When Brooklyn Kura co-founders Brandon Doughan and Brian Polen met in Japan at a mutual friend’s wedding, they discovered that they shared a passion for sake, a traditional Japanese fermented rice beverage.
After heading back to the States, Doughan, a biochemist with 20 years of homebrewing experience, and Polen, who worked in analytics, experimented with making sake at home, took courses, and apprenticed at breweries. Eventually, they began to entertain the idea of opening their own sake brewery. That dream became reality in 2017 when Brooklyn Kura opened in Industry City, an innovation hub in the waterfront Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park.
The What:
Brooklyn Kura was the first sake brewery in New York State and one of only 15 sake breweries in the US when it opened.
Doughan and Polen pride themselves on hand-crafting their sake with the finest possible raw materials. The sake-brewing process is similar to brewing beer, and the beverage consists of four main ingredients: water, rice, yeast and koji, a mold also used to make other fermented products like soy sauce.
At the sleek Industry City tasting room, you can taste a range of sake, from shiboritate (fresh-pressed) to orizake (pre-pressed) to moromi, which is still-fermenting and taken straight from the vat, allowing you to truly appreciate the subtlety and complexity of the drink.
The Why:
Brooklyn Kura is a welcome addition to NYC in many ways: the company fits perfectly into the ever-growing community in Industry City, which consists of over 450 innovators and makers and is redefining manufacturing in the city and our local craft beverage scene, which has experienced a boom in recent decades.. We go through this complex and sometimes taste Brooklyn Kura's sake on our Made in New York tour. We delve even further into the renaissance of craft beverages on our Craft Cocktail Tour (where you can buy a bottle of Brooklyn Kura at Astor Wine and Spirits) in the East Village and our NYC Brewery Tour in Long Island City.
The Where:
Brooklyn Kura
Industry City
68 34th Street (Courtyard ⅚)
Brooklyn, NY 11232
(347) 766-1601