Brewery showcases California fruit in sour beers Story by Jolaine Collins • Photos by Lori Eanes
Fresno County farmer Bryce Loewen had a chat at a San Francisco farmers market more than a decade ago with a couple of avid home brewers intrigued with the idea of using his peaches to make beer. Recalling that conversation today, he says he couldn’t have imagined where it would lead. As it turned out, those home brewers grew their venture into Almanac Beer Co., one of California’s top-selling craft breweries. And Loewen now supplies the company with up to 12 tons of organic stone fruit each summer from his family’s Blossom Bluff Orchards. His peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums are showcased in Almanac’s popular oak-aged sour beers, sold in cans across the United States. John Carlon, owner of Sierra Cascade Blueberry Farm in the Butte County foothills, shares a similar experience where ideas for making sour beers sparked between farmer and brewer over berry bins at the farmers market. “The connection and inspiration that happened while tasting blueberries evolved into a valued, long-term relationship,” Carlon says. Almanac Beer Co. is Sierra Cascade’s largest customer of secondary fruit. Since 2014, the craft brewery has purchased an average of 8,000 pounds of blueberries a year from Carlon’s 9-acre organic blueberry farm, depending on the season’s yield. The blueberries and stone fruits are hand sorted, and any imperfect fruit is frozen fresh and packed at the farms for delivery to the brewery. Almanac’s brewer estimates that close to 1/4 to 1/2 pound of stone fruit or blueberries go into making each 16-ounce can of Almanac’s Sournova sour beer featuring the fruit’s name. Growing long-term partnerships Such long-term partnerships between family farms and local businesses benefit both parties. For growers such as Carlon and Loewen, it means having a secondary market for imperfect fruit that may be slightly blemished, over- or under-ripe and doesn’t meet their premium standards for retail customers and farmers markets. For a craft brewery such as Almanac, it means having a supply of seasonal fruit with which to build its reputation as a producer of specialty beers and bold, experimental brews. “We love working with California producers as much as we can,” says Damian Fagan, the founder and CEO of Almanac Beer Co., who was part of those initial conversations with Loewen and Carlon. “Many of the relationships we enjoy today began at local farmers markets. We value those long-term partnerships.”
Tucker Bush, lead brewer of Almanac Beer Co., sources fruit from California farms to make seasonal favorites featuring stone fruit and blueberries.
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