Many craft beer enthusiasts are familiar with the Brewers Association stat that more than 75 percent of legal-drinking-age adults live within 10 miles of a brewery. But most breweries haven’t had the luxury of living as close to their ingredient suppliers. A brewer on the East Coast still, for the most part, is likely sourcing the lion’s share of its hops from the Pacific Northwest and its malt from Midwestern malt houses that source grain from big barley-growing states like Idaho or Montana.

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That slowly, but surely, is changing as craft brewing, over the past couple of decades, has become a nationwide phenomenon and brewers have increased their focus on all things local. And, more and more, that’s become a two-way street, with “local” becoming as much a part of buying as it is selling. And demand has reached a point where it can, to some degree, sustain smaller, more regionally focused boutique suppliers. Massachusetts-based Valley Malt, founded in 2010, is one such supplier.

“Our whole objective is to source from New England and serve New England, keeping that circle, that orbit,” says Valley Malt owner and maltster Andrea Stanley. “We occasionally get requests for malt to be shipped outside of our area, but 90 percent is within New England.”

“We started with a very specific vision in mind: to get all of our ingredients from within 200 miles of the brewery.” Nicole Carrier, Founder of Throwback Brewery

Among its customers is North Hampton, N.H.-based Throwback Brewery, also founded in 2010, with a mission very much in line with Valley’s.

“We started with a very specific vision in mind: to get all of our ingredients from within 200 miles of the brewery, and a large part of that is the malt,” notes co-founder and president (and, incidentally, Stanley’s cousin), Nicole Carrier.

Each year Throwback inches closer to fully realizing that vision. Depending on the individual beer, grain bills range between about 55 and 100 percent locally sourced malt. The year-round Love Me Long Time Bohemian-style pilsener is on the top end of that range, with all of its grain coming from within a 200-mile radius.

Throwback is also getting between 30 and 40 percent of its hops from a nearby grower and the brewery recently moved to a farm and started growing some of its own. Additionally, Throwback sources local fruits and vegetables for many of its specialty beers, such as New Hampshire-grown rhubarb and jalapeños for its seasonals Rhubarb Wit and Spicy Bohemian Jalapeño Pilsener, respectively. Growers in the Granite State also supplied the 70-plus pounds of watermelons that went into a batch of its Watta Melon blonde.

“For us, it certainly rings true that people really want to support the local economy,” offers Throwback co-founder and head brewer Annette Lee. “More and more breweries are doing it and more and more consumers are demanding it.”

Lee and Carrier credit suppliers like Valley Malt, which launched just before Throwback started up, for helping make that possible.

Valley’s Stanley is also a founding member and president of the Craft Maltsters Guild, a four-year-old organization that boasts some 30 members in the U.S. and Canada now, including a few farm-to-glass breweries and distilleries that malt their own grain.

What is Craft Malt?

A decade ago the notion of a “craft maltster” didn’t even exist, let alone warrant its own trade organization. The guild defines craft malt as “a finished malt product, produced from a variety of grains including, but not limited to, barley, wheat, rye, millet, oats, corn and triticale,” the majority of which (more than 50 percent by weight) are made with locally grown grains (those within the region of the particular malthouse). A craft malthouse is defined as a business that produces between 5 metric tons and 10,000 metric tons of craft malt per year. To fit the definition, no more than 24 percent of a craft malthouse may be owned by a non-craft malthouse–similar to the Brewers Association’s 25 percent ceiling on non-craft-brewer ownership of its individual members.

“We were the first malt house to establish ourselves east of the Mississippi in at least 100, if not 150 years,” Stanley points out.

And Valley ultimately helped pave the way for a burgeoning industry of independents.

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“Seven years ago, no one was really growing malting barley on the East Coast,” Stanley recalls. “No breweries were really able to use any local grain or malt in their beer. Until we opened our doors it was not a possibility to have that kind of connection to local soil — only with some of the herbs and fruits brewers were adding to their beers, but not on the malt side of things.”

Craft malt may seem like a new concept, but it’s really the return to a business model that’s as old as American brewing. In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, maltsters, like brewers, were, largely, local and regional businesses before massive waves of consolidation defined the mid-twentieth-century.

“What has happened over the last six or seven decades is that all of the barley growing moved out toward the west — Idaho, North Dakota and Montana are the biggest barley-growing states in the U.S.,” Stanley explains.

Innovation is the Key

Bringing it back east (not to mention other parts of the country) isn’t without its challenges. With most of the grain farming concentrating in a few Western states, the crops have been bred over the decades to adapt to that region’s relatively dry climate.

Humidity and greater rainfall, on the other hand, characterize the Northeast.

“Barley is probably one of the most adaptable crops out there,” Stanley says, “but the breeding has become so narrow because of the consolidation of where barley is being grown.”

Local growers and craft maltsters have been working to develop barley varieties that thrive in areas, like New England, with more precipitation and humidity.

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And as the quality of those grains improves and evolves, it’ll further enhance brewers’ and consumers’ ability to buy local. It’ll also help brewers capture more of the regional terroir, or as the Throwback founders like to call it “beeroir,” beer that has a taste of place. And some of the excitement such a notion brings to beer stems from the fact that, like the weather, that taste is always changing.

“We embrace the seasonality and some of the variability that comes with local ingredients,” says Lee. “We know breweries that rely on the consistency of big malt houses and I see that as playing a part with some breweries just starting up.”

It certainly can be more expensive for brewers to support small, craft suppliers and that usually means a slightly higher cost for the consumer. But in the end, it’s all about value and passion.

“Unfortunately it’s easier for some breweries to just buy at a certain price point,” Lee admits. “You have to really believe in this type of local agriculture and all of its benefits.”

The post Grain Trust: Craft Malt, Craft Beer and What it Means to be Local appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Placentia, California’s, The Bruery has been among the leading innovators in that space. In addition to bourbon, Scotch and rye whiskey barrels, the company has used rum, brandy and tequila barrels, as well as casks that were once home to fortified wines like port and Madeira.

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A few years back, The Bruery released Sucré, its sixth-anniversary ale, in various barrel-aged iterations, including rum and Madeira. The now-retired 16.9 percent ABV English-style Old Ale was blended using the solera method, a traditional practice in blending sherry where fractions of liquid from younger barrels are merged with small portions from older ones.

Strong, bold brews like Sucré — French for “sugar,” as “sugar” is the traditional sixth-anniversary gift — are the ones that hold up best in rum barrels.

“You get some of the richness from a dark aged rum, some of that sugar cane flavor,” says The Bruery founder Patrick Rue. “Sometimes it can come off a little like airplane modeling glue, it can be super hot — it’s really dependent on the distillery. I’ve had some rum barrel beers that were really nice and some that were not really nice. A really assertive beer generates the best results.”

Rum barrels also worked quite well with The Bruery’s 19.7 percent ABV Black Tuesday imperial stout. Madeira casks were also a good match for those hefty beers, imparting a bit of a burnt raisin flavor, an unusual note for a barrel to deliver.

Port barrels, meanwhile, add hints of dried plum and other dark fruits. One year in the wood tends to be the standard for The Bruery, though its Chronology series features beer that’s been racked at six, 18 and 24 months, in addition to 12 months. “Some are best at six months, some at 12 months and some at 24 months.”

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Even more out of left field was Fort Collins, Colorado, based Odell Brewing Co.’s Fernet Aged Porter, a limited release that spent some time in wood that once held Leopold Bros. Distillery’s riff on the dark, opaque herbal Italian amaro. Known for its minty, licorice-like flavor profile (in addition to hints of other botanicals like lavender, honeysuckle and ginger root), fernet brought a kind of Good ‘n’ Plenty-crossed-with-Andes-Candies dimension to the 9.8 percent ABV roasty, chocolaty porter.

While fernet, Madeira, port and rum all typically spend varying lengths of time in wood, one doesn’t traditionally think “oak-aged” when talking about gin. Most gin is unaged, but an increasing number of barrel-matured gins are on the market, combining the woody elements with the juniper-forward spirit’s mix of botanicals — which, in turn, leave their imprint on the oak. And, once those barrels are empty, many brewers have been quick to get their hands on them.

San Diego’s Green Flash Brewing was among them, using those erstwhile gin vessels to flavor Divine Enebro, the third in its limited-edition Cellar 3 Barrelmaster’s Reserve series. Green Flash found that the fruity esters and gum drop flavors of its Belgian-style tripel would pair well with the gin botanicals.

Barrelmaster Pat Korn found further inspiration in fellow San Diegan Old Harbor Distilling Co.’s San Miguel Southwestern Gin, which marries Southwestern flavors like cilantro and cucumber with the more traditional botanicals.

“I wanted to incorporate those flavors into the beer,” Korn says. “To do this, we added cucumber, juniper berries and coriander in a large hop sack, racked the beer onto this and kegged it off when we felt the botanicals had reached their peak in integration and flavor.”

Distillers Get a Flavor Boost from Beer Barrels

Distiller-brewer collaborations are now proving to be anything but one-way transactions. Just as craft breweries are reaching flavorful new heights aging in spirits barrel, distillers are realizing they can enhance their own products in vessels that once held beer. Across the pond, Jameson last year unveiled its Caskmates series, whose blends incorporated some of the iconic Irish whiskey matured in barrels that previously held beers brewed by some of Ireland’s craft brewers.

Closer to home, Louisville, Kentucky, based craft brandy distiller Copper & Kings recently kicked off its Cr&ftwerk project — the ampersand is a core element of the company’s branding — a series of brandies aged for a year in beer barrels.

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Copper & Kings already had been partnering with brewers that were aging beer in its brandy barrels before the distillery launched the project to do the reverse.

Chico, California’s, Sierra Nevada, Munster, Indiana’s, 3 Floyds, Longmont, Colorado’s, Oskar Blues and Louisville’s Against the Grain Brewery are among the breweries that have supplied barrels for the Cr&ftwerk line.

The distillery released a brandy aged in wood that previously held 3 Floyds’s Dark Lord Russian imperial stout, which infused the spirit with malty, dark chocolate and coffee notes.

“The easiest to use are the imperial stouts,” notes Copper & Kings founder Joe Heron. “There’s a lot of dark chocolate and it’s very viscous, which retains really well in the barrel.”

Copper & Kings’s partnership with Sierra Nevada has so far resulted in two distinct products. One used Sierra’s Imperial Smoked Porter barrels, imparting strong vanilla and malt flavors, with hints of smoke. There’s even some noticeable hop character. Sierra’s Cherry Chocolate Stout served as the basis for another, producing a brandy with flavors of baked cherries, chocolate toffee and a nose of dried cherry and cacao nibs.

“We’ve always been inspired by craft brewers — that authenticity, that creativity, that imagination and just that ability to think differently.” Joe Heron, Copper & Kings

Oskar Blues’s G’Knight and Deviant Dale’s brought, as you would expect, plenty of citrusy, grapefruity hop character to the brandy. Against the Grain’s Mac FannyBaw, a rauchbier that attempted to replicate the flavors of a peaty Islay Scotch whisky, brought some of that smoke to the brandy, as well as a touch of salinity.

The spirit typically enters the wood at 130 proof (65 percent ABV) to ensure maximum beer flavor extraction. It’s not chill-filtered, as that process would strip out some of the desired flavor. It’s then bottled at 111 proof (55.5 percent ABV).

“Brandy is quite a promiscuous spirit,” notes Heron. “It takes on flavor very quickly and maturation has to be managed quite carefully. If you leave it in new American oak too long, it gets very oaky.”

As the number of craft distilleries in the U.S. grows and the players within the segment diversify beyond bourbon and other whiskeys, expect to see more of these alternative barrel collaborations between small brewers and spirits makers. There’s plenty of innovation on both sides, so it would be a shame for each not to mine the talent of the other from time to time.

“We’ve always been inspired by craft brewers — that authenticity, that creativity, that imagination and just that ability to think differently and inspire people to drink differently,” says Heron. “That’s why we started the Cr&ftwerk project and started working with brewers in that way. It was more than, ‘It’ll be cool to age in craft beer barrels.’ We were much more reverential and deferential to the philosophy of great craft brewers.”

The post Brewers Find Bold Beer Flavors in Barrels Beyond Bourbon appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

In a lot of ways, craft distilling is following a similar trajectory to craft brewing; the growth in the number of small spirits producers is exploding and they’re starting to chip away at macro-distillers’ market share (though indie spirits makers represent barely 2 percent of the spirits market at this point, as their segment is fairly nascent, relative to their beer counterpart).

The same entrepreneurial spirit that built the craft beer industry drives the founders of independent distilleries.

But that is pretty much where the comparisons end.

For every similarity between craft beer and craft spirits, there are multiple differences — well beyond ABV and the distilling process. The most significant among those is the competitive environment in which each movement emerged.

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Rage Against the Micro Machine

Think back about four decades when the first craft brewers — called microbrewers back then — produced their first batches. “Beer” meant one style: mass-produced yellowish lagers — loosely based on European pilsners — lacking most of the flavor-forward character of their overseas inspiration.

The early pioneers — be they Anchor Brewing’s Fritz Maytag, New Albion’s Jack McAuliffe or Sierra Nevada’s Ken Grossman — introduced American drinkers to alternatives when those drinkers didn’t even know such alternatives even existed. And, as such brews became available to a larger and larger swath of the legal-drinking-age American population, it changed the course of the beer market forever, ultimately to the tune of 12 percent market share (and counting), according to recent statistics from the Brewers Association.

In a sense, drinking craft became a way to rage against the macro machine, a way of saying “we want something more than what your marketing tries to convince us is flavorful beer.”

That’s not quite the case with craft spirits. The companies that would be the spirits equivalents of macro-brewers — Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Brown-Forman and Beam Suntory, to name the biggest — own many of the most iconic whiskey brands. Not only is Diageo responsible for about one-third of all the Scotch whisky volume coming out of Scotland, it also is the company behind the highly prized Orphan Barrel series of fine bourbon and rye whiskeys. And, sure, Brown-Forman is perhaps best known as the owner Jack Daniel’s, but it’s also responsible for Woodford Reserve.

Maker’s Mark has, for the past 35 of its 60-year existence, been through a series of mergers and acquisitions that ultimately resulted in the formation of Beam Suntory.

It’s hard to argue that the spirits-drinking public was as much in need of a flavor revolution as beer drinkers were. The large spirits companies’ businesses were already diversified enough to appeal to all segments of the market. In addition to the mass-marketed mainstream and budget brands, their portfolios include higher products that occupy a space that many would deem “craft.”

“I don’t think you can out-craft them,” says Brett VanderKamp, president and co-founder of New Holland Brewing. New Holland brings a valuable perspective to the table, as it’s also a distiller. In addition to well-regarded brews like Dragon’s Milk bourbon-barrel stout, Mad Hatter Midwest IPA and the Kölsch-style Full Circle, New Holland also makes whiskey, gin, vodka, rum and liqueurs. A growing number of craft brewers, like New Holland, have been dabbling in distilling.

“[Large spirits producers] are very far ahead in the techniques that they’re using and in exploring different flavor profiles,” VanderKamp continues. “If you look at the quality and craftsmanship there, it’s very high.”

In other words, no one dares tell the folks at Maker’s Mark distillery that there isn’t a “craft” in the production of their storied bourbon.

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Deep Sense of Ownership Among Craft Beer Lovers

Another major distinction between the two beverage-making traditions is that recent spirits growth trends have been the reverse of those for beer. The overall beer market has been flat to down about a percent in recent years, despite craft beer’s double-digit growth. Spirits volume, on the other hand, has been growing between 2 and 3 percent annually. The craft spirits segment has brought a great deal of excitement and innovation to the overall category, as well as a host of dynamic personalities and creative artisans. But a lot of its recent growth has been driven by brands owned by large producers. And the surge owes more to the premiumization trend — aka “trading up” to higher-end, higher-quality products — than it does to the wave of small, startup distilleries. Most of the volume to which spirits drinkers are trading up comes from the portfolios of the macros (for lack of a better term).

The premiumization trend has enabled a craft spirits segment to emerge; the existence of such a segment didn’t initiate the trend.

In the past year and a half, we’ve witnessed a handful of fairly high-profile transactions involving a macro brewer buying a small, independent craft brewer. And, as anyone who spends even the shortest amount of time on Twitter or Facebook will know, craft drinkers are a pretty passionate bunch and often have rather strong opinions when a large multinational brewer acquires or invests significantly in a favorite local or regional craft brewery. Some even refuse to continue drinking that brewery’s beer before the ink dries on those deals.

Meanwhile, the most devout spirits fans — particularly whiskey aficionados — seem to give large, global corporations a pass when they drink the higher-end, boutiquey products in their portfolios. The fact that multibillion-dollar corporations with multimillion-dollar marketing budgets owns their favored brands doesn’t seem to faze the majority of spirits consumers. Social media was relatively quiet in the spring of 2015 when Bacardi announced that it was acquiring Angel’s Envy bourbon. Few batted an eye. (Admittedly, transactions involving a company the size of Bacardi are few and far between in spirits).

The more passionate response from craft beer drinkers is rooted in a sense of ownership they have in their favorite brews, as well as the independent companies that produce them. That’s not quite as pronounced in the spirits realm.

“I don’t think it’s as localized,” VanderKamp observes. “People don’t necessarily think, ‘This is my hometown distillery.’ I know there are a lot more popping up and that could change, but I don’t get a sense that it’s as local-driven, like, ‘My town’s got to have a distillery right now.’”

What Makes Craft “Craft”

Indeed, it could change. For the past few years, I’ve attended both the Craft Brewers Conference and the much newer American Craft Spirits Association’s (ACSA) convention with the same regularity. The latter event is far smaller than the former, but it’s growing rapidly. And though there are more differences than similarities between their respective memberships, the ACSA’s debates and votes related to self-definition bear a striking resemblance to the Brewers Association’s own proactive efforts to hone what exactly it means to be a craft brewer. But the big X factor right now is how drinkers actually translate that definition. Craft brewers and their supporters are, for the most part, on the same page about what makes craft, craft.

Spirits drinkers aren’t quite there yet.

In its Craft Spirits Omnibus Survey, Nielsen asked participants, “Which of the following types of spirits, if any, have you, or anyone in your household, purchased in the past 12 months?” Thirty-one percent said “mainstream spirits only,” while 13 percent responded that they had bought a combination of mainstream spirits and craft spirits. Only 2 percent said they purchased craft spirits only.

I think that 13 percent possibly could be a bit higher and that 2 percent a bit lower, because the definition of craft is still rather nebulous for the general public. It has yet to achieve the crystal clarity that makes beer drinkers so vocally passionate about what they’re drinking and who’s making it.

The post A Tale of Two Crafts: Craft Beer and Craft Spirits appeared first on CraftBeer.com.