What is the Salvage Garden?
Before I tell you that, I need to tell you this: Tossing fruit in a beer isn't a way to use up something that's past the
point where you'd eat it.
Fruit is easily one of the most expensive ingredients that I work with when I make mixed culture beers. Sure, microbes and yeast can add up, especially if I use multiple pitches in a batch. But they're nowhere close to the cost of good fruit. Not even close to the cost for really good fruit.
Sure, I'm not as worried about the cosmetic qualities of the fruit I add to beer, but the better the flavor quality added, the better the beer.
To that end, I've been working on ways to find great quality fruit at prices that will allow me to do more than a handful of batches per year. Foraging accounts for some of the fruit I use. We have fruit trees in our yard, and hopefully they'll eventually produce enough fruit for me to use in brewing.
I have been disappointed with the varieties of fruit, as well as the quality of fruit, at the "farmer's" market's that I've been to in our area. Some stalls at the markets aren't even bothering to take the fruit out of the mass-market packaging before putting it out.
Some stalls do have great fruit, and some of it even grown locally, but at prices outside my rage. I typically need 2.5- 4 pounds of fruit per gallon, so getting fruit often doubles the cost of a beer.
One resource that I've found with some good results is our local salvage grocery store. Many larger towns have similar stores, though it may take some digging to find them.
Their stock isn't consistent, and is almost always on a limited first-come-first-served basis. That means for popular fruits like blackberries and raspberries... you've got to move fast.
Our local store posts a video and list on Facebook usually no more than an afternoon in advance. Having a hop freezer with extra space for random fruit is a huge boon.
Some examples of deals that I've been able to take advantage of:
- 5 pounds peeled, diced and frozen mango for $5
- Flats of organic raspberries for $3 each (not pints, not half-pints... but entire 6 pound flats)
- Flats of blackberries for $4 each
- Rhubarb for a couple of dollars a bunch (worked out to less than $1 per pound)
- Nectarines for around $8 per case
Most of the fruit has already been picked through and usually contains less moldy/waste fruit than I get when buying from our regular grocery store.
We use the same source for getting cases of apples to dehydrate for snacks.
While thinking about a way to express where the fruit was coming from, I saw this post from Primitive Beer (of Longmont, CO). They are calling a series releases using "rescued" fruit their "Exercise in Fruitility" beers.
That post inspired me to make a play on the phrase "Savage Garden". 'Savage Garden', because I read way too many Anne Rice books in the '90s. 'Salvage', well, should be apparent by now, and 'garden' because I wanted to emphasize the fruit and connection to nature in the beer. They're bit wild, a bit feral, like nature.
When designing the logo, I wanted a tree of life to be central to the image and for the logo to reflect that I live in the middle of a gigantic city. The pale green shapes behind the tree and text, when taken on their own have an urban map-like quality. Not a modern city, with neat lines and strict urban planning. Rather a old, sometimes beautiful and sometimes frustrating older city with lots of winding streets and buildings set at odd angles to each other. Honesty, it reminded me a little of the area in Boston where there was a daily farmers market during the last summer I visited the city. The stalls there were filled with wonderful looking ripe fruits, many heirloom varieties.
.png "Label Digital Photography by Enrique Meseguer")
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