Oleg Pichenikin grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and that meant privation and times of pseudo-prohibition. With limited access to vodka, Pichenikin turned to home distillation, making his own version of the national drink from one food that was always plentiful: peas.
When Aleksandr and Maksim Zhdanov heard the story of their grandfather's ingenuity, they set about to create vodka in his honor and founded 3BR Distillery in Keyport, New Jersey, in 2018. They released their first spirit in 2021.
“When my brother and I heard about our grandfather’s pea vodka almost 10 years ago from our mom, I quickly Googled it and couldn’t find any references to alcohol made from peas,” Aleks says. “I asked my grandmother, and she had the recipe. We knew we wanted to bring the spirit into the world, and [to] pay tribute to our grandfather and his inventive idea of using peas when left with limited options during the prohibition of the ’80s.”
Peas, Please
Although 3BR now makes many spirits—including a flavored vodka that pays homage to New Jersey's famous Taylor ham, egg, and cheese sandwich on an everything bagel (see “Addendum” below)—their flagship is Mendel, a 40-percent ABV vodka made entirely from peas. It is named after Gregor Mendel, the Austrian geneticist who experimented with pea plants.
3BR produces the vodka in its 400-gallon stripping still and 100-gallon hybrid still with 17 plates and three reflux condensers, both made by Affordable Distillery Equipment.
To distill the peas—which Zhdanov calls “the stubborn starch”—Zhdanov must first ferment them, and that means unlocking enough sugars to do the job. 3BR uses a combination of malted and unmalted (but pre-gelatinized) peas, getting some help from exogenous enzymes. These are the sort of garden peas we might buy and eat when green, but they turn yellow when left to mature longer—evidence that more of the sugars within are turning into starch.
Because no peas are grown commercially in New Jersey, 3BR sources the peas meant for malting from Nebraska. But there’s still a local hook: Rabbit Hill Malt in Shiloh, New Jersey, malts the peas for the distillery. A small craft operation, Rabbit Hill—tagline: “We don’t sell rabbits, only malt”—had never malted peas before. But Hillary Barile, cofounder and maltster, says she simply used basic malting principles.
“I added water to steep, but at a temperature range I thought peas would want to grow at—warmer than barley,” she says. "We ran a few different test batches relating to the duration of germination and were able to achieve the results 3BR wanted.”
Barile says that one thing contributing to Rabbit Hill’s success in malting the peas was their traditional floor-malting techniques, which are gentler than pneumatic malting systems.
For the pre-gelatinized peas, 3BR turns to a French supplier that makes gluten-free panko-style crumbs from peas. While most grains are high in amylopectin and low in amylose, peas are the opposite, resulting in a gelatinization temperature higher than the boiling point of water. If the peas don’t gelatinize properly, the sugars inside crystallize and become difficult to convert. However, the process of making the panko gelatinizes the peas and provides 3BR with precisely what it needs.
While the malted peas do provide some enzymes, 3BR uses exogenous enzymes to assist with conversion.
Besides honoring his grandfather’s story, Zhdanov says the peas help 3BR to be New Jersey’s only certified carbon-neutral distillery. That certification is for the distillery as a whole, not individual products, and Zhdanov says 3BR achieves its carbon-neutral status because the pea vodka is actually carbon-negative, offsetting the production of other spirits.
“This is because peas are a nitrogen-fixer and need to be used as a rotation crop for organic and sustainable farms,” Zhdanov says. “In a lot of ways, I think peas are the future for this exact reason.”
Vodka With Flavor
Mendel is a flavor-forward vodka—which may be an oxymoron for some consumers. Yet the product speaks for itself, winning Vodka of the Year at the New Orleans Spirits Competition in 2022.
“We have a bunch of people drink our vodka on a cube of ice,” Zhdanov says. “The oils come out. It’s really pleasant. It’s almost tequila-like. We think the flavor is unique and works for the product.”
3BR also uses peas in an aged spirit called Gorovka—a portmanteau of gorokh, the Russian word for peas, and vodka. Unlike Mendel, however, Gorovka is produced in a pot still. And, while vodka must be distilled to 95 percent ABV, they distill Gorovka to about 60 percent ABV then age it in a 133-gallon oak puncheon. They bottle it solera-style, only partially emptying the barrel before topping it up with fresh spirit.
Bottled at 55 percent ABV, Gorovka is copper in color with a slight blush hue. The peas provide some earthiness and a certain amount of savoriness. Gorovka features a pronounced nuttiness—almonds and peanuts, particularly—along with a sharp oak spiciness. Like Mendel, the spirit is unique.
Give Peas A Chance
One of Zhdanov’s business partners is a plant geneticist and breeder, and the 3BR team plans to get more involved in pea breeding to improve the process behind the spirit.
“Breeding any crop is difficult, especially in a scenario where, in this case, peas do not thrive in a New Jersey climate,” says Robert Mattera III, cofounder and head of 3BR’s bar program. Using a USDA database that includes 500 accessions of peas, Mattera plans to organize field trials in multiple New Jersey locations, evaluating as many varieties as he can for their ability to thrive in the local climate, for starch content, and for amylase and other catalytic enzymes to increase malting efficiency.
The first step is to acclimate peas to New Jersey. From there, crosses between the acclimated varieties and widely grown ones could lead to types with higher yield and enzymatic activity. As with any plant breeding, it’s a long game—Mattera says he expects it to take more than 10 years to breed his ideal pea.
“Although these traits are both in theory something we can breed and improve upon, it does depend on how heritable these traits are,” Mattera says. “If peas do not have the natural machinery to survive higher temperatures or produce more carbohydrates in their seeds, then we cannot do much.” On the other hand, he says, “it is exciting to potentially offer a new option of a crop for growers in New Jersey who typically have smaller operations than farms in the Midwest, and therefore have to look for new, interesting, and low-input crops to [be able to] compete.”
It’s ambitious, but both Zhdanov and Mattera seem more excited than daunted. The ingenuity and persistence of Zhdanov’s grandfather appears to be alive in 3BR’s DNA.
Addendum: Making a True New Jersey Spirit (that Tastes Like a Sandwich)
New Jersey boasts many unique culinary inventions, but the most famous is probably the pork roll, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel—a breakfast staple for many New Jersians.
So, there may be no better way for a local distillery to honor the Garden State than to make a spirit that tastes like that sandwich.
“I wanted to re-create all the complexities of the sandwich itself, so I broke it into parts and created those flavors first,” Zhdanov says, “then found the perfect combination of them to create the finished product.”
To capture the flavor of the salty pork roll—aka Taylor ham—Zhdanov used a technique borrowed from mezcal de pechuga, for which mezcaleros suspend a raw chicken over the still. In this case, a local bagel shop cooked 18 pounds of Taylor ham for a distillation of 3BR’s otherwise-neutral in-house vodka. “This captured even the greasy notes of the meat,” Zhdanov says.
“Then, everything-bagel seasoning was distilled to pull all the flavors and, more importantly, the nose,” he says. “As you eat the sandwich, the everything-bagel topping is directly under your nose and adds to the experience. By distilling just the seasoning, I was able to get a good aromatic base that contributes most of what the aroma of the spirit ends up being.”
3BR created the bagel flavor by taking dozens of Russian rye bagels, treating them with exogenous enzymes to liquify and convert the starches in sugar.
While they used no cheese to make the spirit, Zhdanov says he wanted to evoke the mouthfeel of an American cheese slice.
“For that, I borrowed [a] technique from brewing: the use of lactose for creamy mouthfeel in beer,” he says. “All together, these components acted like I wanted them to and formed a cohesive, finished product.”