Brooklyn Brewery helped drag American craft beer out of the shadows and into the global spotlight long before hazy IPAs and pastry stouts fully consumed everyone’s social media feeds. Founded in 1988 by Steve Hindy and Tom Potter, the brewery arrived during the early days of the US craft beer revival with a mission to bring brewing back to Brooklyn after decades of industrial decline. Safe to say things escalated fairly successfully from there.

Brooklyn Lager remains the brewery’s defining beer and still feels refreshingly balanced compared to a lot of modern American craft beer. Amber malt, gentle caramel, floral hops and crisp bitterness all work together without any single element screaming for attention. Garrett Oliver’s influence as brewmaster also pushed the brewery toward more culinary and globally inspired brewing long before food pairing became trendy beer festival vocabulary.

The wider range now stretches from crisp pilsners and hop-forward IPAs through to Belgian-inspired ales, barrel-aged projects and genuinely excellent alcohol-free beers. Even with all the experimentation though, the brewery never completely lost its original philosophy of making flavourful beer that remains approachable and social.

There’s also something deeply New York about the whole operation. Creative, collaborative, slightly chaotic and somehow always buzzing with activity. Brooklyn Brewery feels less like a factory and more like a cultural hub that happens to make very good beer at the same time. Which probably explains why it became such an influential name worldwide.