Emily Watson is the co-founder of Plan Bee Farm Brewing, producing beer from completely organic and local New York ingredients – including its bees! She is originally from Ohio and her dad is a conventional farmer (hence she is knowledgeable about the amount of corn and soy sold to the state for ethanol, and not food).

Digest of topics in this video:

0:00:00 Plan A — what Emily and Evan Watson did before
0:02:28 growing and procuring New York state ingredients
0:06:29 tilling and “no till” farming
0:09:00 finding the Poughkeepsie property
0:15:00 foraging ingredients for brewing
0:18:13 harvesting yeast from honey
0:23:14 coolship brewing
0:24:53 dirty beer and wild ale
0:31:57 renovating the barn
0:33:08 ingredients foraged from the farm
0:39:22 the Plan Bee beers
0:44:56 marketing their product
0:48:50 opening the farm to the public
0:57:30 keeping bees
1:03:43 working with local farms
1:06:56 Emily’s favorite beer

One of the sustainable and organic farming methods Plan Bee Farm Brewery that Emily emphasizes, is the act of “no-tilling”. Tilling releases natural gases due to breaking up or opening up the soil and therefore, disturbing natural biome and making the soil more susceptible to any seeds. The Plan Bee Farm aims to sustain the nutrient-rich biome of the soil by no tilling.

They also really hone into the organic, natural resources available in the local New York State area. Beer mainly uses a few ingredients water, yeast, barley, hops, sour bacteria. They experiment a lot for flavours and yeast components, even foraging for berries or contacting local farms for their surplus produce to create different flavour profiles. This creates experimental craft beers with fascinating flavours such as yellow corn, pumpkin, peppers, squash, beets, dandelion and her favourite – quince and blackcurrant!

Of course, the bee component is a huge one in which their honey is used to ferment the mead and is used as yeast cultures for their beer, and they use about 120 pounds of honey to flavour. Emily also discussed about the temperateness of the yeast, requiring an environment of not too cold, not too hot, about 68 degrees temperature, and even their own food. Yet, despite the need to control these variables, the founders still brew beers in the Old World Style, with an open batch where the area will cool and the ambient yeast will be around. The surrounding wood also eats the sugar, converting it into alcohol and producing carbon dioxide. Their solution to yeast gone wrong is to put it into oak.

Their distribution is quite unique as they struggle with land and autonomy in Poughkeepsie, and is 1 out of the 5 last farms that are agriculturally distinct. They are still waiting for a license to allow customers into the space but at the moment, have mainly distributors and retailers online and can sell out of the door of their farm.