These seltzer fans are bubbling with excitement.
The first-ever Brooklyn SeltzerFest honoring the carbonated drink’s history in the five boroughs – featuring tastings, antique syphons and a national egg cream competition – sold out in Brooklyn on Sunday, with over 600 attendees coming together to celebrate the pop-ular drink.
“Seltzer’s impact on New York City is more than just industrial, it’s more than just cultural: it has been worked into the life blood of who we are as a city – but its impact and history is often underappreciated,” Barry Joseph, director of the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum and co-founder of SeltzerFest, told The Post in an interview.
“What we’re trying to do is remind us of who we are, where we came from and to appreciate the people who are helping to carry it forward,” Joseph, 55, said of the all-day event at Industry City.
Among the festival’s honorees were Walter Backerman, a third-generation seltzer maker whose ongoing 60-plus-year route includes Westchester, Brooklyn and some of the same Lower East Side sites that his grandfather delivered to in 1919.
“What makes it special is you’re not just delivering a product, you’re sharing [in] people’s lives,” said Backerman, who was awarded SeltzerFest’s Spirit of Eli award — named for the late “Sultan of Seltzer” Eli Miller. “You enter people’s homes, and you become part of their lives.”
The fizzy celebration was initially concocted by Joseph and Brooklyn Seltzer Museum co-curator Alex Gomberg as a means to draw more attention to the budding museum, which opened in 2023 at the site of one of the nation’s last seltzer factories – and has since drawn more syphon savants than its founders could have imagined.
“As soon as we opened the doors, we couldn’t close them,” the Forest Hills resident recalled, noting the Cypress Hills museum’s centuries-long span of history through manufacturing, science and cultural exhibitions.
Notably, the space highlights the tradition of Eastern European Jewish immigrants making and delivering seltzer in the Big Apple at the turn of the century.
“There’s a diversity [of visitors] there, and it speaks to what seltzer means to people,” Joseph said.
To artist Ken Rush, whose work includes visions of vintage syphons, seltzer is a sentimental nod to his childhood growing up in the sixties in Brooklyn.
“Seltzer is not just the flavor — you’re part of a living tradition,” said Rush, author of children’s book The Seltzer Man, which memorialized Miller’s deliveryman days.
“Jewish immigrants when they came here, didn’t have the education,” said Judaic seltzer bottle collector Moishe Manies, of Lakewood, N.J. “[Seltzer] was an easy business to go into.”
Manies came to the event to show off part of his 300-plus bottle collection of vintage Judaic seltzer bottles — some of which retail for over $200 online.
“When I saw there was an opportunity to drink seltzers and sample egg creams, it wasn’t a debate,” said SeltzerFest attendee and Manhattanite Alex Dabertin, 31.
“Seltzer is a metaphor for hope. The bubbles, they always rise,” chimed Manhattan resident Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti, 35. “I’m a New Yorker, and seltzer … my family drinks it all the time.”
The festival, which also included egg cream workshops, seltzer-themed trivia and Yiddish seltzer-themed musical performance, is an expansion of the museum’s first-ever National Egg Cream Invitational the museum hosted last year – which saw its 75 tickets sell out in a matter of two hours, Joseph said.
The big (soda) guns were taken out for 2025, with last year’s champion soda jerk Eric Berley, of Philadelphia’s Franklin Fountain, judging the invitational alongside “Uncut Gems” director Benny Safdie, Kelly Fox of Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup and candy scientist Ginny Landt.
The judges were tasked with reviewing the 10 competing egg creams based on three main criteria, Joseph told The Post: performance, presentation and taste.
“When that glass is placed in front of you, does it look like you need to dive right into it, because it’s the most delicious thing in the world?” Joseph said. “Once you drink it, as Mel Brooks once said, ‘You better sit down, because you’re going to swim with ecstasy.’”
In the end, it was Florida’s Lofty Pursuits’ “classic” egg cream and Jersey City-based Hank Schwartz’s “artisanal” cookie-topped egg cream that took home the “best taste” prize in each respective category.
The best performance prize went to Sammy’s Steakhouse hailing from the Lower East Side; and best presentation went to Flatiron-based S&P.
The first place Golden Syphon Champion award was awarded to Carroll Gardens’ Brooklyn Farmacy — beating out other contestants who used edible glitter, lavender syrup, rainbow cookies, coffee and half-and-half to make their concoctions.
“Seltzer seems to have a never-ending source of effervescence that grabs people, whether they have a nostalgic relationship with it or they have no idea what it is,” Joseph reflected.
“In times like this – that is challenging for so many people – to create something that makes people feel so good and connected with something so wholesome is a privilege.”
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