The Brinery
Address: 4175 Whitmore Lake Rd Ann Arbor, MI, 48105
Website: https://thebrinery.com/
About Us
The Brinery is committed to preserving healthy and wholesome produce through the ancient art of fermentation. We aim to stimulate people's inner economies with our living, raw, and unpasteurized fermented foods. At the same time, we strive to stimulate the economy of our greater community by working with local family farms to grow our produce.
The Brinery was founded 2010, with a small batch of sauerkraut meant to preserve a surplus of fresh cabbage at Tantré Farm in Chelsea, MI. Owner and Chief Fermentation Officer, David Klingenberger, went on to make more and more small batch ferments with the abundance of local produce, scaling up the operation at an exciting rate. The Brinery now processes over 200,000 lbs of local family farmed vegetables per year, and employees 12 people!
Our Farms: Tantré Farm, Second Spring, MSU Student Farm, Pregitzer Farm Market, Wayward Seed Farm
The Brinery was founded 2010, with a small batch of sauerkraut meant to preserve a surplus of fresh cabbage at Tantré Farm in Chelsea, MI. Owner and Chief Fermentation Officer, David Klingenberger, went on to make more and more small batch ferments with the abundance of local produce, scaling up the operation at an exciting rate. The Brinery now processes over 200,000 lbs of local family farmed vegetables per year, and employees 12 people!
Our Farms: Tantré Farm, Second Spring, MSU Student Farm, Pregitzer Farm Market, Wayward Seed Farm
Practices
People often hear “sauerkraut” and think of vinegary limp vegetables in a can or bag, but at The Brinery, we transform vegetables through the process of lacto-fermentation. Our name tells you everything you need to know about this ancient art of food preservation – we add a natural salt brine to farm fresh vegetables.
That’s it.
We find ancient scholars from Confucius to Pliny the Elder extolling the merits of this method of food preservation. But this simple technique is handed down to us through the cultural continuity of community and agriculture. Needing to preserve the harvest for their family and friends, people came together during peak seasons and chopped, salted, and fermented vegetables together as many hands made light work.
The ingredients are simple, but the microbial ballet that unfolds under the brine produces a delicious and nutritious food that will store and retain nutrition far longer than vegetables in their raw state. As the salt and anaerobic (oxygen free!) environment stifle harmful bacteria and prevent decay, the beneficial bacteria (lactobacillus) multiply and go to work eating the sugars in the vegetables and converting them to lactic acid and carbon dioxide – the sour taste and fizzy bubbles!
Unlike heat canning and vinegar pickling, lacto-fermenting vegetables is a low-energy way of letting bacteria do the work for you. While heating vegetables can deplete them of nutrients, fermenting actually retains vitamins, produces beneficial lactobacillus, and predigests some of the plant material, making more nutritive elements available to our bodies.
As our business continues to grow, we remain committed to the values that inspired our first batches of kraut:
We believe that probiotic bacteria are a direct path to digestive enlightenment and optimal health.
We work closely with farmers who guard the vitality and diversity of the land, and provide nourishment to their communities.
We are committed to strengthening our region’s economy with natural, healthy, and vibrant foods made by happy and healthy humans.
We keep the flame of creative human culture alive by recalling our ancestors who used fermentation to preserve food out of necessity, while looking to the future of flavors that will inspire new generations to delight in food that brings us ever closer to each other and to our place in the cosmos.
That’s it.
We find ancient scholars from Confucius to Pliny the Elder extolling the merits of this method of food preservation. But this simple technique is handed down to us through the cultural continuity of community and agriculture. Needing to preserve the harvest for their family and friends, people came together during peak seasons and chopped, salted, and fermented vegetables together as many hands made light work.
The ingredients are simple, but the microbial ballet that unfolds under the brine produces a delicious and nutritious food that will store and retain nutrition far longer than vegetables in their raw state. As the salt and anaerobic (oxygen free!) environment stifle harmful bacteria and prevent decay, the beneficial bacteria (lactobacillus) multiply and go to work eating the sugars in the vegetables and converting them to lactic acid and carbon dioxide – the sour taste and fizzy bubbles!
Unlike heat canning and vinegar pickling, lacto-fermenting vegetables is a low-energy way of letting bacteria do the work for you. While heating vegetables can deplete them of nutrients, fermenting actually retains vitamins, produces beneficial lactobacillus, and predigests some of the plant material, making more nutritive elements available to our bodies.
As our business continues to grow, we remain committed to the values that inspired our first batches of kraut:
We believe that probiotic bacteria are a direct path to digestive enlightenment and optimal health.
We work closely with farmers who guard the vitality and diversity of the land, and provide nourishment to their communities.
We are committed to strengthening our region’s economy with natural, healthy, and vibrant foods made by happy and healthy humans.
We keep the flame of creative human culture alive by recalling our ancestors who used fermentation to preserve food out of necessity, while looking to the future of flavors that will inspire new generations to delight in food that brings us ever closer to each other and to our place in the cosmos.