brewed with CRAFT MALt from local farms. Always.

We make our beer with craft malt. Wheatland Spring is also Virginia’s first certified Craft Maltsters Guild brewery.

We grow acres of barley on our farm, using regenerative (no spray) practices, right next to the brewhouse. This turns into our Estate malt, with each batch custom craft malted for specific beers we brew. Beyond growing grain ourselves for our beer, we purchase craft malt made with local grain from our growing region, primarily Virginia. Growing Estate grain for beer we brew involves a lot more effort with much higher costs than even buying local craft malt, let alone commodity malt from far away. Why bother? There’s a lot of reasons…

First UP: What is Craft malt?

1% of beer in the U.S. is made with craft malt. This means nearly all beer produced here is made with ingredients from afar. These ingredients come from across the U.S., Europe, New Zealand, you name it. Locally made beer is not the same as local beer. Local bread is made from local wheat. Local cheese is made from local milk. Local beer is made from local barley.

Next to water, malted grain is the single biggest ingredient in beer. Often demoted to a supporting role for large hop additions and hidden underneath a heap of other things, malt in craft beer has been quietly and humbly working behind the scenes for years. For a long time, small breweries approached malted grain like macro breweries, mostly because that’s all that was available: brew with the same commodity malt used across the country from grain that’s grown on a massive scale in a few, increasingly concentrated areas. Different farms, different harvests, different batches of malt blended together to hit numbers on a spec sheet in the pursuit of efficiency, uniformity, and optimization. This might make sense for global conglomerates, but they’re traits that seem out of line with craft products from a particular place, time, and community — in other words, truly local craft beer.

But that’s changing. Grain growing is increasingly decentralized and small-scale craft malting has arrived.

Why does craft malt matter? 

Unique malt that’s focused on flavor.

Have you ever enjoyed a beer and thought to yourself: “this tastes consistent and optimized for process.” Neither have we. One of craft malt’s primary goals is to create as much flavor from each individual batch, based on that particular grain, as opposed to the unique character being muted or blended away in the name of consistency, optimization, or supply chain efficiency. Approaching malting this way provides a great opportunity to make flavorful and unique beer using fresh and expressive grain. This is especially important to us for beers in our Estate collection.

Highest quality malted grain that tastes like here.

Starting with grain grown on our farm or in our region by other small farms, craft malt arrives at the brewhouse with a more direct flavor expression of our place. This is thanks to the grain coming from individual farms and malting techniques tailored to each batch. The craft malt we purchase is single-origin to retain as much of the character of where it was grown as possible. Aside from a few specific beers we make with malted grain that’s intentionally sourced from further afield, all of our grain is grown on our farm or other small farms in our agricultural region. It tastes like here because it’s grown here. 

Transparency.

You’ll see where the grain was grown on our draft menu, cans, and bottles we offer. You’ll also see the grain growing when you enjoy a beer in our Biergarten in the warmer months. We think it’s important that you’re able to know what’s in your beer, where it comes from, and the people that beer supports — like nearby small farms. This transparency extends to our soil, too. We know what’s in our Estate grain because we’re on the tractor. (In case you’re curious, our grain is full of good stuff from the cover crops we plant that keep the soil happy.)

The Grain is Happier.

Grain selected to grow well in our climate tends to be more robust and resistant to disease, so farmers need to rely less on inputs like pesticides.

Money Stays small and local.

Making beer and supply chains go hand in hand. When beer is made with ingredients from afar, money leaves a community. Alternatively, if the ingredients come from the same region where the beer is made and purchased, there’s a much better chance that money will stay close, supporting more small businesses owned by your family, neighbors, and friends. To put a fine point on it: when you buy beer from Wheatland Spring, your money goes to small farms and small businesses in our county, state, and region. In fact, 95% of our ingredient costs go directly to small business. Of that, 91% are businesses in our growing region, the Piedmont — Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.

Reduces Traffic and Lowers Emissions.

Commodity malt comes from a very few, concentrated places in the world. Unless a brewery is located one of those few places, the malt has to travel (often thousands of miles by land and sea) to arrive at the brewery. Since craft malt houses are decentralized and spread across the country, there’s opportunities to source much closer to home. This means there’s less congestion on our roads and fewer CO2 emissions because the grain is traveling much shorter distances.

Craft Maltsters are the bridge connecting farming and brewing.

Craft maltsters employ everything from traditional floor malting techniques to precision malting with the most sophisticated equipment in the world. The result is offering craft breweries across the U.S. the highest quality, freshest, and differentiated malt using grains from their growing region. This enables small breweries the ability to express their region’s agricultural character through beer. Craft maltsters are able to do this because they have personal relationships with the farmers growing the grain, as well as the brewers turning that malted grain into beer. There’s so much to know and context to have about an agricultural product that simply isn’t available from numbers on a spec sheet. Upstream, this means craft maltsters know what’s happening in the field and how to adjust the malting accordingly. Downstream, this means they share information about each batch of malt so the brewer has the best chance to make the best beer possible.

It always comes down to people.

Small businesses working together rely on relationships built on trust. Working with craft maltsters, there’s transparency and accountability — from the grain field to the finished glass of beer. We’ve worked with our craft maltsters for years and value those relationships so much — they take pride in their craft and care deeply about what’s in every bag of malt they offer. Beyond offering the highest quality malt available, this dedication to perfecting a craft means a lot to us.

These all seem like good things. What’s the catch?

Craft malt is more expensive and more uniquely expressive than commodity malt.

How much more expensive? Depending on the commodity malt used as a baseline, craft malt can be 2x, 3x, or 4x the cost. Sometimes even more. How can it be worth that much more? Please see above. But there’s even more to the story. A high bar has to be met for malting-quality grain. Not all barley is the same and farmers need to grow certain types of barley that meet or exceed stringent requirements. The grain can be fussy and needs more attention. It has to be planted at the right time. And it needs to be harvested in a tight window and then carefully taken care of once it’s out of the ground. There are strict quality standards at every step of this — all before it even reaches the malt house. The craft maltsters we work with pay 3 or 4 times more than the market value to their farmers for this level of dedication and investment. Small scale, small grain farming is more expensive than large-scale farming and demands a higher price. The farmers earned it and they deserve it. 

When it comes to flavor expression, freshness is a big deal. The craft malt we buy is made in small batch and sent to us straight away. Similar to coffee, all of those volatile flavor compounds from the malting process are still there when it’s that fresh and we’re able to capture them in the beer we make. Also similar to coffee, you can still brew with it, but those aromatic flavor compounds tend to go away if malt sits around for some time.

What’s more, each batch of craft malt can express differently — this is a good thing. Beer is an agricultural product and malted grain will necessarily vary from field to field and harvest to harvest. The result is, beer will naturally vary in beautiful ways if the ingredients are allowed to shine. As it has been in the wine world for some time, we think this agricultural character should be celebrated, not shamed and blended away into oblivion. Having flavorful malt tied to a specific place also means the learning curve can be steeper for brewing with craft malt, but the good news is the person turning that grain into malt is a phone call away. It’s like having the engineer who built your car on speed dial when you’re learning how to drive a stick shift.

What’s Next?

Big Innovation in Small Grain. Have a look at the future.