Barrel Age Your Own Sake — A Brooklyn Kura Workshop Class

*What You’ll Create

A functional 2-liter oak barrel, coopered from scratch — same craft, same tools, same afternoon of assembling staves and hoops, cutting crozes on the router table, and charring the interior until it’s ready for spirits. This time, what goes in it isn’t whiskey. It’s rice, koji, yeast, and water, aged into something you helped choose.

*The Tasting Flight

A sake expert from Brooklyn Kura walks you through a flight of three sakes and a shochu, all brewed or distilled right here in Industry City, all selected because they take well to a little time in wood. The lineup changes with the seasons, but here’s what’s been on the table:

Grand Prairie — a Junmai Ginjo built around white peach, jasmine, and toasted rice.
Occidental — a dry-hopped Junmai, bringing out lychee, grapefruit, and cherry that age into deeper dried-fruit notes. Tidal — a fuller-bodied
Junmai, all steamed rice, apple, and cereal bran.
Kura Shochu — distilled from the leftover sake lees, rich with fig and custard and a rice umami built for barrel aging.

Finishing the Night at Kura

Your barrel’s made, your glass is empty — Brooklyn Kura is a short walk across Industry City, and your Craftsman Ave ticket gets you a discount on sake or shochu to take home and age. They’ve got a full kitchen too: mac and cheese, little smoky sausages, house-made focaccia. Good reason to stay a while longer.