How a Crafty Bartender Turned Old Bottles into Cocktail Ingredients
The Liquor Bottle Garden at Freddy's Bar in Brooklyn
One of my very old friends, Michael Sternfeld, works at an awesome place called Freddy's Bar , in Park Slope, Brooklyn. As the weather warmed up, he went to task creating a hydroponic vertical garden in their backyard. He was kind enough to tell me all about his experience.
This is actually Sternfeld's second season playing around with hydroponics. As he put it, he started to feel an urge to "get in touch with plants." His initial inspiration was a former girlfriend, a furniture designer who designed vertical hydroponic planter for a design show . In this case, the main focus was the design, not the efficiency of the plants themselves.
Last year's garden was not as efficient and self-sustaining as the current garden. The initial pump situation was such that it required constant monitoring and early morning check-ins - not ideal for a bartender.
This is the original bottle garden
With the new garden, he built for efficiency.
In the bottom right hand there’s an old 4-gallon pickle tub with water and nutrients. A pump sends it up the top and drips water down on the plants, which are housed in liquor bottles with holes cut in them. The water drips through each bottle, where the plants' roots take in nutrients, then goes through a pouring spout into the next bottle, where the process repeats. This wall-mounted garden grows cucumbers, basil, mint, tomatoes and peas.
The new garden
The whole system uses very little water.
The pump runs for about 12 hours a day, typically during business hours, which looks and sounds pretty for the bar patrons enjoying beverages in the yard.
Roots dangle in the bottle so they don’t have to fight for space, as they would in the ground. With this system, each bottle can house 3 cucumber vines or 5-7 basil plants.
In the ground, each plant would need much more space.
Additionally, the yield from hydroponic plants is much more than what you get in dirt. It is much easier for plants to extract nutrients from water, which makes them more efficient than dirt-bound plants.
This gorgeous, bountiful garden seems complicated, but when asked if he would recommend trying this at home, Sternfeld says, "Absolutely. It’s a total DIY thing." However, taking the bottom off of bottles still didn't seem very DIY-ish to me. How did he do it??? "FIRE AND WATER. F**KING SCIENCE." Well, there you have it. Apparently all you need to do is take a piece of twine and tie it around the bottle, about where you want to make the break. Light the string on fire, let it burn for a minute or so, dunk it in cold water, and that's it - the bottom blows right off.
Sternfeld sands down the bottle bottoms and make ashtrays out of them.
He says it has been great getting people involved in where their food comes from and the benefits of urban gardening. Many of his patrons come in to watch the plants grow.
Of course, they also get to benefit from the bounty of the garden. The cucumber, basil and mint show up in special cocktails and the tomatoes have been known to make their way into Bloody Marys.
Overall, it sounds like a fruitful and sustainable project, and a great way to get people involved in the source of their food. For those of you in Brooklyn, definitely make a trip to Freddy's to check out the garden - and the drinks! For everyone else, here is a recipe for the simple syrup behind Brooklyn's best Hydroponic Cocktails.
Freddy's Bar and Backroom,
627 5th Ave (17th street), Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 768-0131
Hydro Syrup
Bring equal amounts of sugar and water to boil, lower heat and simmer, stirring, until all sugar dissolves.
You can add more or less sugar depending on thickness of sugar and level of sweetness you want.
Dice up cucumber, basil and mint, in any ratio you'd like, so that there is a total amount that is equal to the amount of water that you used. Turn off heat, add herbs and veggies and let sit til it cools.
Remove to an airtight container and leave it in fridge for a few hours, or overnight for best results. Strain and use!
(Ed note: I think this mix would work well with Gin and soda. Also, the strained fruit bits would be nice stirred into this Gin and Grapefruit sorbet that I make sometimes.)