BY day, Antonio Ramos is a medicinal chemist at the drug maker Sanofi-Aventis in Bridgewater, N.J., where he helps develop molecules for prescription drugs.
Photos by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
For their sodas, the couple have experimented with ingredients like star anise, left.
Two examples of the young company’s products, left.
In the evening, he puts his chemistry skill set to a different use: developing formulas for Brooklyn Soda Works, the artisanal soda company he started last year with his partner, Caroline Mak.
At a commercial kitchen they rent in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, the couple make fruit sodas in flavors like cucumber lime sea salt or spiced cranberry. Last year, the seasonal drinks sold at the outdoor weekend flea market in nearby Fort Greene as well as in a handful of craft food restaurants like Blue Hill in Manhattan.
Last Monday night, the pair were experimenting with new flavor extraction methods and ingredient combinations in the kitchen of their Clinton Hill apartment. Ms. Mak, 30, an installation artist by day, stood on the left side of the stove, heating a medley of fresh ginger wedges, cardamom seeds and pressed apple juice.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ramos, 29, watched an adjacent burner, tending to an experiment inspired by Scotch whiskey. He had placed sliced plums and lemon peel in a tin-foil sieve over an industrial stockpot lined with Scottish burning peat — in the hope that he could infuse the fruit with peat smoke.
The practical knowledge he has gleaned from coaxing potential drug ingredients out of ginger and other plants comes in handy here. “It helps me think about how to extract flavors from herbs,” Mr. Ramos says.
But it is not his experience in chemical extraction alone that has helped turn the pair’s hobby into a soda start-up. Ms. Mak’s artistic inclination to make something entirely new has helped them find a niche in a haute beverage market populated by locally roasted coffees, spiced hot chocolates, craft beers and infused vodkas. Their entry is a nonalcoholic, noncaffeinated adult drink that is not so much a soda as a limited-edition carbonated juice.
Ms. Mak takes the ginger cardamom flavor base off the stove, mixes it with apple juice and pours the liquid into a siphon canister for carbonation. Whereas mass-produced fruit sodas that sell in supermarkets are typically made from fizzy water and juice concentrates, she says, their handmade sodas use only fresh ingredients.
“We thought there was a bit of a gap, especially in the area of nonalcoholic beverage options made from fresh fruit,” she says.
The soda venture may have started as a whim: they wanted to see whether they could make their own ginger beer at home so they could serve Dark and Stormy cocktails at a party. But once they saw a potential commercial opportunity, they proceeded scientifically, using each phase of their business — from seeking initial capital to supplying restaurants — to test and refine their niche-market theory.
First, they tried their soda flavors, like pure ginger and lemon, on their friends.
“Our friends liked it, but we wondered if others would like it,” Mr. Ramos says. “We thought, how can we test it?”
They applied for a table at the Brooklyn flea market. Then they sought seed capital of about $2,000 through kickstarter.com, a site that helps finance creative start-up businesses. “We achieved it in four days, which was stunning,” Ms. Mak says.
With the money, the pair bought equipment like soda kegs. They consulted artisanal beer makers about carbonation techniques. They worked with a program at the Cornell University College of Agriculture to vet their soda recipes.
On their first day at the flea market last April, they sold out by 3 p.m., Ms. Mak says. Soon after came an episode that is the foodie equivalent of a starlet being discovered at the lunch counter in Schwab’s drugstore: the chef at Blue Hill, who lives in the neighborhood, happened by the flea market and tasted the sodas. Blue Hill soon became a wholesale client.
For Ms. Mak and Mr. Ramos, a second career in carbonation was born.
Brooklyn Soda Works has arrived at a time when “made in Brooklyn” foods, from borough-roasted Gorilla Coffee to homemade pies from Four & Twenty Blackbirds, are having a cultural moment. In fact, two local craft beer destinations, Beer Table in Park Slope and 61 Local in Cobble Hill, have each repurposed a beer line to put Brooklyn soda on tap.
But the special selling point of the sodas — fresh ingredients — is also their limitation. The sodas have the shelf life of milk, about two weeks, Ms. Mak says. And the couple have made a deliberate decision to stay with fresh ingredients, keeping the brand limited and fairly local. That means they make frequent deliveries to their bar and restaurant clients. They have no plans, as yet, to sell to chain stores, but they might consider supplying a local artisanal food store.
Even so, the company made money last year, the couple says. But so far, their sodanomics are not enough to retire on.
Their sodas typically sell at the wholesale level for $80 a five-gallon keg. The pair can make more than twice as much per keg at the flea market, where they sell their soda at retail for $4 a glass.
NOW the challenge is to scale up production and increase the number of wholesale clients, all while maintaining quality. The company has just hired its first three employees, to help make and sell soda.
And, Ms. Mak says, they have just signed a new client, Untitled, the Danny Meyer restaurant that is to open this month in the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan. But, she says, she was quick to tell the restaurant that the soda company was not yet at a point where it could supply other Meyer restaurants, like Union Square Cafe or the Shake Shack mini-chain.
At the end of an evening of soda experiments, the couple’s kitchen is perfumed in a haze of peat and citrus peel. Ms. Mak takes the canister of cardamom apple ginger soda that she has just made and conducts a taste test.
“This needs more work,” she says. “The cardamom has been beaten back by the ginger and the apple.”
Mr. Ramos checks on the peat-smoked fruit experiment, taking the plums and lemon peel out of the pan and sniffing them. “It’s definitely peaty,” he says, pleased.
Like single-malt Scotch whiskey, the Brooklyn sodas and their unusual flavors — grapefruit jalapeno honey, strawberry hops pink peppercorn and (go figure) maple bacon — attract a certain beverage cognoscenti. That kind of chemistry between consumer and consumed is no accident.
“It’s an expensive product and we are making weird flavors,” Mr. Ramos acknowledges. “You can dumb it down or you can try to understand your niche and push harder into that niche.”
2010 EcoGastronomy graduate, Matt Benham, passed this article along to us. He is one of the "first three employees" the Brooklyn artisan soda company has hired.
At a commercial kitchen they rent in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, the couple make fruit sodas in flavors like cucumber lime sea salt or spiced cranberry. Last year, the seasonal drinks sold at the outdoor weekend flea market in nearby Fort Greene as well as in a handful of craft food restaurants like Blue Hill in Manhattan.
Last Monday night, the pair were experimenting with new flavor extraction methods and ingredient combinations in the kitchen of their Clinton Hill apartment. Ms. Mak, 30, an installation artist by day, stood on the left side of the stove, heating a medley of fresh ginger wedges, cardamom seeds and pressed apple juice.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ramos, 29, watched an adjacent burner, tending to an experiment inspired by Scotch whiskey. He had placed sliced plums and lemon peel in a tin-foil sieve over an industrial stockpot lined with Scottish burning peat — in the hope that he could infuse the fruit with peat smoke.
The practical knowledge he has gleaned from coaxing potential drug ingredients out of ginger and other plants comes in handy here. “It helps me think about how to extract flavors from herbs,” Mr. Ramos says.
But it is not his experience in chemical extraction alone that has helped turn the pair’s hobby into a soda start-up. Ms. Mak’s artistic inclination to make something entirely new has helped them find a niche in a haute beverage market populated by locally roasted coffees, spiced hot chocolates, craft beers and infused vodkas. Their entry is a nonalcoholic, noncaffeinated adult drink that is not so much a soda as a limited-edition carbonated juice.
Ms. Mak takes the ginger cardamom flavor base off the stove, mixes it with apple juice and pours the liquid into a siphon canister for carbonation. Whereas mass-produced fruit sodas that sell in supermarkets are typically made from fizzy water and juice concentrates, she says, their handmade sodas use only fresh ingredients.
“We thought there was a bit of a gap, especially in the area of nonalcoholic beverage options made from fresh fruit,” she says.
The soda venture may have started as a whim: they wanted to see whether they could make their own ginger beer at home so they could serve Dark and Stormy cocktails at a party. But once they saw a potential commercial opportunity, they proceeded scientifically, using each phase of their business — from seeking initial capital to supplying restaurants — to test and refine their niche-market theory.
First, they tried their soda flavors, like pure ginger and lemon, on their friends.
“Our friends liked it, but we wondered if others would like it,” Mr. Ramos says. “We thought, how can we test it?”
They applied for a table at the Brooklyn flea market. Then they sought seed capital of about $2,000 through kickstarter.com, a site that helps finance creative start-up businesses. “We achieved it in four days, which was stunning,” Ms. Mak says.
With the money, the pair bought equipment like soda kegs. They consulted artisanal beer makers about carbonation techniques. They worked with a program at the Cornell University College of Agriculture to vet their soda recipes.
On their first day at the flea market last April, they sold out by 3 p.m., Ms. Mak says. Soon after came an episode that is the foodie equivalent of a starlet being discovered at the lunch counter in Schwab’s drugstore: the chef at Blue Hill, who lives in the neighborhood, happened by the flea market and tasted the sodas. Blue Hill soon became a wholesale client.
For Ms. Mak and Mr. Ramos, a second career in carbonation was born.
Brooklyn Soda Works has arrived at a time when “made in Brooklyn” foods, from borough-roasted Gorilla Coffee to homemade pies from Four & Twenty Blackbirds, are having a cultural moment. In fact, two local craft beer destinations, Beer Table in Park Slope and 61 Local in Cobble Hill, have each repurposed a beer line to put Brooklyn soda on tap.
But the special selling point of the sodas — fresh ingredients — is also their limitation. The sodas have the shelf life of milk, about two weeks, Ms. Mak says. And the couple have made a deliberate decision to stay with fresh ingredients, keeping the brand limited and fairly local. That means they make frequent deliveries to their bar and restaurant clients. They have no plans, as yet, to sell to chain stores, but they might consider supplying a local artisanal food store.
Even so, the company made money last year, the couple says. But so far, their sodanomics are not enough to retire on.
Their sodas typically sell at the wholesale level for $80 a five-gallon keg. The pair can make more than twice as much per keg at the flea market, where they sell their soda at retail for $4 a glass.
NOW the challenge is to scale up production and increase the number of wholesale clients, all while maintaining quality. The company has just hired its first three employees, to help make and sell soda.
And, Ms. Mak says, they have just signed a new client, Untitled, the Danny Meyer restaurant that is to open this month in the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan. But, she says, she was quick to tell the restaurant that the soda company was not yet at a point where it could supply other Meyer restaurants, like Union Square Cafe or the Shake Shack mini-chain.
At the end of an evening of soda experiments, the couple’s kitchen is perfumed in a haze of peat and citrus peel. Ms. Mak takes the canister of cardamom apple ginger soda that she has just made and conducts a taste test.
“This needs more work,” she says. “The cardamom has been beaten back by the ginger and the apple.”
Mr. Ramos checks on the peat-smoked fruit experiment, taking the plums and lemon peel out of the pan and sniffing them. “It’s definitely peaty,” he says, pleased.
Like single-malt Scotch whiskey, the Brooklyn sodas and their unusual flavors — grapefruit jalapeno honey, strawberry hops pink peppercorn and (go figure) maple bacon — attract a certain beverage cognoscenti. That kind of chemistry between consumer and consumed is no accident.
“It’s an expensive product and we are making weird flavors,” Mr. Ramos acknowledges. “You can dumb it down or you can try to understand your niche and push harder into that niche.”
2010 EcoGastronomy graduate, Matt Benham, passed this article along to us. He is one of the "first three employees" the Brooklyn artisan soda company has hired.
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