Botany’s Funky First Foot Forward
By Joseph AltonJanuary 18, 2023When I say that a lot of information was shared in the BrewFarm handoff between the former owner and myself, I mean A LOT of information. There was all the business stuff, the building stuff, the brewery stuff. And then there’s the land.
The first time I came out to discuss a potential BrewFarm acquisition, former BrewFarmer David Anderson took me for a long walkabout to introduce me to the property. We spent a good amount of time exploring the thirty-five acres of diverse topography brimming with eager life, even in the very early spring.
By design, beer ingredients are growing everywhere at the BrewFarm. Some cultivated, some wild. Along with rolling pasture and fields of organic oats and spelt, the very intentionally planted hop yard shares adjacency with a small but fruitful orchard growing a mix of apple varieties, and as I’m sure Dave told me at some point, apparently also plums.
Plum pickin’ photos by Abi Conner
Amongst all the other minutia I’d gathered in the transition, I had forgotten I had plums trees. The handful of Prunus domestica planted in the early days of the BrewFarm surprised me in July when they began to produce bountiful amounts of fresh fruit just yards from my front door.
“Oh, yeah! I think I remember Dave saying something about plums,” I reminded myself as I examined the first ripe, grape-sized stone fruit popping from the mostly neglected patch of plum trees.
While giving a late night farm tour and telling that story to the crew from Arbeiter Brewing Company on their staff retreat to the BrewFarm late last August, the plums piqued the interest of Arbeiter Head Brewer Aaron Herman. “What are you going to do with them?” he asked. “Whatever you want,” I shrugged encouragingly.
“I thought this was supposed to be a retreat.” -Arbeiter Brewing Company staff harvesting plums and getting poison ivy at a staff overnight, August 2022So at about midnight we started picking plums, figuring we could get enough for Arbeiter to play with as a potential ingredient. But as we started plucking the fruit from the tree it quickly became apparent that a) there were more plums than anyone thought and b) picking plums in the pitch black with cell phone flashlights probably wasn’t the most efficient way to harvest the bounty.
We made a plan to wait a couple more weeks until the plums were at maximum ripeness and called in some extra hands to help us get as much fruit as we could from the newly discovered plum pit. Friend of Arbeiter, label illustrator, and woman about beer, Abi Conner, chipped in to help us pull approximately 80 more pounds of fresh plums from in and around the very dense and thorny patch of plum trees.
We washed them, bagged them, and when the work was done we headed down to the local Legion to soothe our scratchy limbs with a cold can of Miller High Life. That’s where Aaron suggested he may just have the perfect purpose for the plums.
He was making an imperial pilsener for the Arbeiter anniversary. The beer had spent a short time aging in a second-use red wine barrel from The Winery at Sovereign Estate. Aaron said the barrel—and the naturally occurring brettanomyces within—had imparted “a very complex, intense flavor profile of fruity, tannic, woody, earthy, funky notes.” He liked the result but he was “feeling the beer could benefit from some added fruity sweetness.”
Well, what a happy ending for our once-forgotten plums — and what a perfect opportunity to collaborate with some of our friends in the craft beer world on a farmhouse-funky first beer forward.
This beer is special to us, not only because it’s the first time we had a hand in a commercially available retail release, but also because this beer represents so much of what we want to do at Botany BrewFarm. It features fresh organic produce from our orchard, hand-picked by creative and talented friends, to be shared between you and yours.
It’s unique. It’s collaborative. It’s wild. Really though. . . WILD.
“It’s so unique! It’s so fruity, but it’s so tannic, and dry at the same time. I haven’t ever tasted anything quite like it,” said Aaron when we first tasted the final product at Arbeiter’s South Minneapolis taproom in December.
I agree.
Label art and sample photo by Abi Conner“Botany,” a red wine barrel-aged brett imperial pilsener, doesn’t even really drink like a beer. Its vinous, stone fruity aromas mix with muted grassy hop character and a slight farmyard funk on the nose. Bright, ripe, fresh plums are the first thing I taste, followed by a complex wave of tannic oak character from the barrel which balances the beer nicely, inviting another sip and therefore another funky ride.
At 9% ABV this beer is made to be sipped, not slammed. I would recommend sharing a bottle with a few friends over a meaty (Think mortadella.), cheese-filled (Funkier the better.) charcuterie board. I could also see it pairing quite well with some sweeter Kansas City- or Memphis-style barbecue.
But the best thing about your beer is you get to drink it how you want to, so you do you.
The beer will be released at Arbeiter’s Anniversary Party and Lunar New Year Celebration on January 27, 2023. The Arbeiter owners will be spinning some records as we toast to our first collab and ring in the Year of the Rabbit. Come get yourself a 750ml of Arbeiter Botany (VERY LIMITED RELEASE) or have one on tap with us at the taproom.
Want to learn more about the botany of the BrewFarm? Follow our project on iNaturalist, where we have started indexing (and geo-tagging) all the species of plants growing on the property, and will encourage our guests to do so as well.
And don’t forget to sign up for our email list here.
