Mayor Bloomberg likes his beer cold — really cold.
Standing inside the just-expanded Brooklyn Brewery yesterday, the mayor revealed that his unorthodox approach to drinking beer requires ice.
“I actually put ice in my beer,” the mayor said. “Most people don’t.”
Hearing a gasp from the crowd, he explained: “I know. I’ve always done it. I don’t think it comes from Boston.”
Brewery President Steve Hindy was too polite to set the mayor straight on the correct way to savor his popular suds.
But Julie Johnson, editor of All About Beer magazine, was more than willing to offer Bloomberg some drinking tips.
Rule No. 1: Don’t do what you’re doing.
“Never,” she declared, “if you want to respect the efforts the brewers put into the beer.”
Johnson said craft beers and ales, such as Brooklyn’s, are meant to be served at “cellar temperatures” of 50 to 55 degrees and not ice cold, much less watered down.
Even a frozen mug would be off limits, she added, since “you don’t want to chill it into a tasteless mess.”
The odds of Bloomberg following her advice are remote. The mayor’s been known to march to his own taste drummer. He adds salt to just about everything — including pizza.
Bloomberg turned up at the Williamsburg brewery yesterday — his 69th birthday — with a bunch of elected Brooklyn officials to cut the ribbon on the $8 million expansion, which is being aided by an $800,000 state grant.
Hindy said that would allow him to ramp up production from 12,000 to 120,000 barrels a year. Each barrel is the equivalent of 14 cases, or 336 bottles.
Hindy said he hopes to triple sales within three years and “all of the increase will happen here in Brooklyn.”
Sales of Brooklyn-label beers were up 20 percent between 2009 and 2010, even as total beer consumption in the US declined.