“I’m drinking my sweat right now,” Keely Gerhold says as she lifts a pint of Lithology Tinyfield Amber Ale to her lips. But it wasn’t the drinking that caused Gerhold to perspire, it was the process that filled that glass. Gerhold is on the forefront of a local food movement that has swept up New York City, leaving a robust craft beer scene in its wake. But instead of opening her own brewery, Gerhold went a little further. If people want beer made in New York City, why not grow the components of that beer in the city, too?
Last year, she and her business partner, Katrina Ceguera, founded Tinyfield Roofhop Farm on the roof of the Pfizer Building in the Bed-Stuy. They planted hop plants—a perennial flowering vine that is a principal ingredient in beer—in buckets and watched them trellis up a steel spiderweb of industrial infrastructure left over from the days when the building was a drug manufacturing plant. “It’s creating an ecosystem up there,” Gerhold explains. “Now if you want to source local, organic hops, you can.”
In 2012, the New York State legislature passed the Farm Brewery Bill, which aimed to encourage breweries in New York to source ingredients—particularly hops—from farms in the state. Until 2018, breweries that source at least 20% of their hops and 20% of other ingredients from within New York state will be certified as a “New York State labeled beer,” a boost to their locavore brand. That percentage will increase over time until until 2024, when breweries will have to source 90% of hops and 90% of other ingredients in order to be certified… CONTINUE READING AT GOTHAMIST
