Barley growing next to the Corn Crib brewhouse barn at Wheatland Spring Brewery in Waterford, Virginia.
Raise a glass to the brewers who embrace local growers and regional ingredients to bring a real taste of place to each batch of beer they make.
WORDS John Holl
There’s an oft-repeated statistic that most Americans now live within five miles of at least one brewery. That’s a robust figure that is then commonly followed by the plea to “drink local.”
In that case, local means the brewery itself, where the beer is made. However, beer is often brewed with ingredients that come from far beyond five miles and are commercially harvested, packaged or processed in a lab or warehouse.
If local is a place, what goes into the glass is national or global.
There are some breweries, however, that are looking to change that.
Sometimes it’s growing hops on their own property or working with a local maltster. Others use wild yeast strains harvested on their property or fruit from a nearby farm.
These brewers are offering terroir in every pint and changing the perspective of what “local” beer can really be.
Craft malts for craft beer / Courtesy Maine Malt House
Wildbloom Beer
Littleton, New Hampshire
When he opened his northern New Hampshire brewery several years ago, Devin Bush thought about the impact he wanted to make not only on beer but his community. So, he committed to budgeting for ingredients grown as close to his brewery as possible. In some cases, that means the hops and malt used is more expensive than commercially available options.
“If we opened up five years earlier, we couldn’t have done it, because the infrastructure of malt houses, of quality, of growing, of all that wasn’t there yet,” says Bush, owner and head brewer at Wildbloom Beer. “New England is a great growing region for grain and for hops. So to me, it was logical that you should tie those together. Why would I not want to do that? We grow these things well.”
There are upsides to sourcing locally grown hops, namely in the flavor. Well-known and -grown hops like Cascade are a Pacific Northwest powerhouse; the Cascade grown in coastal Maine that Bush uses in his Pinecone pale ale has a candied orange aroma and flavor that comes off as sweeter than its West Coast counterpart.
He says that when he can do rubbings on a new harvest of hops, his brewer creativity can run wild. It’s not the same hops that 99 percent of other brewers will be using, and by focusing on local, it gives that taste of place he strives for.
“If the flavor wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be doing it, because then it would just be dumb,” he says. “It’s also the working hand in hand with the farmers on what they’re growing and finding out what they’re excited about and what they want to see out of the beer.”
The Seed: A Living Beer Project
Atlantic City, New Jersey
“We built our brewery around our philosophy of saison—brew with and showcase the bounties that surround you,” says Amanda Cardinali of The Seed, which she owns with her husband, Sean Towers. “The term has become a bit overused at this point, but tying a sense of place to everything we do makes it that much more meaningful.”
For The Seed, that means the strawberries they harvest in spring, the flowers and herbs they pick in summer and the grain they source from nearby Rabbit Hill Farms keep the beers grounded to the local lands and add to the story of the brewery.
“I would like to believe that our customers feel a deeper connection to our beer knowing that they incorporate locally sourced ingredients,” says Cardinali.
It is also an opportunity to teach customers about local farms they might not be aware of.
Chief among that is Rabbit Hill, the Garden State’s only craft malthouse. The Seed only uses Rabbit Hill malt and the flavor is noticeable, in a good way. When Cardinali sets out to brew a specific style, she can reach out to the local maltster to find grains that match different regions or beers, yet using local malt makes those beers truly unique.
Cardinali is confident that “when you can put a ‘face to a name’ with our beers, meaning when you can actually associate a specific farm to a certain flavor, it better helps the consumer link the emotions and the story behind what they are tasting.”
Beer in the wild / Courtesy The Seed
Assorted grains / Courtesy Mad Fritz Beer Book-Jeff Bramwell
Mad Fritz Brewing
St. Helena, California
Brewing in the heart of California’s Napa Valley, there is a lot of talk about the terroir of the beers produced by Mad Fritz, the brewing project by winemaker Nile Zacherle. When the brewery was founded in 2014, Zacherle promised himself that he would make beers with local products that would differentiate themselves in the marketplace. The brewery produces about 200 barrels per year and sources local malts and hops, which add character to the beers.
More recently, Zacherle says he has been sourcing his water from different springs in the area, letting the ground water add its own character to the recipe through natural minerals.
His beers are aged in foeders or barrels for fermentation and allowed to carbonate completely naturally, without the need for industrial gas. Because of this, the beers take longer to make, often two to four months, but it allows Zacherle to “provide a product that ages beautifully and has another dimension of flavor.”
“Who wants to brew by numbers?” he asks. “That’s kind of boring. At the end of the day, our product is a reflection of the ingredients.”
Occasionally, the brewery brings in freshly emptied Chardonnay or Cabernet barrels from local wineries for added flavor dimensions.
Being small and having the ability to be uncompromising in approach through ingredients, time and creativity, the Mad Fritz beers are often well received and appreciated by regular customers who will often spend upwards of $35 per 750-ml bottle.
“When you taste our beer, in contrast to something else, it’s a totally different experience,” says Zacherle. “It’s a different beer and that’s what’s beautiful about it.”
A Craft Malt Certified sign at Wheatland Spring Brewery
Wheatland Spring Brewery
Waterford, Virginia
There are many breweries that have hop fields attached to them, and several on farms that grow a variety of grains, but very few can boast being on a regenerative malt farm. Wheatland Spring Brewery in Waterford, Virginia, about an hour drive northwest from Washington D.C., is one such brewery and farm.
“I recently planted the sixth year of grains next to our brewhouse for beer we’ll offer in 2025,” says brewery co-owner John Branding. “It’s been a long road to get here with many ups and downs, but we’ve always had the same focus—offer the highest-quality beer we’re able to make. This is predicated on two obvious truths: beer is an agricultural product, and we have the best chance of making the finest beer we can with the highest-quality ingredients in hand.”
That means Branding manages the entire estate-grain-supply chain, from soil to mash tun. That takes real commitment, grit, faith and a sense of adventure.
Earlier this year, Branding brewed with grains that had never been previously used for beer. The experimental barley that was bred for his region and that he regeneratively grew last year, was combined with the farm’s water and native yeast that was captured on the grounds.
“This beer can only exist here because of our intention, ingredients and methods,” he says. “And I think that’s a beautiful thing.”
By staying away from what he calls “commodity malt” or grains grown on commercial farms—which the vast majority of breweries use—he’s able to create a sense of place with each bottle of beer he releases. The flavors are not only complex and intriguing, but he says it’s “also extraordinarily rewarding. It’s deeply fulfilling to play a role in re-localizing our food and drink—and doing it in a way that we feel good about.”
Freshies from Crosby Hop Farm / Courtesy pFriem Family Brewers
pFriem Family Brewers
Hood River, Oregon
About a two-hour drive northeast from the Willamette Valley, it would take some real doing for the brewers at pFriem to not brew with local ingredients. There is an abundance of fresh fruit grown close by and, of course, the annual hop crop, some of the best in the world, is grown a stone’s throw away.
“Oregon is a land of bounty,” says Josh Pfriem, brewmaster and cofounder. “We get a lot of our berries out of the Valley, whether it’s raspberries, blackberries, marionberries or hybrids.”
He says they are able to work with small farmers, many of whom come into the tasting room on a regular basis and together they find ways to bring those flavors to the beers, often creating something that has not been done before.
It’s a similar thrust with being close to Oregon’s wine country, where Pfriem says the brewery makes “quite a few different barrel aged beers” that use local grapes. Sometimes that means using whole fruit, juice or must.
It’s really the hops, however, that get the starring role in local drinking. Beginning every August, when hop harvest begins, the brewers are in the fields picking preferred lots that will be used in their beers for the coming year. There are also special batches of fresh and wet-hop beers that use hops picked from the bine and added to the brew kettle within minutes of harvest.
Because of location, Pfriem notes that regular customers, especially those in the brewery’s membership club, are “really in tune and in touch, they are asking lots of questions, they walk in knowing what they want and like and they live for beer. They know about it, they know all the details and we can’t give them enough information. They love the stories and love the ingredients.”
This article was published in the Winter 2024 issue of Full Pour. Don’t own it? Pick one up today!