"Come Grow With Us" - Peace Tree Brewing Company

Our hope is that the beer made under the Peace Tree label will be shared with friends and strangers alike and be a catalyst for conversations, new friendships and important agreements – in line with the lore of infamous Peace Tree of Red Rock.

It used to be the Nash Rambler dealership in Knoxville, and still retains many of the dealership characteristics. Located at 107 West Main Street in Knoxville, and in business less than a year, Peace Tree Brewing Company has already outgrown storage space for their "hand crafted, full flavored" locally produced beers. Regular business hours for the Brewing Company are Monday through Friday, 8-5. Beer brewing began last September. The taproom has been open since October, and welcomes you every Thursday and Friday evening from 4-10 p.m. and Saturdays from 1-10 p.m.

The taproom will schedule group tastings at your place or the brewery, and is available for special events of up to about fifty people for $50 per hour. A bartender is provided, and if the bar bill is large enough, his $20/hour fee is waived. No outside beverages are permitted but you may and are encouraged to bring food in. Peace Tree can help you find a caterer if you wish. (Call 641-842-2739 to make arrangements.)

"We do not want to be in competition with area restaurants," explained Megan McKay Ziller (co-owner of McKay Insurance and the Brewing Company with her dad, Dan, and husband, Scott Ziller). "We are happy to have our patrons bring in food and let us provide the beverages."

The owners' chose to be a distributing brewery to generate income from outside their local area that would benefit the local economy. They never intended to create the typical bar atmosphere. "We wanted to provide an economic spark for downtown Knoxville," she explained, "a congenial local establishment where you can bring your kids and feel at home. We want to be part of the social fabric of the community, not just a bar."

To help create that family-friendly atmosphere, the brewery also makes its own non-alcoholic root beer and orange soda.

Peace Tree beers are available at the brewery of course, but also in Knoxville at Swamp Fox, Pine Knolls Country Club, Hy-Vee, and the Round Window. In Pella they are available at Kaldera, Sports Page, Billy Jaks, and Hy-Vee. There are also forty other locations throughout Iowa that sell the Peace Tree label.

"Iowa is a good state for a brewery," Megan explained. "There are only around two dozen throughout the state and only six are packaging breweries." (Like Peace Tree, a packaging brewery bottles beer for outside sales. Peace Tree has its own labels, and is able to bottle its unfiltered, unpasteurized beers at the rate of 40 cases per hour.) Megan says most other breweries are brew pubs that serve the majority of their beer on site, but do not package for retail sale.

Key to the success of the brewery is Brewmaster Joe Kesteloot, originally from the Chicago area, an Iowa State graduate, and a graduate of the American Brewers Guild in Vermont. Kesteloot, and his wife, Dani, came on board early, and his first jobs were to scout out the hop companies, the grain companies, and do the equipment shopping necessary to set up the brewery. Presently, he is brewing twice a week. The beers you find at Peace Tree are all his original recipes. This day, he was creating Cornucopia, a sweet corn beer that will be available in about four weeks, brewed from the corn of Dan-D Farms. Though Cornucopia was not ready for sampling, five of their "regulars" were.

In mid-March, Iowa allowed state breweries for the first time to brew beers to 8.5% alcohol by volume, up from 6.25. Peace Tree responded by creating Blonde Fatale, their lightest color and lightest tasting beer, similar to a Belgian ale, so named because "if you're not careful, it'll catch up with you."

Red Rambler Ale, named for the building that houses the brewery and taproom, is brewed with a combination of malts and hops, and has a deep red color. It is 5.8% alcohol by volume.

You can smell the hops in the Hop Wrangler 3, and you ought to: there are six of them. "This is Joe's multi-national take on a classic India Pale Ale, which are known for their intense hop bitterness, flavor and aromas."

While the Hop Wrangler 3 is only 6.25% alcohol, the new brew for "hop huggers" is Double IPA, a concoction of four hops varieties added in six massive doses, which tips the alcohol content to about 9%.

The Rye Porter is a dark, full-flavored, chocolatey brew with an alcohol content of 6%. (Perhaps it was the chocolate, but it was declared the favorite by those sampling.)

Peace Tree Brewing Company, like the beers it produces, takes its name from its regional source, an historic sycamore tree located near the town of Red Rock, and now in Lake Red Rock. "Supposedly the old sycamore was a place where Indians met for generations, then became a meeting place for fur traders. Indian treaties were negotiated here and there is some speculation that it marks the Red Rock Line...Our hope is that the beer made under the Peace Tree label will be a shared with friends and strangers alike and catalyst for conversations, new friendships and important agreements – in line with the lore of infamous Peace Tree of Red Rock." (Further historical information regarding this second largest sycamore in the country is available at http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA255372&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf)

For those interested in the actual brewing process we offer this explanation of the process:

1) Base malt (barley) is delivered by truckload from Cargil in Wisconsin and stored in the silo on Roche Street. Specialty grains such as rye and wheat that add color, body, and flavor are delivered in bags.

2) The grain is milled to open the husks and expose the starch.

3) Grain is weighed and water is heated.

4) The hot water and grain are added to a tank where fermentable sugars are converted from the starch. This sugar water is the wort. This tank has a false bottom with a screen where the wort is separated from the husk and transferred to the brew kettle. (Leftover mash is mixed 50/50 with other grains and used as cattle feed.)

5) The wort is boiled and hops are added. Hops are flowers that grow on 20-30-foot vines whose oils when heated give different flavors to beer. Peace Tree uses hops primarily from Oregon and Washington. This boiling sterilizes the product.

6) The wort is pumped through a heat exchanger (used to heat the water) where it is cooled and oxygen added.

7) The wort is then transferred to the fermenter where yeast is added. The yeast takes in sugar and converts it to alcohol and carbon dioxide while conditioning the beer. The temperature is lowered to about 32° for two weeks to let it flavor and let the yeast and sediment settle.

8) The beer is transferred to the finishing tank which carbonates the beer.

9) The beer is packaged and stored in the cooler for distribution.

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