Give Peas a Chance: 3BR Distillery's Vodka Produces 65% Lower Emissions
As experts and entrepreneurs partner to address the climate crisis, technological innovations from seaweed farming to advanced batteries are making headlines, but the past also offers pathways forward. At 3BR Distillery in Keyport, New Jersey, twin brothers Maks and Aleks Zhdanov are creating spirits with ingredients and methods that their Russian ancestors would recognize – and that are helping them to reach carbon neutrality for future generations.
3BR’s flagship product is MENDEL, a vodka based not on grain or potatoes but on field peas. They’re following in the footsteps of their grandfather, Oleg Pichenikin. This “eternal badass,” as the family fondly calls him, was an engineer and tinkerer who tapped Soviet government phones for fun. When top leader Mikhail Gorbachev issued a soft prohibition on alcohol in 1986, limiting Russians to two bottles of vodka each month (typical consumption was a bottle every other day), Oleg turned his ingenuity to home distilling. He used an old family recipe for spirits made from an easily available and abundant source of natural sugar: peas.
"My grandfather always believed you have to help those in need. He would go further and teach others how to help themselves and others in the future. Our mother – his daughter – instilled this into us," says grandson and 3BR co-founder Maks Zhdanov. "We believe it is not only our responsibility to do our part in supporting climate initiatives but also demonstrate those practices so others can do it, too."
Often grown as rotational crops, field peas help to regenerate the nitrogen levels in soil so that future plantings of any species can thrive. That’s already a climate win since the growing field peas take carbon dioxide out of the air AND reduce the need to use commercial nitrogen fertilizer, with all the emissions associated with that process. They don’t even need fertilizers themselves to produce abundant crops. Raising peas emits approximately 23 percent less CO2e per kilogram vs. raising a kilogram of grain.
Field peas are commonly used as livestock feed, but their carbohydrates are also prime fodder for fermentation, malting faster and more efficiently than other common sugar sources used in distilling like grain or potatoes. A 400-gallon batch of field peas will ferment in 1.5 days vs. the 2.5 days typical for straight-up sugar. When you take into account every facet of 3BR’s production process, a bottle of field pea spirits has an approximately 65 percent smaller carbon footprint than an equivalent bottle of grain-based alcohol according to a similar life cycle assessment!
"Peas are known as nitrogen fixers – this means they have the ability to take atmospheric Nitrogen (N2) and convert it to usable nitrogen (NH4) by the plant,” says Robert Mattera, plant scientist and head of 3BR’s bar program. “This remarkable skill is actually a collaboration between the pea plant and nitrogen-fixing bacteria that are housed in root nodules. This allows farmers to completely forgo adding nitrogen-based fertilizers when growing peas and in some cases means they can rotate other crops that deplete the nitrogen in the soil with peas that restore it. I am excited because peas are unknown in the distilling world – very little plant breeding work has been done to develop peas that are even higher in starches and innate enzymes that have the ability to convert starch to fermentable sugars. The latter would prevent the need for exogenous enzymes cutting down on the carbon footprint of the distillation process."
3BR is minimizing their emissions through other strategies, too. After their star role in the distilling process, spent field peas end up as fertilizer in local gardens, and the team at 3BR reuses 100 percent of their production-related wastewater for the distillation cooling process using a holding tank heat exchanger and glycol chiller, which saves more than 2 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e) emissions annually. In the baseline calculation year, 2 MTCO2e was found to be approximately 1.17% of total emissions.
An innovative on-site machine from Viking Pure Solutions generates safe and sustainable cleaning solutions on demand using only salt, water, and electricity and reducing reliance on chemicals and impacts associated with shipping liquid disinfectants. An electric vehicle also helps to minimize their emissions associated with transportation. The 3BR team manages their overall climate impact by working with ClimateHound to estimate their total carbon footprint including emissions associated with their supply chain and uncover additional ways to reduce emissions.
Other distillers have put out special-edition spirits based on field peas, but the 3BR team believes that they’re the first U.S. producers to make the legume liquor a permanent part of their product line. And they’re the only producers of pea spirits who have gone the final mile by certifying as a fully carbon neutral distillery.
"I am excited, with the support of ClimateHound, to really take a critical look at our usage and get to a whole other level to reduce waste at 3BR," says COO William Proulx. "It is essential to produce sustainably if we want to be a future-thinking business."
The team at 3BR is not only committed to doing right by the planet – they’re also doing right by their customers with uniquely delicious spirits. MENDEL has won double gold at the Tales of the Cocktail conference in a blind tasting. “I was stunned by the complex, layered flavors in the MENDEL pea vodka,” says ClimateHound founder and longtime spirits nerd Palmer Fox. “I’m not a huge vodka drinker, and I believe my exact words were, ‘I wish you didn’t have to call this vodka.’ An overshare, maybe, but it’s true! This spirit is unique.”
At 3BR’s Keyport tasting room, which celebrates 80s-era Soviet punk style, you can try MENDEL in a Leningrad Mule, which adds honey and black tea to the Moscow version. Their GOROVKA, a pea spirit that’s been aged, shows up in the cinnamon-spiced Peas + Carrots, and 3BR also makes a pea-based savory gin, called SHISHKA, with mushroom, garlic, and chives. The distillery produces a range of spirits based on other ingredients, from a Soviet-style rum to rye whiskey and liqueurs. Many reflect local partnerships, like 3BR’s collaboration with Neshanic Valley Beekeepers to source cranberry blossom honey for their GINGER BEAR liqueur.
Served in a 5,000-square-foot space decorated with graffiti and upcycled decor like old newspapers and anti-alcohol Soviet posters, the 3BR products embody the revolutionary spirit (pun intended) captured in the distillery’s name. 3BR stands for “three bottles or riot,” a slogan that protested Gorbachev’s soft prohibition.
"Our grandfather would have loved that we are making delicious things and telling the story of the Soviet soft prohibition," says head distiller Aleks Zhdanov. "Not to mention he was always thinking forward about industry and pollution, especially in 1983 after the much publicized waste spillage in the former USSR, now Western Ukraine." Now, through their ClimateHound certification, the 3BR team is carrying forward Oleg’s values for a new era in climate action.