Waves of Grain: The Brewer
Grains! They're not just for bread!
Welcome to ‘Waves of Grain,’ a four-part series about locally grown small grains. This series was inspired by my research for a Richmond Magazine story now in the current issue (October, 2024). If you’re in Richmond, grab a copy and consider showing your support for local journalism by subscribing to the magazine.
Throughout October, I’ll look at small grains through the lenses of brewers, bakers, farmers, and millers. Up first, the brewer, specifically Fine Creek Brewing head brewer, Brian Mandeville.
First, a little context. The term ‘small grains‘ refers not to the antithesis to Big Grain (although it is also that) but specifically to cereal grains like wheat, oats, barley, rice, and rye that have smaller kernels. Here, I’m mostly concerned with small grains that are grown locally or on a small scale. Local grain farms and mills used to be much more common, but as grain production became commercialized and centralized to the midwest, where monocropping is the name of the game, these small, typically family-owned businesses were forced out. Over the past decade, there’s been a resurgence of interest in small grains, and that’s great because working with these nutrient-dense grains is a boon to biodiversity and soil health that contributes to the local economy and provides different avenues of flavor for bakers, brewers, and distillers to discover. That’s a lot of wins.
If you’re a lover of local beer, you’ve got a reason to be invested in the local grain economy. All too often, Mandeville notes, ‘local’ beer is actually made with ingredients that come from hundreds of miles away. Mandeville has sourced grains like buckwheat and corn from Deep Roots Milling, Next Step Produce, and Greater Richmond Grains. Making local beer truly local is, no surprise, much more complex and often more logistically challenging, but the results speak for themselves.
In Their Words: Brian Mandeville, Fine Creek Brewing
For Big Impact, Go Small…
Originally a brewer, much like a Miller, was this person in the community who helped to translate agricultural goods into something that was good to store and keep for a much longer time. So yes, I 100% think that beer is an agricultural good, and I think that the closer we can get back to that history and that tradition, the better.
And also, from a selfish perspective as a brewer, it really helps to sustain a lot more breweries if those breweries are hyper-focused on smaller food systems and supply chains that focus locally, because, instead of buying grain from the same three international malt houses and buying hops from the same large hop conglomerates, sourcing locally makes the beer far more distinct, unique and reflective of the area around it.
Many Hands Make Good Beer…
Brewers are just a really small part of a much larger ecosystem that's required for the production of beer. To me, that puts this responsibility on a brewer to make sure that you are telling that story and that you are reflecting kind of the work being done by many, many hands that go beyond just your work in order for that beer to end up in a glass. That's everything from conservation groups that are doing work to protect the land around us so that we have clean water to make beer with, to the growers who are producing the grain that then gets malted by somebody else in order to make beer.
There's all of these other people whose hands touch that product and whose labor is required. And I think beer can be this amazing thing that shows that, or it can be this real commodity-like product, where all of that is obscured. And so in my opinion, the Brewer has the responsibility to make sure that that story is told and make sure that those connections are maintained, because we rely on that ecosystem for our own existence, and we are fortunate that we, at the end of the day, we get to give someone a beer. So it hopefully makes that storytelling a little easier, because as long as you do a good job as a brewer and you make something that's delicious, you open so many more doors to have those conversations.
Buy It: Looking for beer that tastes like the place where it was made? Here are a few Virginia breweries that make a point of working with locally grown grains.
Brew It: A Recipe for Pale Malt from Brian Mandeville
By now, you’re probably convinced that you should be making your own beer from locally grown grains, so I’ll let Brian Mandeville lead you through this recipe for a Murphy & Rude 6-Row Pale Malt. Mandeville works with Charlottesville-based malthouse, Murphy & Rude to source malt made from local grains for Fine Creek Brewing, and the cool thing is they have malt available for home brewers as well. Take it away, Brian!
Single Hopped Murphy & Rude 6-Row Pale Ale
We brew a series of Pale Ale's using 100% Murphy & Rude 6-Row Pale Malt. The 6-Row helps us to produce a round mouthfeel and a flavor profile of water crackers and dried straw that acts as a perfect malt base to showcase hops. We use these Pale's as an opportunity to explore new hops, or ones that we just really like working with.
OG: 11.8° Plato
FG: 2.0° Plato
IBU: 32
ABV: 5.2% ABV
Grist
100% Murphy & Rude 6-Row Pale
The kennel size of 6-Row barley tends to be a fair bit different from 2-Row barley. It is likely that you will need to adjust your mill gap and pay close attention to the grind you're getting out of your mill.
Hops
For these Pale Ales I recommend using one of your favorite IPA hops. Some of the best results we have gotten have been with El Dorado, Eclipse, and Mosaic.
32 IBUs: Your Favorite Single Hop @ Whirlpool
Dry Hop 1: .5oz per gallon of the same hop
Dry Hop 2: .5oz per gallon of the same hop
Yeast
Voss Kveik
We ferment this yeast at 95°F, if you have the ability to maintain control of your fermentation temperature then I recommend trying that temperature. This can be a bit risky if you don't have a means of preventing it from overheating, if that is the case I recommend starting fermentation at 80°F.
Process
Single-step infusion mash at 154°F for 60min.
Boil the wort for 90 min adding only one addition at whirlpool to achieve the desired 32 IBUs.
Chill the wort to 90°F, if you are fermenting at 95°F, otherwise chill to 80°F. Aerate the wort and pitch yeast.
At these temperatures fermentation will generally start very quickly and tends to be very robust.
24 hours after fermentation starts, add your first dry hop.
After there are no signs of active fermentation add your second dry hop and allow it to condition with the hops for three days.
Confirm that a stable final gravity has been reached, cold crash and bottle or keg the beer.
Finished beer should be hazy, with a round mouth feel and a pleasantly dry finish.
Go To It: Common Grain Alliance 2024 Mid-Atlantic Grain Fair
Got grains on the brain? Mark your calendar for the Common Grain Alliance’s Mid-Atlantic Grain Fair in DC on Saturday, October 12 from 10:00 to 4:00 at Peirce Mill with demo’s, lectures, and a marketplace for all your grain shopping needs.
Thanks for reading! Next week, we’ll hear from the farmers — Fred and David Sachs of Grapewood Farm. Until then…
xox
SG