Breuckelen Glorious Gin

In 1646, under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company, the village of Breuckelen became the first municipality in what eventually became New York State. The Dutch lost Breuckelen to the British in 1664 and over time the name evolved from Breuckelen to Brooklyn. Breuckelen Distilling Company was founded by Brad Estabrooke in 2010 – one of the first to open in Brooklyn since Prohibition. The distillery is located in an industrial neighborhood a few hundred yards from the Gowanus Canal.

Brad sources the grains for his gin and whiskeys from Oechsner Farms in Newfield, New York, just south of Ithaca. Owner Thor Oechsner organically farms 950 acres planted to corn, wheat, oats, barley and rye. Brad produces handcrafted small-batch spirits in a 400 liter Ulrich Kothe hybrid copper-pot/column still and grinds, mills, ferments and distills his spirits in house. The botanicals used for Glorious Gin are a blend of organically grown juniper, grapefruit peel, rosemary, lemon and ginger. He distills each botanical separately – in three different runs – and then blends the five parts by hand. For the whiskeys, Brad ferments the mash without using any genetically modified yeast, a costly and time-consuming step.