Jon Cadoux
of Peak Organic Brewing Company was kind enough to talk with me about his beer and
brewery. I would like to thank him for
taking time out of his day to speak with me. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed speaking with him.
Without further ado, on to the interview:
WIBeerGeek: I
have read that you started home brewing with a group of friends in college?
Jon: That’s right
WIBG: When did
you decide to jump up to all grain, and then move on to developing your own
recipes?
J: To be honest, we only brewed a couple
batches with extract and then moved to all grain. Sure it’s a hassle, but we quickly found that we had much more control
over the beers we were brewing. Shortly
after going all grain, we started developing recipes and keeping notes so that
we could improve on our recipes.
We started using a whole bunch of
local organic hops and other local ingredients back when no one else was doing
that and people started digging our beers, so we thought this could be a
interesting combination and went for it.
WIBG: So, you had
started your organic brewing when you were still home brewing?
J: Yeah, and a
lot of the ingredients we still use today like organic Vermont maple syrup,
locally roasted organic espresso, all kinds of different things. Before we were brewers, we were passionate, foodie
locavores, so we just started bringing that ethic into home brewing and found
that it made for an interesting, different concoction that was unique to our
beers.
WIBG: What made
you decide to get into commercial brewing?
J: We started
giving a lot of homebrew away and people loved it, which is obviously the most
important part. We thought that what we
were doing was an interesting little niche, keeping the ingredients local and sourced
from organic farms. That is important from an environmental perspective and we wanted
to bring it over to commercial beer.
WIBG: Is the
original home brewing group from college still together?
J: That group is still
intact but we have added a few new people over the past few years. The core group of the company, we all grew up
together. Most of those people I have
known since I was 12, which is great. It
makes life a lot of fun, no doubt about it.
WIBG: Are you
currently the head brewer, or do you have another brewer on staff?
J: There are a couple
of us now, we don’t really have titles.
My card says founder but at the end of the day we all do everything.
WIBG: What is
your reaction to the new regulation that is going to require the use of organic
hops for a beer to be labeled organic? Do
you see the push towards all organic ingredients to be a good one?
J: We strongly support
the new regulation. It is great, it
really is an issue that was difficult in the past, but now there are many more
organic hop producers. We buy organic
Citra, Simcoe, Centennial, and will buy Amarillo next year so really the
availability of quality organic varieties has just mushroomed. For us it’s a no brainer and we are 100%
committed to it.
WIBG: Are you
expecting the price of organic hops to skyrocket once they are required?
J: In theory, the
prices should normalize because the supply should increase when more farmers
get really good at growing organic hops and the yields get closer to the yields
for conventional hops, so in theory it should normalize price, not make it
skyrocket.
Access to
organic hops is certainly more limited than conventional hops, but there are a
lot of guys doing it, there is a lot of interest. They are wonderful growers too. In our Peak Winter Session for example, we
use organic Citra hops from our good buddy, Brad Carpenter. In my opinion they are the best Citra Hops
that I have ever used. They are just
incredible and so that is the most exciting part. The growers come to the table with some
unbelievable organic strains and varieties and I think that’s huge because I
think at the end of the day the reason why we eat local and organic food is not
only because of the social and environmental benefits, but because it tastes
better.
When you walk into a great
farm-to-table restaurant, people aren’t there paying a lot of money because it’s
local and organic, they are doing it because it ought to taste fantastic. We refuse to buy an ingredient just because
it’s organic, it has to be excellent first and organic second to make it in the
door. We strive to produce beer that is extremely
exceptional, as well as organic.
WIBG: Do you do
most of your sourcing of the hops and the grain from local farmers?
J: We source from
all over and work with a lot of different farmers. I think some might look at it as a hassle, but
we actually love it. You know when you
are just buying conventional grain you are pretty much just buying from a middleman
or broker and its one contact. For us,
we work with many different farms and farmers, from a time and efficiency
standpoint maybe not an optimal way to operate, but having that direct
interaction and relationship with our farmers helps improve quality and
expectations over the years.
When you are friends with the
farmers that you are working with they are going to step up their game to grow
for you rather than just growing something and selling it enmass to a big
middleman wholesaler. I think when the
relationship is stretched out it is less fun, and I think from a quality standpoint,
it’s just not as good. One thing we
found out is that when you approach a farmer and you are willing to contract
with him for a couple of years he will be pretty quick to increase acreage for
you.
WIBG: You have
had farmers expand production for you?
J: Yeah, that is
a big risk with farming, you go all in, invest heavy and are growing something
that you don’t know for a fact you can sell.
We try to take that risk off the table as much as possible with our
farmers. Then word spreads and maybe his
neighbor who is also interested hears about our commitment and then they start
to get involve. That’s how we expand our
supplier base, keeping our relationship with the farm. The closer we work with
those guys the better everything works.
From a quality standpoint, I can’t emphasize it enough, a direct
relationship with a farmer leads to higher quality ingredients, I am sure of
that.
WIBG: You also have your local series, right? Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and New York,
do you source each beer in the series solely with ingredients from the each
state?
J: That’s right, it was a really fun project. What we were trying to do was create a pretty
standard recipe, an American Pale Ale, keep the recipe the same and see if
there was a discernible difference that you could pick up, knowing that flavor
differences in the beer would be due to the terroir of the ingredients. So we did that and it was just a blast, it was
soo much fun. The bottom line is that there
were really discernible differences
WIBG: So, did you
learn from the series which state you should source some of the ingredients
from?
J: I wouldn’t say
that, it wasn’t like one was bad and one was better than the other, they were
just different. For example, the big
focus was on the hop side with Nugget hops.
We found that the Nugget hops from each state had a ton of
variability. The Maine hops for example
had a robust citrus component; whereas the Vermont hops had a much more spicy
character.
WIBG: That’s
really cool. So if I could ask you a little
bit about Weiss Principal now, can you reveal anything about the grain bill?
J: There is one
thing that I am happy to say, we use a
ridiculous amount of wheat, wheat as a percent of total grains is totally out
of control and it makes it a horrible beer to brew, but we think it’s
completely worth it. There is just a ton
of wheat with some pale malt and just a touch of Munich malt, that’s it. Our early hop additions are Centennial, and
the late and dry hop additions are massive Cascade hop bombs.
WIBG: I did pick up a lot of pine and citrus from
it, it was definitely a very good beer!
J: I appreciate
that
WIBG: How would you recommend drinking this? Is it supposed to be served cloudy, or should
I leave the sediment in the bottle?
J: It’s funny you
mention that, both. It comes in a 22 and
the way I do it, everyone is different, but the way I drink it is that I try to
get the first pour to be lacking in sediment and then the second one is kind of
heavy. So it’s kind of like two very
different beers out of the same bottle. I
would say that I like them both, although some people certainly prefer one
versus the other. I love the mouthfeel
that comes along with that sediment, some people do think that it is a little
too sticky, but I personally love it.
Then you get others who appreciate the hops more when the sediment is
not mixed in, when it’s a little lighter, crisper and brighter version they say
that the hops, and the hop forward nature of the beer shines more without sediment. So, I don’t know if there is a right way to
do it to be totally honest.
WIBG: It was a very good beer and I wish I could
find it more reliably in Wisconsin.
J: We have very
limited distribution in Wisconsin, really just a handful of the best bottle
shops get special releases here and there.
WIBG: Do you have
any special releases coming up?
J: Yeah, there
are a lot . Next week we brew a beer
called Fall Summit, which is a nice crisp, dry, marzen-style, but it is hop
forward and hopped with Summit hops. We like
Summit because they have that really nice piney, spicy character to them and it
really plays well off that marzen-style malt backbone. The month after that we brew a beer called
Maple Collaboration and that is a bigger amber beer, we brew it with a ton of
oats to give it a really dynamic mouth feel and then we add a whole bunch of
local, organic maple syrup. The month
after that we have the local series again, and after that we have our Winter Session. The Winter session is a dark
malted wheat beer and that’s single hopped and dry hopped with Citra hops from
Brad Carpenter. Then right after that,
we do an oak aged mocha stout, it’s a big Imperial Stout that comes out in
December. That’s just a small handful of
our upcoming beers, we try to do a new release every month.
WIBG: Is there a
particular brewery that you look up to?
J: A brewery that
I look up to tremendously is Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. The reason for that
is that they do tackle a lot of different styles and every beer they release is
absolutely excellent. They certainly are
not the only brewery that does that, but they are the first that comes to mind. Every
style that they try to tackle, and every beer that they release is excellent. They
don’t release beers just because there is an interesting story behind it, it is
just really high quality beer every single time. That is something that I really admire. I wouldn’t say that we have designed our
company after theirs by any means, but I really like that they don’t rely on
gimmicks, and don’t rely on marketing driven beer releases. Their beer is all about the liquid and I
respect that a lot.
WIBG: Are you
planning any upcoming collaboration beers with other breweries?
J: We haven’t really done any beer brewing
collaborations, and that is not a plan of ours right now. Not because we are against it, but there are
so many and it’s hard to even know how to do something that would cut through
all the clutter.
What we have done, and love doing
is partnering with people like Butternut Mountain Farm who produce really nice
organic maple syrup, with Taza Chocolate who produce excellent chocolate, with Coffeeby Design, a local artisan coffee roaster or with Sambazon who produce an
incredible organic pomegranate juice. We
do a lot of collaborations, but they are with artisan food and beverage
producers rather than other brewers.
WIBG: I have two
quick questions in closing. First, do
you have any advice for home brewers that can help them brew better beer more
consistently and second, do you have any advice for someone who is interested
in starting a craft brewery?
J: For home brewers, temperature control during
fermentation will dramatically improve the consistency of your batches. If you are going to start your own brewery,
make sure you have a unique offering for the craft beer community. The industry needs more innovation, not
imitation.
That's all for today! Check back on Friday for my next post!
Happy Drinking!!
That's all for today! Check back on Friday for my next post!
Happy Drinking!!