Ben Brueshoff thought he was going to open a craft brewery. But when he had an idea to make vodka out of sugarbeets, he knew he was onto something.
"The craft beer industry is really saturated. There's a bunch of breweries; distillers, very very few," he said. "So we kind of had the lightbulb moment and said, let's create another social, locally made spirit, or drink, I should say, and that was a spirit, vodka, made out of sugarbeets."
Since he was in Minnesota, which shares with North Dakota the Red River Valley — the nation's top sugarbeet growing area — it made sense. Originally, they tried to make BĒT Vodka (pronounced beet) from raw sugarbeets that they hauled to the Twin Cities from the Red River Valley. But it didn't go the way they hoped.
"It doesn't smell like a standard vodka that has that, oftentimes that kind of abrasive quality that almost goes up through your nose and kind of burns a bit," he said.
"The taste is good," said sugarbeet farmer Mark Nyquist. "It's a higher-end vodka."
"It's great. We're always looking to tap into some niche markets, and that would be an opportunity for us to do that," he says.
This time of year, with people toasting the holidays, is usually BET Vodka's biggest sales season. However, the coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on their sales and tasting events. But Brueshoff raise a toast to the future of BĒT Vodka.
"This is a really subtle vodka that has this nice vanilla peppery finish when you sip it, and I think that's a credit to the sugarbeet, to this local Minnesota crop that we're using," he says.
