selling to breweries - brilliant stream · that most often do not add significant amounts of...

Craft Beverage Summit March 3, 2020 BrilliantStream.com

Selling Local Ingredients To Local Breweries

Charles Bockway

Brilliant Stream Craft Beer from a West Virginia Perspective

BrilliantStream.comCharleston, West Virginia

Comment to: [email protected] 1

mailto:[email protected]


Background on Brewery Operations Beer is made primarily from water and malted grains. Water makes up roughly 90+ percent of the volume of the typical, traditional beer. Grains make up most of the rest.

Until decade or so ago, the vast majority of beers sold locally and globally had only water, malt (and possibly another grain or two), hops, and yeast as ingredients (Think pale lagers, pale ales and pilsners, etc.). Relatively few beers included other ingredients for flavoring. This goes back to the old German brewing tradition that says beer contains only malt, water, hops, and yeast.

In contemporary American beer, however, things are changing rapidly. American brewers who are part of the craft beer movement donʼt mind breaking the rules and embracing all kinds of interesting ingredients that create a distinctive beer flavor or which have a real connection to the area at which the beer was brewed.

Small batch specialty beers featuring locally-sourced ingredients are becoming more and more popular as brewers search for new ways to differentiate their products in a competitive market. Demand for specialty beers is heightened by today’s consumers who, once exposed to these beers, develop a passion for them. Whether beer drinkers love the flavors or they just want to support local agriculture and local breweries, more and more people are seeking out these beers. With around 8,000 independent breweries nationwide, some brewer is always looking for unique ingredients to add the their beer.

Specialized malted grains — primarily barley malt — still make up the vast majority of grain used by a brewer. The bulk of these are supplied by large, national/international malting companies. A few small regional maltsters have been popping up in recent years and finding success. Haus Malt in northern Ohio and Riverbend Malt in western North Carolina are two great examples. West Virginia has its first maltster in Rippon Brewing Co. Beyond malt, some beer also contains smaller amounts non-malted grains, such as wheat or rye, which could be sourced locally.

With the exception of water, the locally sourced ingredients most in demand are classes of things in the brewing world called Adjuncts and Flavorings. Breweries seek out these local ingredients to give a stronger sense of place to the beer.

Adjuncts are simply a non-malt source of fermentable sugars. This could be fruit purèe, maple syrup, sorghum molasses, pumpkins, non-malted corn and wheat, etc.

Flavorings are agents that boost the taste of simpler base beer to a different level but that most often do not add significant amounts of fermentable sugar. Flavorings include hops, other herbs, spices, vegetables, native plants, and other natural ingredients. When fruits and vegetables are added to a beer, they may be seen more as flavorings, even though they do also add fermentable sugar to the beer.




Styles of Craft Beer Often Using Local Ingredients While any type of beer can include locally-sourced ingredients, you will see them more frequently in certain beer styles. Some of the more popular beer styles for incorporating locally sourced ingredients are:

Cream aleCoffee stout Spiced beerFruited wheat beerFruited blonde ale Pastry stout

Fresh hopped ale Slushie fruit purée beerMilkshake IPAChili pepper aleFarmhouse ale Saison

Barrel-aged soursFruited GoseFruited Berliner WeisseVegetable beersPumpkin ale

If a local brewery is making any of these styles, it is a prime candidate to become a customer for local ingredients. In West Virginia the alcohol content of beer containing local ingredients generally runs anywhere from very strong (15%) to very light (3.0% or less). It all depends on what the brewer wants to make. Adding fruits or natural sugars to the beer fermentation will increase the alcohol content.




Ingredients breweries can use Breweries have been known to use an incredibly wide array of things to flavor their beer. American craft brewers are nothing if not creative in their use of adjunct and flavoring ingredients. They can include as recipe ingredients many types of plants that are Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS), in a manner similar to other commercial food producers.The list below covers the more common things seen in contemporary American beer. The best way to know what your local breweries might use is to survey them and let them know what you can provide them. When offering vegetables, fruits and specialty grains (pumpkins, squash, corn, etc.), heirloom and heritage varieties can be a real plus. For foraged products, stick to age-old proven safe varieties, preferably items without strong medicinal properties and ones not commonly causing allergic reactions. For many fruits, brewers often prefer to use frozen fruit, which they either purchase as purée or that they purée after thawing out the fruit. Brewers believe that freezing the fruit breaks down the cell walls and helps the fruit release its flavors.

Farmed Fruits BerriesRed raspberriesBlueberries Currants

BlackberriesStrawberries Black raspberries

Golden raspberries

Grapes: Labrusca and Vinifera varieties

Tree Fruits & NutsCherries Peaches Plums Apricots

Pluots ApplesCrab Apples Pears

Persimmons Pawpaws Kiwi Black walnut meat

Tropical fruits: mango, guava, coconut, cocoa, passionfruit Citrus fruits (whole and peel): orange, lemon, grapefruit

Row & Hothouse Crops WatermelonsCantaloupeHoneydewCucumberPrickly pear fruit

Jalapeno peppers Poblano peppers Habanero peppers Pumpkins Winter squash

Beets Sweet potatoesBasil, thyme, rosemaryRhubarbGinger root




Hops: fresh whole cone and pelletized. Aroma varieties preferred. Miscellaneous Grain: corn, oats, buckwheat, winter wheat, spelt (With the exception of malted grains, quantities needed will be quite small)

Miscellaneous Farm Products Sugars: honey, varietal honeys, maple syrup, molasses, sorghum juice, concentrated tree sap

Foraged Products Spruce tips, fresh in spring Edible wild flower blooms (dandelion, honeysuckle, chicory, black locust, day lily, elder flower) Brambles: raspberry, blackberry Spicebush berries

GooseberriesSumac berriesElderberry, tea berry, June berry, cranberries Mushrooms: fresh or dried, such as chanterelle, oyster Rose hips

Barks, twigs, and roots (birch, wild cherry, etc.) Nut meats: black walnut, hazelnuts (filberts), pecans Juniper berriesFlavorful herbaceous plants such as lemon balm

Any ingredient that typically contains thujone (for example, wormwood, tansy, or yarrow) require TTB Formula Approval

Miscellaneous Products Coffee: locally roasted coffee beans Coriander (cilantro seeds)Salt YogurtHemp seed heartsTea leavesCocoa powder or nibs




The Brewing Process Understanding a bit about the brewing process and how your products might fit in is a good thing to know. The typical brewing session contains several steps that follow a definite order. Mash: The brewing process begins with mashing, which is steeping the malt and other grains in heated water to extract sugars, flavors, and other solids. The liquid that runs off the mash is called wort. Boil: The wort is collected in the kettle where it is boiled for a period of time. Normally, hops are added at various times during the boil (or they may also be added right after the boil while the wort is cooling. Fermentation: Following the boil, the wort is cooled and pumped into a fermentation tank. Special strains of brewers yeast is then added, which ferments the sugars in the wort, turning it into alcohol and also adding flavors produced by the fermentation process. Once fermentation is complete, the liquid is called beer. Conditioning: Brewers let the beer rest in a tank, or condition, for a period of time. Depending on the beer style, this may take anywhere from a few day to a few weeks. Often today, more hops are added during conditioning (and sometimes during fermentation) in a technique called dry hopping. Following conditioning, beer is kegged, canned, or bottled. or it may be put into wooden barrels for further aging. Barrel aging: Some beer styles must be aged in wooden barrels to develop their flavors. Time spent in the barrel can vary from a couple months to several years.

Locally-sourced ingredients may be added at any stage of the brewing process. The most common point for adding adjuncts is either during mashing (grains) or during the boil (sugars). Flavoring agents including fruits are more commonly added during the fermentation and conditioning processes. Flavoring agents are sometimes added to a beer while it is aging in wooden barrels.




Quantities of Beer Brewed Most West Virginia breweries have fairly small capacity brewing systems. The smallest ones brew only 30 gallons to 90 gallons of beer at a time. Our larger breweries brew up to 900 gallon batches, but these larger volume batches would most often not be beers that include fruits or, with the exception of hops and coffee, other locally-sourced ingredients beyond grains. It is common for breweries to make smaller-sized batches of specialty beer styles, such as those containing locally-sourced fruits or foraged products. When making a specialty beer that includes local ingredients, the batch size would commonly fall into the 30- to 450-gallon range, though it could be larger.

Fruit Quantities Commonly Needed The amount of ingredients a brewer needs varies both by the batch size and the intensity of flavor the brewer desires to achieve. Just as a broad estimator, look at the table below. It shows the common range of pounds-per-gallon of fruit used.

For example, if a brewery wanted to make a 10-barrel batch (roughly 300 gallons) of blackberry saison, it could need anything between 150 lb. and 620 lb., depending on what the brewer is trying to achieve in the beer. If the brewer selects a recipe using one pound of blackberries per gallon of beer, brewing a 10-barrel batch would require roughly 300 lb. of blackberries.

Pounds Per Gallon Pounds Per Gallon

Fruit Type (fresh) Low High

Blackberries 0.5 2.0

Blueberries 0.5 3.0

Cherries (sour) 0.5 3.0

Peaches 0.5 5.0

Plums 0.5 2.0

Raspberries 0.25 2.0

Strawberries 0.5 2.0




Making the sale Brewers plan their brewing schedules well in advance. They have to order their brewing ingredients well in advance. Many have their brewing schedules pretty much laid out a year in advance for their high volume products. The seasonal and specialty beers, which are most likely to contain local ingredients, are often scheduled on a shorter notice. That is why it’s good for a brewery to have your produce availability schedule in their office at all times.

For warm season produce, contact the breweries in the winter to tell them the types of produce you will be growing and the expected availability dates for each. Tell them about your business and the things that make your operation special. Invite them to visit your farm if they can.

Use the advance time to build a relationship with any brewer who responds favorably. Ask them if there are any other types of produce or farm products that they might be interested in. They may possibly ask for something you could add to your production schedule or a product that a neighboring farm could supply. Beyond the types, ask the brewer about the quantity of any produce they might possibly use. If it is a crop you already plan to raise, be prepared to generally discuss with the brewer your pricing for the quantity they would need. Some breweries will respond very favorably to organic and pesticide free. Others, not so much.

If it is past the wintertime, make your initial brewery contact as soon as you can or at least a month before the expected availability date of a crop you would like to sell. Because our small breweries have limited fermentation tank space, they tend to keep their tanks full most of the time to maximize production. This limitation usually makes doing a spur of the moment beer impossible. Breweries cannot just decide to brew a new beer today if their fermentation tanks are full. That is why they must schedule well ahead and know the expected delivery day. Contacting the brewery after the crop is harvested is normally too late (unless the crop or product is one that holds well, such as honey, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, etc.).

It is good to know the price for which a brewery can source the same type produce from a local wholesaler or specialty food ingredient supplier. A brewer interested in locally-sourced ingredients may willingly pay a premium for locally-grown produce, but there is a limit. Remember, these breweries are local small businesses, and money is usually tight.

Last minute finds If you find an unexpected bountiful harvest of something you hadn’t previously alerted brewers to, don’t be afraid to contact your local brewers and let them know. It is not out of the question that they may quickly decide that they want the item even though it was not scheduled ahead. Just be aware, that for items that spoil quickly, the success rate here will be much less than when scheduled ahead.




Produce scheduling & delivery As the growing season progresses, if weather, disease or other issues arise that delay or reduce your ability to deliver the produce the brewery expects, you must let the brewer know as soon as you make that determination. Hopefully, you can give the brewer enough advance time to make alternative arrangements. As a rule, brewers are pretty understanding people who will not hold things against you that were beyond your control. One month before the expected harvest date, make a quick courtesy contact (by phone or email) with the brewery to assure them things are on schedule on your end. Do the same at about two weeks out. At a week before expected harvest, update the brewery and schedule your delivery day. This kind of communication keeps everyone happy. If a brewery is close by, they might be interested in a pick-your-own or gleaning opportunity, if you offer that. When the produce is delivered, consider buying a growler or six-pack of beer at the brewery to take home. If you are not a drinker, give it to a friend who is. Like any small business, local breweries enjoy doing business with people who support them.

Produce quality It is best to harvest and deliver your produce to the brewery at its peak of ripeness in peak season. Delivering at peak of ripeness ensures the brewer gets the flavor intensity that will make the beer stand out. Buying the produce at peak season should also get the brewer the best price per pound. A local brewery can be a good market for fruits and produce with a less than perfect appearance, blemishes that keep it out of the retail market. Since the produce will be crushed before being added to the beer, as long as the quality is very good, the appearance is not important. The delivered produce should be clean, free of dirt and dust, and with any spoiling pieces removed. Because it is bulk produce, the type of packaging is not so important. Boxes, plastic tubs and bins, and sacks are all fine. Brewers will gladly save the empty containers for you to reuse. If you are selling your fresh-picked hops to a brewery, it is important to have them delivered to the brewery within 24 hours of harvest. Fresh hop oils diminish substantially even in a few days.




Planning to promote the special beer A big part of the benefits of beers that contain local ingredients is the positive publicity value that can come to both the brewery and the grower. Plan ahead about how you and the brewery can work together to promote the beer once it is made. Website and social media publicity can work wonders to get the public excited about the new product. Make sure to tell the story of the farm and its operations, include photos of the ingredient, and tell how the brewery and you got together. If an heirloom variety is involved, tell the special story of that too. The brewer will add the production and tasting notes covering the special features of the beer that make it attractive.

If the product is bottled or canned, the label should clearly list the local ingredient with the source farm name. If the beer is only sold in kegs and growlers, prepare a little flyer or card with the highlights of the beer and of the farm association. Distribute this flyer at the brewery and to all restaurants, taverns, and retailers who may sell the beer.

Consider holding a special release event for the beer. Invite all your friends and the local news media. A beer release event can be held at the brewery, at bars, or at retailers who sell the beer. Let everyone know the importance of local agriculture and local breweries.




PART 2 – Brewers Buying from Local Growers

Finding local growers and ingredient suppliers - visit farmers markets - roadside stands- ask county agricultural extension agents- ask other local growers, suppliersWhat to look for - An accomplished grower with several years experience - References. Have they supplied food product to restaurants, local schools,

institutions, retail grocers, or wholesalers - Are they GAP certified; other certifications

Things you need to know about agricultural products - Unpredictable weather, pests and disease can greatly impact supply and quality - Plant varieties can make a big difference to flavor - Prices vary from year to year and are negotiable - Some crops take multiple years from first planting to first harvest (hops, fruit trees,

some berries, etc.) - Almost all produce is best for brewing when harvested at its peak of ripeness and

delivered to the brewery immediately. To make the best beer, you need to brew on the produce’s schedule rather than on yours. Be ready to add the product to your beer within 24 hours of delivery (except for items that store well, such as sweet potatoes, apples, etc.).

- Produce often needs prepping before it is added to the beer. It may need peeling, seed removal, chopping, and crushing. Have sufficient staff scheduled to cover those needs.

Formula approval may be required When planning to add non-traditional ingredients to a beer, prior formula approval from the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) may be required before the beer can be produced, labeled, and sold. However, the TTB has also created a large exception to their general rule. It has adopted a long list of ingredients that are considered “traditionally used” in the production of beer and fermented beverages. These ingredients may normally be used without seeking formula approval from the TTB. Examples of these ingredients are apples, blackberries, blueberries, cherries,




chocolate, cinnamon, cocoa, coffee, honey, maple syrup, nutmeg, orange, pumpkin, raspberries, and strawberries, among many others. Brewers should check to see if any ingredients it is considering adding to its product are listed in the TTB’s ruling, 2015-1More info at: https://www.ttb.gov/what-we-do/program-areas/formulation

Negotiating the sale • Contact growers and forages early in the year to discuss their products and your

needs• You can contract ahead for the produce but it may not get you a better price. • You don’t need the prettiest Grade A items. You don’t need to buy things graded as

Extra Fancy, Fancy, or No. 1. You are usually better off with lesser grades because blemishes and non-standard sizes will not affect the quality for use in beer.

• If possible, find out the wholesale price for the type of produce you want to purchase. You should be prepared to pay somewhere between the wholesale and retail price for the produce. Small quantities will be very close to or at retail pricing. Large quantities should be closer to the wholesale price.

• Don’t be afraid to haggle on the price.• If you have the extra help to do it, ask about pick-your-own or gleaning pricing.• Some growers can also process the produce if you desire it. compare their price

versus your time needed to process the item. • Like brewing, farming is capital intensive, heavily regulated and risky. Growers need

to make a profit too. • There can be great value for both the grower and brewer in the publicity the

collaborative beer generates. • Local agricultural products are influenced by supply and demand. Pricing can vary

considerably from year to year. • Buying at peak season tends to give you the best quality and the best pricing.• Caveat Emptor: There are lots of folks selling produce and farm products who did

not actually raise or produce them. Never assume just because it is a local farm stand or local vendor that everything they sell is local. Some items may well not be local (although the quality may be good).

• It is always good to know your supplier. Visit their farm in advance whenever possible. When buying local honey, it is always best to visit the beekeeper, look at their hives and honey processing facility, and sample their different honeys on site.


https://www.ttb.gov/images/pdfs/rulings/ttb-ruling-2015-1-attachment-1.pdf

https://www.ttb.gov/what-we-do/program-areas/formulation


selling to breweries - brilliant stream · that most often do not add significant amounts of...

Documents