Officially, Anthony Totten is the events manager for Finback Brewery in Queens. But he prefers to use the title “curator of vibes.”
If you ask him to pick a perfect quarantine beer, one to quell—at least temporarily—the myriad fears and concerns during this coronavirus crisis, he might suggest BQE, a bourbon barrel-aged Imperial Stout that Finback releases each winter. BQE features chocolate made in Queens and coffee roasted in Brooklyn—or vice versa—hence why the beer is named for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which passes through the two boroughs.
Now, both boroughs share another, more significant part of Finback’s story. Now, they’re both home.
For over the last year, or a little longer than I’ve worked here, the brewery has been building a second production facility in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood, not far from the Barclays Center. We’re calling it a “beverage studio” to denote the new ventures we want to use it for, from coffee roasting to distilling. There’s even going to be a dumpling shop, overseen by one of the owner’s mothers.
But with restaurants and bars, including taprooms, now limited to takeout and delivery in New York City (which has roughly 1/3 of the nation’s COVID-19 cases), the almost-but-not-quite-ready space has been repurposed as a second point for to-go sales—an attempt to find a solution to the financial distress we, like so many small businesses around the world, now face.
It’s been tough for everyone, on so many levels, but Totten is trying to see the positive in it. When he works the retail station in Brooklyn, “I’m meeting people from the community—people who know us, people who don’t, they’re just walking by—and I’m starting to build friendships,” he tells me on a recent afternoon in the cold box, while loading cases of cans onto a hand truck before his shift. “And I tell ’em, ‘When this is all over, and we’re officially open, we’re going to party.’”
