Home Sweet Homebrew

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The other day I ran across a notice that Seven Bridges Cooperative (an organic homebrew company out of California) is sponsoring the 2007 National Organic Homebrew Challenge!  All entries must be brewed using malt, hops, and adjuncts that are verified organically grown and non-GMO.  Yeast must be non-GMO.  It made me wonder what kind of effort it would take to brew beer from locally grown ingredients. 

Certainly, if you’re going to make a fruity beer, you could use locally grown fruit in the production.  But what about the barley and hops?  Or even other beer additives, like wheat or oats?  Beer making used to involve only locally grown ingredients, so surely there must be a way for local homebrewers to get their hands on local grains, no?

The nice folks at Wine, Barley & Hops Homebrew Supply in Feasterville do say that making beer from locally grown ingredients can be tricky, but it’s possible.  In some cases, you would really need to grow your own.  They do sell hop plant root cuttings in the Spring, so it’s possible to grow your own hops.  There are plenty of places to buy various types of hop plants on the internet and some great growing tutorials. 

There may or may not be a source for locally grown malting barley, but it seems easy just to grow your own.  Not any old barley will do, you understand.  I’ve found some good sources for seed: Chin Ridge Seeds and Amazon. Malting your own barley doesn’t seem too difficult.

There are a million different things you could probably grow to facilitate making beer from locally-grown ingredients.  I even found a great article about planting a beer lover’s garden.  I may just need to incorporate a few things into next year’s garden.