Chicagoist's "Beer of the Week": Peak Organic Nut Brown Ale

A couple weeks back we had the opportunity to sit down for a few beers with Jon Cadoux, founder of Peak Organic Brewing Company in Portland, Maine, at the Streeterville Elephant & Castle. Like many craft breweries, Peak evolved from both Cadoux's home-brewing hobby and commitment to organic and sustainable agriculture. He was in town making the rounds, help his distributor place his beers into some new accounts. He was pretty successful: in addition to E&C, Peak selections can be found at Funky Buddha and Frontera Grill, with assurances that Blackbird and Spring would soon add Peak to their respective beer listings. Committing to organic is an all-consuming and costly process. Cadoux told Chicagoist that to ensure Peak stays in strict compliance with USDA organic guidelines, he has a full-time quality control manager on staff.

Peak's organic nut brown ale is a great introduction to the brewery, and gives us warmth to stave off the biting wind we've had this week. Cadoux described this beer as a cross between an English mild brown ale and an American session brown. Brewed with organic chocolate and Munich malts and a rare organic New Zealand Hallertau hop, this is a wonderfully sweet brown ale, a good entry to Peak's other selections and darker beers. The malts were prominent on the nose and surprisingly crisp on the palate. The hops didn't truly hit us until the finish, and then only briefly. It was indeed a good session ale. The overall rush of flavor was something we weren't expecting from an organic beer. Seems like our colleague Carrie Miller, the Beer Pirate, agrees, as you'll see in the video above.

You can find Peak Organic Nut Brown Ale and their other selections (a pale and an amber ale) at Binny's in six- and twelve-packs. They're all great tasting beers, but for now, Peak's organic nut brown ale is Chicagoist's "Beer of the Week."