E-Malt.com News article: USA, N.Y.: The FX Matt Brewing Company to enter craft beer market with their High Peaks series

The FX Matt Brewing Company has been a part of Utica for a long time. From the mid-1800s they have survived prohibition, economic downturns, and wars. And they have made a lot of beer. Now they're after the ever trendier craft-brew market with their High Peaks Chocolate Orange Porter, YNN.com reported on February, 25.

High Peaks Chocolate Orange Porter is part of a higher-end line of Saranac craft beers called High Peaks.

"It's a line of beers that are bigger and more complex," explained F.X. Matt representative Meghan Frasier. "They're a line of beers that are meant to be sipped and savored. They're very distinctive, they have very unique ingredients in them."

The company has brewed special seasonal Saranac beers since the 1980s, but the High Peaks series is more for the casual aficionado.

"We're really just kind of trying to find some really unique ingredients to showcase what we have available to provide to the craft brewing industry," Frasier said.

To make this flavor, they started by putting blood orange peels in with the hops.

"It's almost like if you imagine making a tea," Frasier said. You really want to steep it in there in the water and you really want to get all the flavors out."

For the other half of the flavor, they use raw cocoa, or cocoa nibs. But the cocoa isn't brewed with the beer. For that, they wait until the fermentation stage.

In nearly the last step of the process, they add the cocoa nibs into tanks like these in order to add that chocolaty flavor just before they bottle the product and send it out to the consumer.

"You really get that wicked chocolaty flavor and that nice chocolaty aroma," said Frasier.

But High Peaks beers are one-offs, or a single batch that are released only once.

They are following the standards of the craft brew world, where the company may last a long time, like FX Matt, but those special beers are gone, just another trophy on the wall.


29 February, 2012