BREWERIES
As discussed above, before embarking on this pilot project, Food21 visited or had extensive discussions with 18 prospective end users: Great Lakes Brewing, Straub Beer, All Saints Brewery, North Country Brewing, Four Seasons Brewing, Devout Brewing, Helltown Brewing, Southern Tier Brewing, Penn Brewery, Yellow Bridge Brewing, Four Points Brewing, Mindful Brewing, Voodoo Brewery, Troegs Brewery, Stoney’s Beer, Wigle Whiskey, White Valley Distillery, and City Brewery/Latrobe. With the exception of Wigle Whiskey (they only use certified organic ingredients) and Voodoo (they didn’t believe we could meet their high standards) all were receptive (with varying degrees of interest) to considering using local malt. As the project progressed ten breweries either committed to purchasing malt or entertained experimenting with a batch of local malt.
On April 17th, All Saints Brewery introduced Old Hanna’s Town beer made through the Farm to Tap project. Later in April Monday’s Brewery and Recon Brewing offered their customers Bradford’s Reserve and PA Pride Pisner, respectively. Both also produced their beers
through the Farm to Tap malt barley value chain. We anticipate other breweries, including North Country Brewing, Penn Brewery, Devout Brewing, Southern Tier Brewing, Mindful Brewing, Straub, and White Valley Distillery to participate in the Farm to Tap project shortly. It should be noted that even though the bigger breweries - Great Lakes, Troegs and City Brewery - did not participate in Farm to Tap, they seem to have a genuine interest in locally raised malt. Two small craft breweries and a home brewer requested product after hearing of its availability from CNC Malt. Overall, the local craft brewers were very receptive to the possibility of incorporating local grains into their brewing recipes.
Breweries in the Western Atlantic Food Shed (WAFS)
The most challenging aspect of selling the Food21 malt is the small volume per purchase. Food21 has roughly 35,000 pounds of malt to sell. Our participating craft brewers use 500 to 1,000 pounds of malt per batch. We will have to close perhaps 50 transaction to sell all of our product. On the plus side, most if not all of our craft brewers will be ordering more than one time. Nevertheless, contracting with a malt house to take part of the barley and having a brewer purchase larger quantities of the malt, should be explored.