BeerBorg

My local Homebrew club had an interesting guest speaker at a meet this evening. Skagit Valley Malting's ( http://skagitvalleymalting.com/about-us/ ) sales leader spoke about the local grown varieties of barley they are malting, the process they use for their small batches, and working with local farmers to try different heirloom varieties with unique flavors.
We tasted several of their base malt varieties, as well as a tasty Munich malt. They have a little one barrel brewery there as well, brewing up SMaSH beers to get feedback on different varieties. Got an invite to go there & visit. Our LHBS has two of the malts on hand, with a third arriving on Monday.
I'm going to try some of these malts in some homebrews this spring!

Very cool!

There is a big uptick in new maltsters nationwide as well as hop growers and processors.

Yeast is another area of growth as evidenced by several new, albeit smaller yeast manufacturers.

For us locally, there is a newer 'farm brewer' license type which, among other things, requires brewers holding this classification to use some percentage of locally grown (in state) ingredients. Water is implied and I'm not sure about the yeast...

But the requirement has these brewers ramping up over a couple of years to like 90+% locally sourced ingredients!

This has had an impact as we are now seeing new malt and hop sources that are intrinsic to NYS.

Barley and wheat growers, maltsters, hop farmers and processing plants...

Personally, I have been buying NY Craft Malt's Light Munich and Iroquois Hop Co-operative's locally grown hops...

Pretty cool and I like being able to support local businesses.

I like to support local as well. Small world; the Skagit Valley Malting rep & her husband were neighbors of one of my co-workers who passed away. With the opportunities of supplying local distilleries, Brewers, & home brewers I think they will be successful.

Sounds awesome. Looking forward to hearing about these.

Cool that along with the Craft Beer explosion, the ancillary businesses grow too. We have a new malt house in Cleveland that is up and running called Haus Malts. Seems more and more of these types of companies are feeding the local Craft scene.

This is really a great time to be a brewer! I believe that we are finally witnessing the completion the perfect circle of brewing. Using locally sourced ingredients to brew delicious beer locally. I can tell you that literally 100% of breweries opened in New Jersey, within the past 3 years, have one important thing in common. Each of these breweries are located in what were previously deserted or otherwise abandoned buildings. The trickle down effect from building renovations, brewing and buying beer locally is in my mind undeniably the best thing to happen here in a very long time.

Valley Malt in MA doing it too.
http://valleymalt.com/

Riverbend Malt House in NC.
http://riverbendmalt.com/

Wanted to check out Riverbend when we were in Asheville.

@Dawg, you know any way to get some Haus Malts malt on a small scale? I'd love to use some local stuff.

mashani wrote:@Dawg, you know any way to get some Haus Malts malt on a small scale? I'd love to use some local stuff.

I should be able to find out tonite, one of the guys from LMHBA had some and think might be a prize for club brew contest tonite. Hope I remember to find out. They are located on Carnegie off 55th St.

Nothing on the small scale yet from Haus Malts, word is you can call them and on Saturday pick up only 50lb sacks at the moment. They have Pale, Vienna and Spelt right now.

Went to the LHBS & picked up some Skagit Valley Copeland malt yesterday; priced same as imported continental malts. I will most likely brew up a batch of ale with this when I get back from a road trip next week.

@Dawg, if you and folks you hang with in one of the brew clubs want to go in on a bag of something and split it up and need another person to make it happen, let me know. Spelt is intriguing but I can't possibly deal with 55# of it.