Alcohol has been suitable for many combinations over the years. Painting and drinking, bars and trivia nights, beers and every major sporting event. Now, a new combination is being born: miniature trees and breweries.
Bonsai Bar, a company that organizes and promotes bonsai workshops for beginners in bars, holds events across the metropolitan area, with four events scheduled between now and Christmas. More events are planned for the new year as the event continues to spread its roots.
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single cut north: December 10th, 12:30pm. 6 Fairchild Square, Clifton Park; $75 per person, available online at bonsaibar.com
Wolf Hollow Brewing: December 13th at 6pm. 6882 Amsterdam Road, Grenville; $75 per person, available online at bonsaibar.com
Bard and Baker: December 15th at 6:30pm. 501 Broadway, Troy; $75 per person, available online at bonsaibar.com
Rare Form Brewing Company: December 20th at 6pm. 90 Congress St., Troy. $75 per person, available online at bonsaibar.com
Tim Arsenault, a self-proclaimed cereal enthusiast, founded Bonsai Bar in Providence, Rhode Island in 2021. His goal was to make bonsai, the ancient Japanese art of growing, training and maintaining miniature trees, more accessible through bar-based workshops. The organization has since expanded to Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York.
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Sean Lamoureux, the group’s regional director, is helping spread Bonsai Bar to the metropolitan area. The Albany native took up bonsai as a quarantine hobby in 2020, connected with Arsenault through a class in Massachusetts, and offered Lamoureux a job teaching a bonsai bar workshop to expand to New York.
Participants are given a beginner tree, usually a dwarf jade, and taught the basics of potting, pruning, and design. We also offer a free 15-minute virtual “Treeage” session if you need help troubleshooting your plants. Also, if your bonsai tree becomes dirty, he will provide you with a replacement tree. This is important to continue encouraging new bonsai enthusiasts, Lamoureux said.
“Many of us at the bonsai bar have had the experience of getting a tree for the first time, only to find it clearly dead, demoralized, and unable to return to bonsai for years or at all,” he says. To tell. “Our mission is to connect people with bonsai, so we are serious about flattening the learning curve.”
Mr. Lamoureux’s first local workshop will be held at Rare Foam Brewery in Troy in 2022, with events later that year at Bird & Baker, Greenhouse Cidery in Chatham, and Single Cut North in Clifton Park. It spread. Several breweries in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley, including Glenville’s Wolf Hollow Brewing, added bonsai bars to their event rotations earlier this year.
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Taproom Manager Teresa Campbell said Single Cut North had never experimented with plant-themed events before partnering with Bonsai Bar. Ease of planning — Bonsai Bar handles the logistics from ticketing to cleanup — and word of mouth from other facility owners and customers who already host bonsai events led Campbell to plan a bonsai event in 2022. We decided to give it a try and it is now one of SingleCut’s most popular events. We will be holding events in both Clifton Park and Queens.
“There’s a real fan following in the bonsai community,” Campbell says. “I think[Bonsai Bar’s]generosity and desire to continue sharing their knowledge and teaching and educating is so strong…You can see their love for this art form.”
For Wolf Hollow, the bonsai workshop is a natural extension of the brewery’s popular Plant and Drinks held at The Planter in Cohoes, said Taproom Manager Eddie Del Castillo, who said the bonsai workshop was a natural extension of the brewery’s popular Plant and Drinks event in Cohoes. It also included a terrarium workshop. Since launching in January of this year, Wolf Hollow has hosted Bonsai Bar events once every other month.
“We’re definitely getting people to come to our house who they probably wouldn’t have met otherwise,” Del Castillo said. “They may or may not come back, but sometimes getting them through the door is the first step.”
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While the workshops help participants connect with others, whether they continue their education through local bonsai organizations such as the Mohawk-Hudson Bonsai Society, the connections people make with miniature trees can be found at Bonsai Bar That’s the most exciting part. said Lamoureux.
“While attending classes and learning skills and techniques is very fun and important, the one-on-one care you provide to your plants throughout the week is truly the magic of bonsai,” Lamoureux said. “After months or years, all of a sudden you think, ‘Oh my gosh, this thing has changed so much in the time I’ve been using it.'” We want you to experience it. What I want are those “aha” moments. ”