From the outside, 19-33 37th Street looks like just another warehouse, but inside it’s producing the borough’s newest brew. Richard Buceta left the job security and comfort of an almost 20-year career in the advertising world to start SingleCut Beersmiths.

It was December 2007 and Buceta was on a two-week Christmas vacation when he came to the sudden realization that he wasn’t going back to his job. He didn’t like the way the advertising industry was being run and told his wife he was leaving the “fat paycheck behind.” “You only live once,” he said, but was afraid because “I didn’t have a plan B.”
As an avid home brewer for over 10 years, beer was always on his mind, but he didn’t think that he could turn his passion for craft beer into a career. For roughly a month after quitting his job, Buceta sat at home and watched his wife go to work every day while he began to turn their home into a laboratory filled with beer-making equipment. His wife was always supportive of his life-altering decision, but Buceta admitted that she was growing tired of having her living space turned into a mini-brewery.

After two-and-a-half months, Buceta got a job at a local brewery

in Brooklyn. He won them over by bringing samples of his own beer from perfected recipes, and he recalls having to work his way back up a new corporate ladder. On the lowest rung of the ladder in the advertising world, you make the coffee; on the lowest rung of the ladder in the brewing world, you clean out the kegs.

One day Buceta was doing the manual work and thought “I’m really foolish.” “I let my heart dictate my life over my mind,” he said. Frustrated, Buceta decided to start his own brewery.

On December 8, Single Cut Beersmiths opened its taps to the public for the first time, serving over 1,200 thirsty patrons. Soon, they’ll be able to buy SingleCut beers – there’s currently five different kinds – in their favorite bar.
“I’m thrilled,” he said. “I consider myself lucky, and I’ve never worked harder in my life.

With a nod to his love of music, the name SingleCut comes from a type of Les Paul guitar. The tap room, which is open to the public on a limited basis Thursday through Saturday, has guitar-shaped taps and a stage.
There’s currently seven people working at the brewery. “We wear many hats,” Buceta said. “There are no weak links in the chain.”

One member of that chain is Mark Muecke, who is head of sales. It was three years ago that he decided to change his career path as well, started as an intern at Greenpoint Beer Works, where he met Buceta, who shared his vision for starting his own brewery. The two hit it off, and when Buceta asked him to oversee sales for SingleCut, Muecke jumped at the chance and hasn’t regretted it.

“Because we’re a small company, there is no bureaucracy,” he said. “There is no one cracking the whip, you do your job and you do it well.”
At the grand opening, visitors had the chance to see the space where the beer is brewed up close. “I think this is cooler than the Brooklyn Brewery,” said Brooklyn transplant and Sunnyside resident Darin Roberts, who said SingleCut has “more of a raw feeling.”

When asked what he sees in the future for the growing brewery, Muecke said, “lots of beer, lots of parties, and lots of hangovers.”
The tap room will be open to the public every Thursday and Friday from 5 to 8 p.m., and Saturdays from
12 to 6 p.m.

By Heather Senison

Chase Emmons is buzzing around Queens spreading the word on an often-misjudged form of urban farming: beekeeping.

Emmons is the Chief Beekeeper and Director of Business Development for Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farm in Long Island City.

After growing up in Greenwich Village where he still lives, Emmons went on to Ithaca College for a year, and left to become one of the original founders of the Princeton Review college preparation program.

He now has 10 beehives on his farm in Sunderland, Massachusetts, four hives at the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm, and one on the roof of BoBo’s restaurant in Greenwich Village.

Emmons sells his Long Island City-made honey at fairs and farmer’s markets around New York City. For example, he hosted the Honey Festival on the Rockaway Beach boardwalk on Saturday, September 17.

His passion for bees started in 2002, when his friend, one of the founders of Burton snowboards, invited Emmons to Massachusetts to have a look at his beehives.

“My response was, ‘what’s wrong with you, stinging insects, are you nuts?’” Emmons said. However, he soon fell in love with the ways of the bee colony, which he said reminded him of the computers he built as a technology-nerd when he was growing up.

“The whole operating-of-a-colony was very much like a computer in a way,” Emmons said. “You kind of build this hive for these creatures that will just do all this work for you, and happily so.”

In addition to providing delicious honey to eat, beekeeping allows people to transcend cultures that date as far back as the previous millennium, he said. It also provides a socializing opportunity, as keepers get together in groups and clubs to discuss their honey-harvesting tactics. For example, Emmons is now a member of the Backwards Beekeepers club in New York City.

“I’ve made like 30 different friends that I would’ve never had any chance to meet let alone be friends with,” he said, “simply because of beekeeping in the city.”

New York City legalized beekeeping in May 2010, he said, and since then its popularity has skyrocketed. That is partially due to its profitability. New York City honey sells at between $20 and $40 a pound, making it Brooklyn Grange’s most profitable commodity. One hive can produce more than 50 pounds of honey in a season, Emmons said.

However, “the biggest impact [of beekeeping] is it just helps people to open their eyes to the whole food system, how the system works and what they’re putting in their mouths.

“I was that person,” he said, “who was completely shielded and separated, food just appeared in the supermarket and then appeared on my table.”

By LISA FRASER

It all started with a pot, some milk, vanilla and eight siblings who always couldn’t wait to get home from school to savor their grandmother’s sweet, icy mix.

That was many years ago in the Dominican Republic. Fast-forward to 2011 and out of that afterschool tradition grew an ices factory that now distributes to many delis and bodegas across New York and other states.

It’s called Mamita’s, after the affectionate name given to the Morel family’s grandmother. The Ozone Park factory sits under the elevated A train line on 100th Street and Liberty Avenue. With its navy blue and white awning and the drawing of a smiling woman with upswept hair – fashioned after Mrs. Morel – it’s not hard to miss. But finding the right entrance is a challenge. Once you walk in, you are greeted with a painting that transports you to the tropics, while simultaneously the cold air from the freezers wafts out.

Javier Morel – who heads the business with his three brothers four sisters, and mother and father – is in and out but any number of his jubilant family members are usually around to greet the occasional guest who is interested in purchasing ices by the box – a small retail portion that gives the factory a relationship with the neighborhood.

The Morels immigrated to New York from Santiago in 1990 in search of opportunity.  After they settled in South Ozone Park, one sister, Nieves, began to make cocount-flavored ices and sold batches of 30 to 50 to neighborhood stores. “People soon started to buy them more and more,” said Javier Morel, a clean-shaven man with a soft-spoken demeanor. At the time, they were still made at home in the family’s kitchen.

After an unsuccessful attempt to run a restaurant, the Morels took a risk and started an ices-only factory. They pooled together money, bought the needed machines and now the kitchen concoctions are a booming business. It wasn’t hard for the Morels to get into the rhythm of running a factory. The eight siblings were already used to it since their father owned a business in the Dominican Republic, where they spent time packing boxes.

In 2004, the current space – a former nightclub – opened up and the Morels swooped in, expanding it to 9,500 square feet. Recently, the family bought the laundromat next door and are expanding again.

The new space will bring another five people on staff, adding to the 25 extended family members and local residents who already work there.

The factory churns out 100,000 ices a day and distributes them to over 5,000 customers in Puerto Rico, Miami, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Boston, Connecticut, North Carolina and New York. Mamita’s brings in over $7 million a year.  “We’ve seen people try to do [the same], but so far nobody has come close,” Morel said.

Mamita’s produces seven flavors of ices: coconut,  batata (sweet potato) cream, raspberry cream, tamarind, passion fruit, raspberry lime and mango. (Morel’s favorite is the raspberry.)  The ices sell for one dollar in stores.

In the summer months, when the factory reaches its peak sales, the coconut,  batata cream and tamarind rake in the most sales.

During the winter, sales dip, but Morel plans to change that: he’s looking into products that will always be in demand year-round, such as cheese, which he plans to start producing in a month, and fruit juices.

“We have to look to produce things that will last through all seasons,” he said. “Everybody eats cheese, but not everybody eats ices. That’s exactly how you stay strong.”

Morel never thought that the homemade ices would become so big. Best of all, he said, “you get to see your family everyday. Sometimes we fight but it doesn’t go farther than that; a few minutes after we make up.”