Back before Brooklyn was “Brooklyn”—an international symbol of artisanal, small-batch artisanalness—Steve Hindy was a foreign correspondent and home brewer who had an idea to create a beer that tasted like the beers of nineteenth-century New York City. Since he was a newspaperman, he wanted to call his new venture the Brooklyn Eagle Brewery. It was the designer Milton Glaser who convinced him to drop the eagle. “Brooklyn was this wide open space,” Glaser recalled. “No one had claimed it yet.”

Glaser was speaking in his studio on Thirty-second Street, a floor-through decorated with art books, a giant pencil, and the end results of recent projects, but without an I ♥ NY poster, Bob Dylan silhouette, or New York magazine cover in sight. The occasion was the uncorking of a Silver Anniversary Lager to celebrate twenty-five years of the Brooklyn Brewery. Hindy, despite protesting that he “disliked anniversaries,” had persuaded four artists—Fred Tomaselli, Roxy Paine, Joe Amrhein, and Elizabeth Crawford—to design celebratory labels.

The original label, of course, was designed by Glaser himself, by way of a New York moment of serendipity. Hindy knew how to pick up a telephone, and would call Glaser’s studio almost daily, where the studio assistant would put him off with statements like “Do you know who Milton Glaser is? He doesn’t just talk to anyone.” One day, Glaser was standing by the phone, and the assistant handed him Hindy’s call. Glaser agreed to meet and offered to design the logo in exchange for some stock in the company. (Hindy didn’t like the logo at first. Glaser told him take it home and “live with it for a few days.” Hindy soon changed his mind.)

Back at the studio, speeches were given (“Work only for people you like”), and the Silver Anniversary Lager continued to flow quite generously. It’s a Doppelbock version of the original Brooklyn Lager, 8.6 per cent alcohol, and delicious—but let’s just say that one correspondent was wishing he had eaten more at lunch. Glaser, who is eightysomething, wisely nursed his beer. He was tall, wearing all black, and ended his sentences with an impish grin.

“What was the inspiration for the ‘B’ logo?”

“I thought of the swirl of foam,” he said, and squiggled his finger in the air.

“How did you pick the logo colors?”

“Color is so intuitive.”

“When was your first beer?”

“At a pizza parlor in the Bronx. I paid one dollar for a pie with six other friends. Beer was a nickel.”

“Do you ever go to Brooklyn?”

“I went out there recently, when the power went out.”

“What do you think of Brooklyn’s recent fame?”

“It’s amazing to me that the once-gritty cross-section of neighborhoods is now international, something admired in Paris.”

At this point, the Doppelbock was kicking in and the room was a little fuzzier. Your correspondent started to gently query Glaser about his favorite New York haunts—what he, ahem, loved about New York.

He listened to the questions and laughed. “I do virtually nothing except my work,” he said. “No hobbies.”

In another situation, in another room, that statement would have been a buzzkill. But here, it wasn’t. Good beer is work! Appreciating beer is work! (At least, on this day.) And, highest of all, there is the motto printed above the door on Glaser’s building, glanced at while stepping into the winter evening: “Art Is Work.”