Land Beer

Land Beer is real local beer. 

Beer is an agricultural product and it has the capacity to reflect the agricultural character of the farm, surroundings, and region where the ingredients are grown and sourced.

The vast majority of beer produced anywhere, however, comes from commodity ingredients like barley grown on massive farms located in only a few places in the world. There’s a huge disconnect between what is grown for beer, where it’s grown, and the brewer’s relationship with the farmer and those ingredients.

INTENTION

We’re focused on making the highest quality beer possible, so our approach is to grow on our farm the finest ingredients we can and carefully source the remainder from trusted farmers and partners. Most often that means regional farms. For many beers we offer, the result is a reflection of our farm, surroundings, and growing region’s agricultural character. 

Land Beer is not a style of beer but an approach to making truly local beer. Influenced by living in Bavaria for years, our approach to Land Beer is a nod to the German Landbier tradition with a strong regional agricultural focus and artisanal heritage. We aim to marry agriculture and brewing in ways that celebrate small farms and its produce. To do this, we seek what those who have come before us sought, with our path unique to our place, ingredients, and methods — just as it was for them.

Ingredients

Brewing with grains we grow on our farm next to the brewhouse, water from a natural source that reaches deep below our fields, and native yeast captured from our field is the most direct way we’re able to create beer that reflects our farm’s agricultural character. Estate production is the heart of local. We select specific types of grain, tend our fields, rotate cover crops, plant the grain, harvest the grain, and manage the grain post-harvest. Our growing region determines the most suitable grains and produce to grow. The weather and farming practices during the growing season go a long way in setting the direction of grain attributes, like flavor, at harvest. 

Methods

Once we have the highest quality ingredients available, our focus turns to the most effective ways we can express the character of those ingredients. Our approach is almost never the most cost effective and seldom the most efficient. We do this to coax from each ingredient its truest flavor expression. This is where the art and science of brewing meet. Our farm and region provide a number of advantages and challenges when it comes to executing methods. Each decision among the numerous variables plays a role in the final product. 

Done a certain way, beer can reflect its place. But the poetry of that idea only works if the beer is enjoyable to drink, or interesting, or nuanced, or exceptional. Or all of those qualities. Across all of our styles, our purpose remains to grow beautiful beer that celebrates and strengthens small agriculture.

Come Join Us

We hope our Land Beer is as much a pleasure for you to enjoy as it is rewarding for us to create. We look forward to seeing you around the farm.