INNOVATIVE PARTNERSHIPS AMONG HUDSON VALLEY brewers and distillers are producing some interesting and delicious new products.
- Black Dirt Distillery is teaming with Doc’s Draft Hard Cider (both in Warwick) on a new project: barrel-aged cider. Doc’s is storing cider in Black Dirt’s used bourbon casks, imparting richer flavors to the classic sparkling apple libation.
- Elsewhere in Orange County, Newburgh Brewing Company is aging its Brown Ale in barrels that once held the liquid gold made at Hillrock Estate (Columbia County). Newburgh is putting up its Cream Ale in barrels that previously held syrup, and before that, Hillrock bourbon.
- Dutchess County maple syrup super-producer Crown Maple is aging syrup in barrels from Widow Jane (where whiskey and bourbon are distilled with water only from the namesake mine in Rosendale).
- In another delicious example of serendipitous regional cooperation, Crown Maple will join forces with Black Dirt, as the distillery gets to work on a maple bourbon, due next spring.
- Newburgh Brewing’s Squashtober Ale uses 3,000 pounds of pumpkins and butternut squash from Madura Farm, in Pine Island. Another fall flavor treat: Doc’s Draft Pumpkin Hard Cider puts a pumpkin twist on its apple base.
- In New Paltz, the Brewery at Bacchus (They’ve been called the most interesting brewery in NY you’ve never heard of.) is at work on a couple of autumnal libations: In one, brewers will ferment 50 gallons of fresh cider from Jenkins-Lueken Orchards, then blend it with beer in a 49 percent/51 percent ratio. No word on what it will be named. The other seasonal treat, Orchard Sour, is made with beets “picked up at the Wallkill Farmers’ Market” and apples from Jenkins-Lueken.
- Newburgh Brewing seems to be on a creativity streak. Last year, the brewery used leftover malt from its annual Newburgh Conspiracy Stout to brew an Oyster Stout. This year, the brewery used the leftovers in its Black Oyster Cult Gose. (Co-owner Paul Halayko describes gose as a traditional German-style beer in which the main tasting notes are sour and salt. The sour comes from a treatment with Lactobacillus, a common bacteria; salt notes come from adding whole-shell oysters from Long Island during the boil. “The resulting beer is dark in color, but actually drinks very light. It is tart, salty and slightly briny,” Halayko says.)
- Broken Bow Brewery, in Tuckahoe, has been tapped to make a house brew for RiverMarket Bar and Kitchen. The RiverMarket Farmhouse Ale is available at the Tarrytown restaurant, of course, but is occasionally on tap at the brewery.