Sometimes you need a little liquid courage to face the day — especially if you, like us, spend your days poring over scary climate issues.
Well, now you can feel a little better about that nearly empty bottle rolling around under your desk: Some distilleries are joining the food waste fight by sourcing overripe, undersized, or malformed fruit to produce their heavenly elixirs.
One such place is Colorado-based Peach Street Distillers. After Peach Street’s leaders learned about America’s nasty food waste problem (ahem — we toss out nearly 40 percent of our food supply), they began sourcing local farmers’ leftovers. Here’s more from Civil Eats:
To produce 10,000 cases of artisanal spirits annually, including pear eaux de vie and apple brandy, Clear Creek Distillery partnered with a packing house in the Hood River Valley to buy fruit that is too small or too scarred to be sold in supermarkets. Clear Creek buys upwards of 600,000 pounds of pears a year, using up to 30 pounds of fruit for each bottle.
While farmers expect a certain percentage of their yield to be graded as seconds, there are often unexpected crop failures... Read more
