After their visit with Vice President Joe Biden earlier this week, Vice needed someone even more interesting to speak with. Who better than their neighbor, Brooklyn Brewery co-founder and president Steve Hindy? Over on Munchies, Steve discusses his introduction to homebrewing in Saudi Arabia and early path to starting the Brooklyn Brewery with co-founder Tom Potter in 1988. See the opening of Steve’s story below, then check out the whole thing.
I’m the founder of The Brooklyn Brewery, but I owe my success in the beer business to an unlikely country, Saudi Arabia, where people have been publicly whipped and sometimes beheaded for producing and selling alcoholic beverages.
It’s kind of a strange story. For the first 15 years of my working life, I was a journalist. In February 1979, I landed in Beirut to become a Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press. A few months later, I was sent to Iran to cover the US hostage crisis. I was expelled from Iran, and I went back in 1980 with the Iraqi Army, when they invaded. I covered the civil war in Lebanon and was abducted in south Lebanon in 1980, but that’s another story.
I moved to Cairo in August 1981, and six weeks later, I was sitting behind Egyptian President Anwar Sadat when he was assassinated at a military parade on October 6.
This is where my homebrewing education began. (Read more.)