Plan Bee Farm Brewery - Farm to Bottle Beer

Inspired by the "Barn to Brew" article in the Summer season's issue of edible HUDSON VALLEY, I finally ventured down to Beacon's Farmers' Market to try the beer from Plan Bee Farm Brewery that is mostly all grown and cultivated from one farm: the farm owned and operated by founders and brewers Evan and Emily Watson.

Even more compelling is the component that makes this beer extra special and unique: the Watsons use their own yeast from their farm, using cultures from peaches, apples, and unpasteurized honey from two bee-hives that came with the farm when they bought the property in Fishkill.

The most special thing about cooking, baking or brewing something is using ingredients around you to make the freshest of flavors not easily replicated time and again. Plan Bee Farm Brewery loves this spontaneity of flavor, and embraces and actually seeks out the different flavors their unique yeast method produces. According to Even in the article from edible: "I love the odd and complex flavors you can get from it. These are the backbone of our beers."

Each of their beers have a story which you can read about on their blog. The bottle I tried was their popular Chamomile, developed specifically for and sold at the Cold Spring General Store. Delicious. I took it to a gathering on Mahopac Lake and a friend happily dubbed it a "soft" flavor and immediately texted his parents who were hiking for the day in Cold Spring, to request that they buy a few bottles at the store.

A brew with a notable story behind it is the TechiNiki, which was named after an Indian woman of the Wappingers tribe who picked a peach on a Dutch settler's farm in 1659 and was shot - thus starting the Peach Tree War throughout the entire Hudson Valley. So you're drinking history with these beers, along with flavors and ingredients grown just miles away from you.

Beacon Architect Aryeh Siegel Featured in Upstate House

One of the most exciting aspects of living in Beacon, NY is that we are living during a historical era. When my family moved here, our neighbors across the street had moved here twenty years prior, also from Manhattan, to raise their family. They moved during the height of drug times, when Main Street was boarded up. The first investment they made to their home was installing a giant chain link fence around their entire property to keep people from sitting on the front stoop of their home to do "business".

Today, Beacon is the playground to many architects who are changing the face and experience of this city, while taking delight in "existing structural elements that can be incorporated into new uses." Such statement was spoken by Aryeh Siegel in an interview with Peter Aaron for Upstate House magazine. The article proclaims Siegel to be Beacon's architect laureate thanks in part to the number of game-changing projects he has been involved with crafting and reinventing, including Dia:Beacon, the Roundhouse at Beacon Falls, the Towne Crier Cafe, the Beacon Dog Park, the Beacon Cultural Community Center, and a growing list of other residential and mix-ed use sites.

If you haven't yet, do pick up this issue for the interview and the other great articles in Upstate House to see how this architect views Beacon.