Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Johnson.
Hi Alex, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Making good food for my family and friends while has always been where I find the most joy in my life. I have always enjoyed challenging myself to cook as completely from scratch as I can, so this has led me down some weird pathways in my kitchen. I’ve dabbled in everything from fermenting my own soy sauce and garum to brewing up different cocktail bitters. For whatever reason making vinegar really grabbed ahold of me. During the covid lockdowns most people gravitated towards perfecting sourdough, but I was loading up the closet of my girlfriend’s condo with different jars of fermenting vinegars. For whatever reason she put up with it, and now we are married haha. I have always loved playing around with making different cocktails and going out to all the great breweries in Minnesota. Vinegar making has almost just been an extension of that. All vinegar starts with an alcohol, and we have plenty of great Minnesota made craft beers and ciders to play around with and turn into vinegar. Gives me a chance to buy and sample great stuff and pass it off as “business research”. My first batches weren’t necessarily great, but they were good enough to give me the motivation to keep learning. After I got the hang of it my wife encouraged me to try my hand at selling them at our local farmers market in Northeast Minneapolis. I had no idea if they would actually sell. Fortunately it seemed to resonate with a lot of people and, long story short, we have been slowly growing ever since. I am definitely just figuring it out as I go, which has been a lot of fun for me.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Oh man, I am very much just figuring this out as I go. In most ways I still have no idea what I am doing, but that is half the fun of it for me. I am a middle school teacher, so that is what pays the bills. Vinegar making is still just a side project for me that I get a lot of enjoyment out of. The fact that I have a “day job” with a steady paycheck takes a ton of the stress out of it for me, which I feel very grateful for. It means I can experiment around and take more risks than I could if this were my full time source of income.
Figuring out how to scale up production, deal with licensing, introduce my product to stores, build a website, and a laundry list of other things has definitely been a challenge. I’ve just worked my way through them one at a time. I’m sure there are plenty more new challenges coming down the pipeline.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
The thing I am most proud of with Northland Vinegars is how it helps highlight our craft beverage scene in a new and original way. Obviously drinking a hearty stout beer on a cold winter night or a crisp hard cider in the summer is great. Northland Vinegars allows us to all get those same great flavors into our kitchen though through a dark malt beer vinegar or aged apple cider vinegar. It takes what some great brewers make and transforms it into something new and original, while still keeping the foundational flavors intact. As far as I can tell I am just about the only person in the upper midwest doing this type of fermentation with local alcohols. I try to steer into flavor directions that you can’t find other places. Dark stout beer vinegar co-fermented with chipotle peppers for deep smoky depth of flavor. Savory aquavit vinegar with celery and caraway. Cherry bourbon cider vinegar aged over toasted American white oak. Flavor profiles for vinegar can steer in so many directions, I have a lot of fun figuring out unique directions to go in that still highlight Minnesota flavors.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
What I love about Minneapolis is the incredible restaurant and bar scene. I live in Northeast, so I have such a plethora of fantastic restaurants to eat at within a five minute walk. Vinai, Minari, Anchor Fish and Chips, and so many more are right down the block. Not to mention the great bars and coffee shops all over the place.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.northlandvinegars.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/northlandvinegars/
