Try This: Transmitter Brewing’s CSB, Homegrown Tea, Ravenswood Sriracha, Absent Mindr Poetry App
No. 17
Transmitter Brewing’s CSB
Like A CSA But With Beer
Considering the success of farm shares in Brooklyn, as well as the borough’s avidity for craft beer and supporting local businesses, it’s surprising that there haven’t been any community supported breweries. Well, that’s all changed with the introduction of Greenpoint-founded, Long Island City-based Transmitter Brewery’s CSB. Six-month shares are $175 and participants will get to pick up two 750mL bottles of farmhouse ale per month, as well as two Transmitter Brewing glasses, one Transmitter T-shirt, and 10 percent off additional bottles and growler fills whenever they’d like. And really, a share in a CSB sounds like a lot more fun than one in a CSA, which always tends to be short on the stuff you really want (like tomatoes) and long on stuff you can barely even identify (like purslane). But when all you get is beer and more beer and even more beer? You’re not going to need anything else.
No. 18
Homegrown Tea
5 Tips For Growing Your Own Tea in Your Apartment
Cassie Liversidge’s Homegrown Tea: An Illustrated Guide to Planting, Harvesting and Blending Teas and Tisanes was published in March. We asked her to give a little advice to the apartment-dwelling Brooklynite who might not have much more than a windowsill or fire escape on which to start a garden.
- Scented Pelargoniums (Pelargonium) are easy to grow on a sunny windowsill. You can get so many different flavors, including lavender, cinnamon, peppermint, orange or lemon. And they’re believed to help with stress and anxiety. Keep your plant neat by harvesting leaves throughout the year to use for a cup of fresh tea.
- For an aromatic tea, grow a cardamom plant (Elettaria cardamomum) in your bathroom! They love a humid environment but don’t like sitting in water. Use the fresh lime-green leaves for
- Grow your own lemon grass plant (Cymbopogan citratus) from the stems you buy from grocery stores. Place them in a glass of water and after a few days roots will form. When there are lots of roots, plant them into a pot of potting soil and place on a sunny windowsill. The leaves, which you can snip off to use for tea, are high in folic acid and vitamin C, making this a nutritional as well as aromatic tea.
- Tulsi or Holy Basil (Ocimum sanctum) has been used as a medicinal herb for thousands of years. Tulsi has a strong taste of cloves, and the leaves and the flowers can be used to make tea. Buy a tulsi plant and grow it on a sunny windowsill, as they like a lot of light. Keep it moist but not overwatered. Pluck the leaves off when you fancy a cup of tea that’ll boost your immune system.
- If you have a little more room on your windowsill and want a more unusual herb than mint, why not try growing some lemon verbena (Aloysia triphylla)? It’s a good digestive tea, amazing before or after a meal. Plus, it has a delicious sharp citrus flavor. Use fresh or dry it for later use.
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No. 19
Ravenswood Sriracha
The Only Hot Sauce You’ll Need this Summer
Whatever your hot sauce of choice—Frank’s, Cholula, or good old Tabasco—it’s hard to deny the current ubiquity of Huy Fong’s Sriracha in homes and restaurants all over Brooklyn. And while we’ve long been partial to the tangy heat of Rooster sauce, we’d been looking for a little variety in our our favorite condiment—enter Ravenswood Sriracha. A partnership between Ravenswood Winery and Jojo’s Sriracha, these wine-infused hot sauces have the spice of sriracha tempered by the rich, fruity undertones of Ravenswood’s Petite Sirah and Zinfandel wines, making for the perfect accompaniment to, oh, just about anything you’re going to eat this summer.
No. 20
Absent Mindr Poetry App
Brooklyn Poetry as Möbius Strip
Absent Mindr is Brooklyn poet Tommy Pico’s attempt to bring poetry to the masses—or, at least, the masses with smart phones. Part performance, part multimedia collaboration, part interactive experience, Absent Mindr’s most important aspect is its form. And Pico is part of a wider world of boundary-defying poets who accept the challenges of making art in a constricted world. “Outlets and attention spans and competition and community and the environment and various crushing –isms,” he says. “I think it’s a Möbius strip.” And yet: “Dissatisfaction makes people ripe, and while the world may be going to hell, all these people make me excited.” He adds, “It’s like Alexander Chee said on Facebook the other day, ‘Despair is just bourgeois laziness.’”
