Things To Do In Brooklyn | Apollo Fields Wedding Photography | Barrow’s Intense Ginger Liqueur | Strong Rope Brewery

Being a small business owner means a lot of long hours doing taxes, cleaning out your email inbox, fielding calls, filing receipts, and managing invoices. AKA, not taking just taking pretty pictures all day long (one can dream, right). I still wouldn’t trade it for anything, and days like today are reminders of exactly that!

Barrow’s Intense Ginger Liqueur

After a meeting with a venue in Glen Cove, we headed into Brooklyn. Our first stop was Barrow’s Intense Ginger Liqueur to meet up with my friend and owner, Josh Morton. I’ve always been a big fan of this product since I stumbled across it while bartending in NYC a few years ago. They have been growing their operation for the last six years and recently opened an awesome tasting room that can double as a dope event space with a designated studio for food photography.

It is no secret that I love supporting brands that have quirky beginnings and have found success by good old fashioned hard work and not taking shortcuts. Josh stumbled into this business after making his ginger liqueur out of his apartment building and giving it to friends as gifts. It obviously caught on because it is fresh and delicious, but also because as a spirit it works great in a lot of different cocktails but can also hold up on its own. A lot of hard work and smart decision making later, they are now in 40 different states and absolutely killing it, all while having fun.

Strong Rope Brewery

Afterwards, we headed over to Strong Rope Brewery to sample some beer and have a little work-date. We are able to do a lot of the business remotely, which means that we can totally set up shop at breweries (they are totally the new coffee shop, right?) Also, since moving back east, one of the things that we miss the most is the dank beer that was everywhere in Colorado so we’ve been on the hunt for places out here that not only have delicious brews but also have that chill, easygoing, doggo-and-kiddo friendly vibe.

We had a mini-blizzard this afternoon in New York, with snow and garbage flying in little dancing tornadoes along the streets. Between rush hour and the freak weather, we certainly didn’t want to drive back into Long Island right away, so it was the perfect excuse to hunker down in Brooklyn a little longer. The beer here is solid and the vibe is quiet and laid back.

The winters here are much different than in Colorado. The temps get bone-chilling cold, the kind of cold where it hurts your teeth to chew gum and you don’t want to open your eyes all the way. It’s unforgiving, but on the rare occasion, it will shut the whole city down which actually becomes quite romantic. Everything gets quiet, and the flurries will become illuminated by street lights and a sense of wonderment as you can walk in the middle of the streets without a taxi in sight.

Colorado winters are the opposite. They are something to be celebrated, where long-awaited retreats to the mountains are equal parts exercise and fun. The cold doesn’t even stick to your skin, much less your bones. The flurries melt before they become blackened ice mounds. I think eventually you take it for granted, but enduring the east cost oh-no-I’m-not-going-out-there cold months again is definitely a lesson working with what you got. In the meantime, we’re happy to hide away in craft breweries and tasting rooms while we answer emails and tie up loose ends from 2018.