Month: April 2011

Mike Cadoux of Peak Organic


Mike Cadoux, Jonathan Stan and Jen Schwertman on Beer Sessions Radio (TM)

On April 5, Mike Cadoux of Peak Organic Brewing Company sat in with the gang on Beer Sessions Radio (TM) to talk about organic beer.  Mike sat down to answer a few questions before the show:


What are the challenges in making an organic beer that may be different from a beer not labeled organic?

The main difficulty with brewing organic beer compared with “regular” beer is just the sourcing of ingredients.  Obviously, we have to be more careful where they come from and can’t spot buy them off the market as much.  This has become a positive for us, however, because it has led to many personal relationships with farmers.

After a long battle, organic hop growers have finally won their fight to require beers labeled organic to be brewed with organic hops (For more information on this issue, click here.) Will the upcoming, new organic hop regulations have an effect on Peak Organic?

We planned far in advance for the new hop regulations and now have some of the most amazing hop varietals being grown for us organically, including Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Summit, Simcoe, Citra, and more.  We went to the source, in the Yakima, and forged great relationships with the farmers themselves.

In what ways can the beer industry at large improve on issues of sustainability?

This is a question with many answers, and many of them not specific to the beer industry.  More renewable  energy, more responsible farming, etc.  Comparatively, brewers are actually pretty good at this, and aware.

Can you explain Peak’s relationship with Chef’s Collaborative?

Chef’s collaborative is a group that promises to use local and sustainable ingredients in their restaurants, so we have a natural synergy with them as far as mission goes.  Then we make a beer with them, the Maple Oat Ale, that uses organic Maine oats and organic Vermont maple syrup.

Are there any upcoming events/ releases/ other news about Peak Organic that you would like our listeners to know about?

We just finished our last Single Hopped Seasonal – our Simcoe Spring Ale.  Each of our seasonals is a showcase for a specific hop variety – that we created to make sure all the more badass hops had a definite demand.  Our Summer Session will follow and is hopped with Amarillo, Fall Summit with Summit and Winter Session with Citra.  I’ll have some Simcoe Spring to try out on everybody, its killer.

Thanks, Mike! Click here to learn more about Peak Organic Brewing Company.

The Joy (and Jeremy) of Cider

In early March, home cider makers Joy Doumis and Jeremy Hammond joined the panel of Beer Sessions Radio (TM) to spread the word about America’s first beverage.

Joy and Jeremy brought in a selection of delectable ciders made in their Brooklyn home from locally sourced apples. Jeremy used his knowledge from his time in France working with wine makers to develop their home cider making process which currently yields a little over 100 gallons of cider each year.

The cider making season begins in late August and stretches to Thanksgiving, allowing Joy and Jeremy to harvest, sweat, wash, chop, grind, press, and ferment, their ciders. In 2010, Joy says they picked 21 different varieties which added up to 1600 pounds of apples. Joy was kind enough to break down the process for us this way:

Harvest: Each apple is chosen for a different job; sweet, aromatic, tart, astringent, etc. I like to stick with the older apples because they have amazing complex flavors that just aren’t present in newer/popular apples…[the cider apples] some of them taste like poison but make pretty amazing juice!

Sweat: We let the apples sit for about 2 weeks after picking. We to this to develop the apple sugars and concentrate the flavors.

Wash and Chop: We deal with a lot of small orchards using organic methods and aren’t sure what protein is going to add to the final product. So, we wash all the apples and at least quarter them to determine whether they have a resident and so that they can fit into the grinder hole.

Grind: [We use] a home-built modified garbage disposal.


Pressing Apples

Press: [We now use] a steel shop press. Pulp gets folded into cloth, stacked between plates of HDPE, pressure is applied with a hydraulic jack and the juice is collected in 25 gallon brew buckets.

Ferment: We use wine yeast and basically re-hydrate it and pitch it in the juice. Primary fermentation takes place in plastic buckets or an oak barrel. When primary is over, we rack off to glass carboys or the stainless steel tank.

Taste and Blend Juice: Around March everything has pretty much dropped clear and this is when we start tasting and considering our different blends. We really only started blending in the past few years as we moved into using heritage and true cider apples. Another reason is that we are dealing with different apples that have all been picked and pressed at different times, and in different quantities, that sometimes even age differently.


Tasting and Blending Ciders


Bottle: We bottle as much as we can when we have time and have enough bottles.

The resulting ciders are complex, flavorful and definitely something to talk about! If you want to know more about this urban  cider making duo, tune in to Episode 53 of Beer Sessions Radio (TM).

Thank you to Joy and Jeremy for the wonderful ciders and the great pictures! For more information about Joy and Jeremy check out their Slanty Cider page on Facebook.

Brewers For Brewers Event Raises $12,000 for Japan Disaster Relief

Monday Night, March 28, Brooklyn Brewery hosted the Brewers For Brewers event to benefit disaster relief efforts in Japan. Created by Food Karma Projects, and sponsored by The Good Beer Seal, Beer Sessions Radio (TM) and Chow Ciao Design, the Brewers for Brewers event raised over $12,000 that went into a special account for Kiuchi Brewery (Hitachino) to distribute in their hard hit community.

The beer industry came out in droves to support the humanitarian effort, lending their talents, products, services, and good will to help. Check out the Brooklyn Brewery blog to read more about the event and see pictures of this  great evening. Thanks to all of the participating  brewers, bars, restaurants, and organizations that helped to make  this fundraiser a success.