A Denver-area distillery is working with a new starch source that offers an opportunity to support sustainable farming. However, the team at Branch & Barrel in Centennial, Colorado, says they’re mainly doing it for the flavor.
It started when cofounder Scott Freund had more peas than he knew what to do with. One of his farming neighbors had planted the nitrogen-fixing legumes to reinvigorate their soil, and Freund—also a farmer—bought a lot of those peas to feed his pigs and cattle.
However, according to distillery director and master blender Mitch Nester, Freund realized he had more peas than he could use. After doing some research, he learned that they contained starches that could be broken down into sugars.
“So, he’s like, ‘That means they can ferment. That means we can put it into whiskey,’” Nester says. “And we decided to roll with it, try it out, and see what happened.”
Peas and Love
They went with a mash bill of 64 percent corn, 22 percent dried yellow field peas, and 14 percent malted barley to create a one-of-a-kind product.
Legally, they’re not allowed to call it a bourbon or even a whiskey, so they label it as a “spirit distilled from grain and peas.” Their thinking, according to Nester: “We’ll work within the lines that we’re given and make what we’re considering a pea bourbon and label it a pea spirit.”
They realized quickly that what was coming off the still was unique—and eventually that it was truly special. Six years later, the Branch & Barrel team is releasing Peas Please.
“I wasn’t there for the initial run, but it was described to me as the ferment smelled really good, really earthy, and really fun,” Nester says. “The stripping run smelled horrendous, all the phenols and everything coming off of it. And then the spirit run smelled good again, so they were really concerned with exactly how that was going to turn out because it’s such uncharted territory.”
Then the journey of maturation began.
“In the barrel as it aged, the younger Peas I found to be more umami, and it lost a little bit of that along the way,” Nester says. “It’s still very much there, but before I would’ve compared it to a little bit of shiitake mushroom on the palate and that earthy, vegetal nuance, and I felt like that was pretty predominant.”
After a few years in the barrel, however, the cereal grain notes and barrel character began to come more to the fore while retaining that savory, earthy complexity.
“Three years was about when we first saw the potential of the product,” Nester says. “It was starting to balance out with the caramel-butterscotchy-ness of the bourbon and made this really fun balance of salted caramel and cedar-mulchy earth tones. And it started to bring out a really nice chocolate [note]. It’s just such a unique and delicious profile.”
Before the current six-year release, Branch & Barrel put out a cask-strength single barrel at three years—they felt it was too cool of a project to keep behind closed doors. They also released a couple of barrels at four years as Peppercorn Peas.
“Scott had thought long and hard because the rack house is on his property,” Nester says. “It’s just there, and he’s like, ‘You know, what I really like with peas is pepper. I think that's a great mix.’ And so, he … got three different colors of peppercorn—pink, white, and green—crushed them, and threw them into the barrel, and just let it sit and marinate. I always joke that it’s the steak sauce of whiskey because it just has this really savory, peppery kind of flavor. And it was something that was a huge hit in the bloody Mary crowd and then makes an incredible whiskey sour, of all things. And it was just a really, really popular release.”
Peas in the Still
Branch & Barrel were able to fold the peas into their production process relatively seamlessly.
The yields are comparable to—if slightly lower than—their standard bourbon runs. Peas also overlap with corn’s window for gelatinization and enzymatic needs. Meanwhile, an elevated level of free-amino nitrogen helps to turbocharge the pea fermentations.
On the other hand, peas also have high protein levels, and those lead to a couple of potential curveballs. Nester says the spent grain is stickier and more viscous than the regular bourbon mash; their combination mash tun–fermentors have false bottoms to help separate the grain (and vegetable) solids.
A more tangible protein-related concern is the potential for foaming and entrainment in the still. Branch & Barrel mitigates that by distilling extremely slowly as a standard process, running strips for five to six hours—and closer to eight for the pea spirit. They go 32 hours for the finishing run to preserve as many volatile compounds as possible; those might otherwise be destroyed through rapid temperature increases.
“Because you are keeping all of those nice proteins and stuff in there,” Nester says, “it does create a richness to the texture of the mouthfeel.”
More Peas, Please
The Branch & Barrel team did a second run of this “whiskey” a couple years ago, coming back to the peas as both a flavor and an environmental decision.
They put up both batches in a mix of 30- and 53-gallon barrels. They filled more 30s on the first batch, while it was still experimental—and while they were dealing with COVID-era supply-chain issues. For the second batch, they filled more of the 53s as they grew more confident in the product.
Nester says they’re still not sure whether Peas Please will become a regular part of the rotation or more of an occasional product, dependent on when their farmers need to get some legumes in the ground to improve the soil.
“We are such fans of it that if we had it our way, I think it would be a full-on, full-time member of the standard portfolio,” he says. “But it’s just something that we’ve done so sporadically and so low-volume that I think, for now, [it’s] going to live as a special release that we can bring out when it gets ready.”
When they do, he says, it’s a fun, unique opportunity to show off Colorado agriculture and do something new.
“The peas were a pretty big hit,” Nester says. “The flavor of it was just super-cool. It’s such a novel idea.”
Branch & Barrel isn’t pushing any big, highfalutin claims about its use of peas and the environment. The distillery supports regenerative farming, soil health, and efforts by their farmers to minimize chemical applications to their land. But for Nester and the rest of the team, it’s more about the flavor—particularly the expression of flavor from their location.
“Our stance on this whole industry, and our part in it, is Colorado-style whiskey,” Nester says. “We want our whiskey to taste like Colorado, so we let it affect everything. We only use local grain and water, all that sort of thing. And being able to highlight this aspect of Colorado’s agriculture in this way is super-neat. We're not making any [environmental] claims. It’s more about: This is a taste of Colorado, the local farmers—and how they handle having to resist synthetic fertilizers, and do crop rotations, and do more regenerative farming techniques—and us being able to help support that a little bit.”
Ultimately, it’s about the character of the spirit.
“Not everything has to be, ‘Oh, look at the eco-friendly whiskey we just released,’” Nester says. “We don’t really need the buzzwords there. I think it’s one of my favorite things we’ve ever done. There’s nothing that tastes like it.”