(Almost) Local Beer

[Engagement with the local food scene here in Rhode Island prompts me to consider how “local” craft-brewed beer can be, what some of the limitations are, and what’s next to make craft beer even more local than it already can be.]

The term “local beer” is a bit of a misnomer. “Locally-brewed” is a more accurate appellation. This is largely due to the fact that almost no brewers produce or source their ingredients locally, except for one, water. “Hop harvest” beers using locally-grown hops have become more popular recently, but the total percentage of a year’s hop use by a brewery is from hops grown in the western US or on another continent. Regardless, hops don’t weigh much, many beers don’t use that many hops, and their overall composition of a beer is very small. However, unlike wine makers, who often grow their own grapes, or cider makers, who often grow their own apples or pears, brewers rarely grown their own grains, the essential fermentable in beer. Barley is ubiquitous to almost all beer styles (some wheat beers use only wheat), it is bulky, and rarely, if ever grown locally.

While there are certainly a number of small operations growing their own barley and hops, few are well known. Recently, a PhD student in South Carolina (blog) set out to grow his own hops and barely to produce a completely local beer, as a proof of concept. However, on the production scale, with their Chico Estate Harvest Ale, Sierra Nevada may be one of the only breweries in the US to produce a beer with ingredients produced entirely on-premise. The caveat: they had to ship their barley to Canada (via freight train) for malting to use in brewing.

Malting is the unspoken lynch-pin that prevents the prevalence of completely local beer. Even if a brewer can grow or source grain locally or regionally, it still has to be malted properly. While homebrewing guru Randy Mosher quips in Radical Brewing, that “in the old days they just threw a sack of barley in the creek, waited for it to sprout, and dried it over anything that burned,” that process isn’t going to produce high-quality, well-modified malts that yield good beer. A trained maltster is necessary, because there are varying degrees of quality in malted grain. For example, I personally know a number of homebrewers who favor Weyermann pilsner malt over that of other companies because they believe it is far superior. Unfortunately, skilled malting, such Weyermann’s, is not a common skill or practice.

The map below shows the major barley producing regions in the United States and the 12 (only!) malting facilities, which are largely near barley production areas or in Wisconsin and Minnesota (freight train centers coming out of the breadbasket). Keep in mind that Canada produces a considerable quantity of barely as well. In the U.S., it is plain to see that if a brewer sourced or produced barely in, say, Rhode Island, it would have to be shipped up into Canada (the nearest facility is in Montreal) or to Chicago for malting. After malting, it would have to be shipped back. That’s a lot of transportation miles and a rather large footprint.

Barley Production Regions & U.S. Malting Facilities

Unfortunately, the absence of this type of “middleman” is present throughout other sectors of our food system. USDA-approved meat packaging facilities are few and far between (four companies control 80% of the beef).  Many local food experts note that the lack of production, processing, and distribution facilities at the local and regional levels inhibits the growth of local food producers trying to find sources beyond farmer’s markets and CSAs. These systems are now trying to change this by establishing their own structures through cooperatives.

To take the next step in making craft beer more local, by establishing more malting facilities, brewer/grower cooperatives are a good place to start. In Wisconsin, a group of brewers have established one of the first. However, they are lucky, because Wisconsin is home a number of maltsters and to fertile grain-growing soils. There is a reason much of the barley in this country is produced in particular regions, the climate is amenable to large-scale, high-yield grain production. But for local brewpubs and microbreweries, the appeal of producing or sourcing grain locally for the sake of price stability, stabilization of supply fluctuations, low carbon footprint, and individual character is high despite the fact that they may not be situated in the breadbasket.

A critical mass of small brewers demanding local grain and local maltsters needs to be reached, in striving to establish new malting facilities. This will not happen overnight, as there are many obstacles to overcome. In the mean time, though, brewers can revel in one fact about the locality of their beer: 90% of the beer is unique to wherever they source their water. As many homebrewers and craft beer aficionados know, water profiles are critically unique to a number of classic beer styles. Brewers are smart to tout their water sources when acknowledging the individuality of their beer. And that’s something that sourcing distant grain will never take away from a brewery (until they are forced to source water distantly).