What could possibly go wrong?
A popular Carroll Gardens brew house will host a festival that pairs professional wrestling with highly potent pours of beer! The Pastrytown fest at Industry City on March 16 will feature pastry stouts and fruited Berliners flavored with unlikely “adjunct” ingredients, at an event that promises to be simply magical, according to an organizer.
“Basically it’s an adjunct fantasy land,” said Matt Monahan, co-owner of Other Half Brewery.
The bonanza of unusual brews will showcase 35 top-notch brewers from across the country, each pouring beers flavored with adjuncts — a term referring to anything added to beer aside from the main ingredients of hops, yeast, malt, and water — including bananas, vanilla, almonds, pretzels, sea salt, coconut, macadamia nuts, cinnamon, and lots of other zany additions that sound more at home in a dessert dish than a stout beer.
Other Half plans to pour Cookie Kooks, an imperial stout brewed in collaboration with Swedish beer-maker Omnipollo, which will also be at the festival with its medley of sugary, breakfast-inspired brews. Cookie Kooks boasts an intoxicating 15.4-percent alcohol by volume, which is three times more potent than a Budweiser, but is typical of the type of beers that ticket holders can expect at Pastrytown.
That big buzz is the big reason that Monahan and his crew worked hard to ensure there will be plenty of food options — including Ample Hills Creamery, Bien Cuit, Coolhaus, Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Milk Bar, and Supermoon Bakehouse — to help fortify stomachs against the effects of too much sugar-laden alcohol.
“Because of the high ABV, we want to make sure people aren’t completely annihilated,” Monahan said. “There’s a lot of food and a lot of water available at this thing.”
And because Other Half just happens to employ several professional wrestlers, the warriors of the New York Wrestling Connection will be on hand to duke it out in a series of catastrophic, blood-soaked free-for-alls for the amusement of Pastrytown revelers.
“It’s so much fun,” said Monahan. “At some point there’s 10 or 15 of these guys in the ring at the same time, they have all sorts of props out, they’re high flying — it’s bust.”
Drink dessert and watch pro wrestling at Industry City [220 36th St. Suite 2A, between Second and Third Avenue in Sunset Park, pastr
