The Brewing Industry Perspective: Past, Present, and Future

I've been a beer buyer for about a year now, for a small, health-focused grocery store in a very touristy part of NY, that specializes in a lot of local products. I'd be happy to answer any questions about buying/selling/distributors/et cetera, if I'm able to.

 

Yeah, the whole labor force dynamic within the brewing industry is really interesting.

It's effectively a maintenence job in a manufacturing setting at the entry level, with an organic chemistry component, processed food production, and it all carries some cultural cache.

Regional differences range from a very narrow range of opportunities to near constant need for entry level workers, and those levels have probably been super dynamic in most regions in the last decade.

And on top of all of that, there probably aren't too many industries in the last 2 decades with a hight proportion of founders with no industry experience. All together it makes for quite the labor market, I'm thinking

 

I am personally super into the agricultural aspect of beer. But I do feel like that gets decent coverage within the beer nerd circle.

Although, farmers in general are not a super media (social or otherwise) savvy lot and I definitely feel like we Basically never hear from barley/grain growers about that side of things.

But i also know that most people arent really interested in that part, its too far from the glass I think

 

I have a few breweries on my wall that are farms, as well. Arrowood is a big one: https://arrowoodfarms.com/

There's a barn/table beer I've got on the shelf from a farm in Poughkeepsie, they grow most of the ingredients they use themselves: https://www.planbeefarmbrewery.com/hiveshop/support-dzyf2-77h7m

I think because the shop I work at is in a pretty touristy spot of upstate NY, most customers are seasonal/visiting and they're really into the whole local thing. The more it's from a farm, or the more ties it has to the community, the better.

From a retail perspective, it's always exciting to get to talk to both the brewers/farmers, and to the customers who are interested, but to be honest, there's not a lot of good ways to convey this type of information. Customers are not really waiting for a lecture when they're shopping, they just want to be told 1) what's good and 2) what's local *and* good.

 

I was going to ask you if Plan Bee was able to produce their own barley malt. From a web search the answer is no:

“The Barley Malt Connection

• The Maltster: Plan Bee relies on Dennis Nesel at Hudson Valley Malt, who resurrected traditional, natural "floor-malting" techniques to create the backbone of their brews.
• The Partnership: Plan Bee's founders, Evan and Emily Watson, drive custom heritage grains from Hudson Valley Malt to their 1830s Poughkeepsie barn, resulting in a strictly localized, 100% New York terroir.

How to Experience It

• Signature Beer: Their flagship "Barn Beer" (5.5% ABV) is brewed with 100% NYS organic 6-row barley and wheat, and fermented with wild yeast cultivated from their own farm's beehives.”

Cheers!

 

Sounds like exactly the type of thing we'd carry in our store. For the customer it often ends up being just a superficial appreciation, or like a marketing tool they can latch on to when they're unsure what to get, but for a buyer like me, that's the type of stuff that motivates me: History and Craft.

We've got some fantastic malters in the area, and I always enjoy getting to talk to brewers/reps that come through the store and pick their brains about ingredient sourcing/histories/et cetera. Upstate NY is a luxurious place to be, as a buyer, when it comes to specialty/artisan product.

 

Small scale, specialty maltsters seems to becoming a ‘thing’.

I recently discussed a Southern New Jersey brewed German Pilsner from Wander Back Beerworks which was brewed by a local (local to them) maltster’s Pilsner Malt: Rabbit Hill Malting.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-weekend-301.683174/#post-8359721

I have also had a few beers from The Seed (Atlantic City, NJ) brewed with Rabbit Hill malts and those beers were excellent – outstanding.

Cheers to small scale maltsters!

P.S. The malt that Plan Bee uses to brew their Barn Beer is from six-row barley. I use six-row barley malt to brew my Classic American Pilsners.

 

I love reading about this kind of stuff. So interesting that during the 90s everyone in the US switched back to two-row again. I wonder if, along with asking breweries to state their hops on the can, we should also ask them to show what grains they use. I have a few cans on the shelf that do mention more than hops.

Regardless, definitely the type of research that only a select few that drink beer are into doing. But that makes it easy to forget that there's real places, real people and real practices behind all of this.

 

This is a big issue and a growing thorn in the side of my current work.

I've been the idealistic young man who cursed the industrial agriculture system and I've spent a couple decades working in small scale ag and interacted with some large scale farmers doing amazing things and come to see how detached from reality my idealism was. At least as much, if not more, as the most anti-biotic, chemistry focused, industrial monoculture farmers mind set.

I'm currently working on a processed food start up with a larger goal to be a key piece of a local agricultural economy that supports and rewards farmers that are pushing the envelope on ecologically integrated crop and food production. Our goals are generally considered to be something between audacious and absurd by the farmers we interact with. And I still encounter people routinely who think we are promoting an "extractive" or "colonial" model of food production. Usually people who seem to have never managed more than a container garden and who are taking various Instagram homestead accounts as genuine representations of viable food production. Its deeply frustrating and really alienates a lot of actual growers

 

The types of barley bred for brewing is an ever-changing thing. The American Malting Barley Association (AMBA) plays a key role here and periodically they create a list of preferred barley varieties to ‘influence’ the farmers in planting crops. Below is a link to the recommended varieties for 2024:

https://www.craftbrewingbusiness.co...ecommended-variety-list-with-three-additions/

The majority of the varieties in that list are two-row barley crops.

Why is two-row preferred you might ask?

“Many differences distinguish two- and six-row malt, but these differences have become less pronounced over the past 20 years as new varieties have been bred. The high protein and enzyme content of six-row barley makes it unlikely that a brewer producing an all-malt beer would wish to use exclusively six-row malt.”

https://morebeer.com/blogs/articles...zBP2fHQZZ6Rtlh1YICYeLcA5ftx-QfQLQK2y0mtpaxjNb

Or in other words, six-row barley malt would be preferred for beers that are not all malt such as my Classic American Pilsner (CAP) beers which has 20% corn as part of the grain bill.

I have read where pundits will opine that six-row malt is inferior and produces a husky/grainy flavor profile. I can report that this has never been the case with the 25+ batches of CAP that I have brewed over the past 30-ish years.

It is likely there will come a day where obtaining six-row malt from my homebrewing suppliers will no longer be available; I will likely then be compelled to purchase a two-row barley malt to brew my CAP beers.

Well, it is important to consider that barley malt is a manufactured (i.e., by the Maltster) product and not an ingredient per se. The numerous process steps/decisions that the Maltster makes to produce the product will be impactful to the sensory qualities of the beer. For a brewer to list on the beer can/bottle that it as brewed with AC Matcalfe barley malt is just part of the ‘story’ here.

Cheers!