These seltzer followers are effervescent with pleasure.
The primary-ever Brooklyn SeltzerFest honoring the carbonated drink’s historical past within the 5 boroughs – that includes tastings, vintage syphons and a nationwide egg cream competitors – offered out in Brooklyn on Sunday, with over 600 attendees coming collectively to have a good time the pop-ular drink.
“Seltzer’s impression on New York Metropolis is extra than simply industrial, it’s extra than simply cultural: it has been labored into the life blood of who we’re as a metropolis – however its impression and historical past is commonly underappreciated,” Barry Joseph, director of the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum and co-founder of SeltzerFest, advised The Publish in an interview.
“What we’re attempting to do is remind us of who we’re, the place we got here from and to understand the people who find themselves serving to to hold it ahead,” Joseph, 55, mentioned of the all-day occasion at Business Metropolis.
Among the many competition’s honorees have been Walter Backerman, a third-generation seltzer maker whose ongoing 60-plus-year route consists of Westchester, Brooklyn and among the identical Decrease East Facet websites that his grandfather delivered to in 1919.
“What makes it particular is you’re not simply delivering a product, you’re sharing [in] individuals’s lives,” mentioned Backerman, who was awarded SeltzerFest’s Spirit of Eli award — named for the late “Sultan of Seltzer” Eli Miller. “You enter individuals’s properties, and also you turn out to be a part of their lives.”
The fizzy celebration was initially concocted by Joseph and Brooklyn Seltzer Museum co-curator Alex Gomberg as a way to attract extra consideration to the budding museum, which opened in 2023 on the website of one of many nation’s final seltzer factories – and has since drawn extra syphon savants than its founders may have imagined.
“As quickly as we opened the doorways, we couldn’t shut them,” the Forest Hills resident recalled, noting the Cypress Hills museum’s centuries-long span of historical past by means of manufacturing, science and cultural exhibitions.
Notably, the area highlights the custom of Jap European Jewish immigrants making and delivering seltzer within the Huge Apple on the flip of the century.
“There’s a range [of visitors] there, and it speaks to what seltzer means to individuals,” Joseph mentioned.
To artist Ken Rush, whose work consists of visions of classic syphons, seltzer is a sentimental nod to his childhood rising up within the sixties in Brooklyn.
“Seltzer is not only the flavour — you’re a part of a residing custom,” mentioned Rush, writer of kids’s e-book The Seltzer Man, which memorialized Miller’s deliveryman days.
“Jewish immigrants once they got here right here, didn’t have the training,” mentioned Judaic seltzer bottle collector Moishe Manies, of Lakewood, N.J. “[Seltzer] was a simple enterprise to enter.”
Manies got here to the occasion to point out off a part of his 300-plus bottle assortment of classic Judaic seltzer bottles — a few of which retail for over $200 on-line.
“After I noticed there was a possibility to drink seltzers and pattern egg lotions, it wasn’t a debate,” mentioned SeltzerFest attendee and Manhattanite Alex Dabertin, 31.
“Seltzer is a metaphor for hope. The bubbles, they all the time rise,” chimed Manhattan resident Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti, 35. “I’m a New Yorker, and seltzer … my household drinks it on a regular basis.”
The competition, which additionally included egg cream workshops, seltzer-themed trivia and Yiddish seltzer-themed musical efficiency, is an growth of the museum’s first-ever Nationwide Egg Cream Invitational the museum hosted final 12 months – which noticed its 75 tickets promote out in a matter of two hours, Joseph mentioned.
The large (soda) weapons have been taken out for 2025, with final 12 months’s champion soda jerk Eric Berley, of Philadelphia’s Franklin Fountain, judging the invitational alongside “Uncut Gems” director Benny Safdie, Kelly Fox of Fox’s U-Guess chocolate syrup and sweet scientist Ginny Landt.
The judges have been tasked with reviewing the ten competing egg lotions based mostly on three primary standards, Joseph advised The Publish: efficiency, presentation and style.
“When that tumbler is positioned in entrance of you, does it seem like it’s worthwhile to dive proper into it, as a result of it’s probably the most scrumptious factor on the planet?” Joseph mentioned. “When you drink it, as Mel Brooks as soon as mentioned, ‘You higher sit down, since you’re going to swim with ecstasy.’”
In the long run, it was Florida’s Lofty Pursuits’ “basic” egg cream and Jersey Metropolis-based Hank Schwartz’s “artisanal” cookie-topped egg cream that took dwelling the “greatest style” prize in every respective class.
The most effective efficiency prize went to Sammy’s Steakhouse hailing from the Decrease East Facet; and greatest presentation went to Flatiron-based S&P.
The primary place Golden Syphon Champion award was awarded to Carroll Gardens’ Brooklyn Farmacy — beating out different contestants who used edible glitter, lavender syrup, rainbow cookies, espresso and half-and-half to make their concoctions.
“Seltzer appears to have a endless supply of effervescence that grabs individuals, whether or not they have a nostalgic relationship with it or they don’t know what it’s,” Joseph mirrored.
“In occasions like this – that’s difficult for therefore many individuals – to create one thing that makes individuals really feel so good and linked with one thing so healthful is a privilege.”
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