We spoke with two brewers about what they’ve learned from brewing with specialty ingredients and what special measures they take to ensure that the ingredients stay as fresh as possible.
Working with Fruits and Nuts
Travis Camacho, Barrel Program Manager, Drake’s Brewing Company, San Leandro, California
At Drake’s, we try to get most of the ingredients we’re going to use as fresh as possible and use it right away. We use a lot of fruits, and we’re lucky when we can source them fresh and locally from the valley. Depending on the recipe, we try to start processing whole fruit as quickly as possible, but sometimes it can take a few days to process, so we have to be on the lookout for anything that doesn’t look good and then toss it.
We know it’s not always an option to use fresh fruit right away. For instance, we make a barrel-aged beer called Cult of the Sun with yuzu fruit and Buddha’s hand (fingered citron). The flavors go really well together, but the fruits aren’t harvested at the same time. In addition, both of these fruits, as with other exotic fruits, can be hard to find. So just for this beer, we invested in a few medium-sized chest freezers that let us hold onto the fruits for long periods of time and even use the ingredients year-round.