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Brewers who seek ways to give their beer a sense of place have a number of ways to go about it. Sometimes, it’s as simple as embracing local ingredients, or as identifying a local crop that can make a surprising marriage with the underlying beer. That’s the approach at Lasting Joy, founded in 2022 by Emily and Alex Wenner in Tivoli, New York, in the Hudson Valley. It’s not only New York–grown grains and hops that find their way into their beers. In this case, they add beets to their English-style stout—and it’s a core beer for them.
Cofounder and head brewer Alex Wenner describes Heartbeet of the Hudson as a beer “that really sums up our mission as a New York farm brewery here at Lasting Joy. We want to make beers utilizing the best of New York farms and agriculture. New York is a major beet-growing state, and it really just struck me that an English stout with the enhanced earthiness and richness of beets could be a perfect match.
“I was inspired, in part, by the wide use of sugar beets or beet sugar as a source of highly fermentable sugars for some of my favorite Belgian classics, and I wanted to pay homage to those while trying to use a more flavorful beet in a way that … celebrated its flavor and not just the fermentability. Very similar to how we use locally grown, floor-malted barley to make full use of the flavor available, and not just … the most flavor-neutral, mass-available grains we could.
“One of my favorite things about its reception has been how many people who don’t like beets enjoy the stout, [or] people that say they like beets but not dark beers or beer at all, and then they enjoy it. Somehow it is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Photo: Eric Petschek/Courtesy Lasting Joy
Recipe: Lasting Joy Heartbeet of the Hudson
In its bucolic spot on a winding farm road in the Hudson Valley, Lasting Joy is dedicated to brewing with New York–grown ingredients. In the case of its flagship stout, that includes beets—a tribute of sorts to its home state, which grows about one-third of all U.S. table beets. “And what better way,” the brewery says, “to highlight their brilliant color and earthy sweetness than to incorporate them in our signature English stout. Full bodied, malty, and bittersweet, with hints of chocolate and a frothy pink head.”
ALL-GRAIN
Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.056
FG: 1.017
IBUs: 36
ABV: 5%