From Farm to Tavern: a Grain of Truth

At Skagit Valley Malting, Wayne Carpenter presides over a rapidly increasing assortment of squat metal silos that store the grain he buys from local farmers. Carpenter started Skagit Valley Malting to take advantage of the grain supply and to specialize in low-protein malt for craft brewers, producing custom malt on demand. His customers have varying requirements for their malts, from performance characteristics (temperature, humidity) to quantity (as much as eight tons), which SVM is able to replicate from one order to the next. The result: new flavors for brewers, distillers and bakers.

Malt is the backbone of beer, its heart and soul, really. By this definition, virtually no beer in Washington is truly local. Malted grain typically arrives at Washingtons breweries and distilleries in 50-pound bags from the Midwest and Canada. Malt is created when grain such as barley, wheat, rye, oats, millet, sorghum, corn and triticale (a hybrid of wheat and rye) is allowed to sprout so the germinating seeds begin to release their sugar. It is then dried roasted, in industry parlance to arrest the process.

Specialty brewers overwhelmingly favor barley because it can be roasted to produce a wide range of colors and flavors. Of the 30,000 varieties of grain on the planet, only about a dozen are used for the industrial brewing of commercial beer, let alone for distilling. Its a bit like wine; there are thousands of varieties of grapes, but only a dozen or so readily available on the shelf.

The entire industry is monolithic, says Carpenter, who for his efforts was named a 2016 James Beard Awards semifinalist in the category of Outstanding Wine, Beer or Spirits Professional. Hed like to change that dynamic because it seems a shame to let that natural advantage go to waste selling Skagit grain into the commodities market. Why should the Chicago Mercantile Exchange set the price for our crops? he muses.

A former software executive with a knack for tinkering, Carpenter works in a windowless building surrounded by grain silos on a 10-acre section of the Bayview Business Park. A skunk works, they would have called it in Grandpas day, where he and his staff of engineers have built a phalanx of secret machines worth about a million dollars each to customize the malting process for thousands of grain varieties, unlocking a world of choice and flavor for its customers.

With our precise, adjustable malt equipment, we are ushering in a new, modernized era of malt, Carpenter declares. Our equipment can customize every phase of the malting process to develop the best characteristics of the grain. That means we can adapt the process to any kind of grain varietal.

To control the experiment at every point in the malting process, sensors monitor for size, moisture content, color and texture of each type of grain. International patents are still pending, so Carpenter allows no public access or photographs.

A 50-pound bag of industrial malt will produce two 50-gallon kegs of beer, enough for 250 pints at the pub. The cost of a bag from an industrial supplier is roughly $18. The good stuff from Skagit Valley Malting goes for $50. Craft beer, to name just one use, requires up to 4 ounces of malt per glass. If you do the math, you can see the obvious benefit to Carpenters business and to Skagit Valley farmers.

The Port of Skagit County, which operates Bayview Business Park, believes Carpenter has the answer to a big agricultural concern: falling prices for crops that have long been considered commodities. By turning the barley crop into a specialty product for discerning brewers and distillers, value will be added and prices will rise.

And brewers arent the only ones looking for better raw materials. Washingtons eight-year-old craft distilling industry is required by law to source at least half of its grain locally, and Skagit barley is a natural. The largest whiskey distillery west of the Mississippi, Seattles 60,000-bottle Westland Distillery, is an enthusiastic adopter of Skagit Valley Maltings output, even though the malt is several times more expensive and the distillery needs four pounds of malt per bottle.

Westlands master distiller, Matt Hofmann, a Bellarmine Prep grad who left the University of Washington to study the distilling craft in Scotland, swears by Skagit Valley Malting and looks forward to the day in three years or so that his peated single-malt whiskey using SVM grain reaches maturity.

The term single malt has specific meaning in Scotland, referring to a distillerys location as well as the ingredients, but theres room on bar shelves for American Single Malt as well. Westland, which has a distillery in SoDo and matures its casks at a rack house in the cold, moist air of Hoquiam, was recently named the worlds best craft distillery by Whisky Magazine.

The very first svm adopter was the Pike Brewing Company, a sprawling, 300-seat brewpub that occupies several levels of the Pike Place Market. Charles and Rose Ann Finkel brew most of their beers and ales with distillers malt from suppliers like Briess Malt & Ingredients Company in Chilton, Wisconsin. But a couple of bags, shipped from Burlington, bear the name Skagit Valley Malting, and theyre quite tasty. Alba, developed at Oregon State University, has a lemony fragrance like sauvignon blanc. Copeland, a hybrid from the Washington State University, is more like a spicy syrah.

To differentiate the locally malted beers from its long-established brands like Naughtie Nellie and Kilt Lifter, Pike calls these beers its Pike Locale series. Its one of the most exciting things in beer, says Charles Finkel, who spent the first two decades of his professional career in the wine world (see story at right). Malt sets a foundation for the hops.

Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association, the nations trade group for small and independent breweries, points out that 75 percent of Americans now live within 10 miles of a brewery, and that there are more breweries in the United States today than at any time within the past 150 years.

Not every pint of beer or bottle of bourbon made from local grain will be a winner. Jamie Boudreau, owner of the now-iconic Capitol Hill bar called Canon, always tastes new products, including bottlings from the local distilleries. Unfortunately, he says, there is a lot more questionable product out there than there is quality.

Regardless, the sudden windfall of locally brewed beer and locally distilled spirits will most likely turn out to be a good thing. Local products take the accident of geography our unique location and turn it into a commercial advantage: beers and whiskeys that simply have more individuality, more character than the mass-produced offerings. They become a central element of our local identity, an integral part of our culture.

Or, as Carpenter notes, The new era of malting unlocks unlimited potential for variety in taste and flavor. Were excited to share our palette with those who want to explore the potential of their craft. When you taste it, youll get it.

Brew the beer; the grain will follow.
When national brands like Budweiser and Coors began dominating the beer business a couple of generations ago, they essentially doused the tradition of brewing beer locally. Anything with flavor, anything with character, was stigmatized as specialty beer.

So Seattle entrepreneur Charles Finkel, formerly sales director for Chateau Ste. Michelle, launched a company named Merchant du Vin to import bottled beer from Belgium, Germany and England for discerning beer drinkers in the United States.

Just as there was a hidden demand for decent coffee, it turns out there was a thirst for specialty beer. Within a couple of years, the British press named Seattle and Portland the top two craft beer markets in the world. Finkel conceived or revived many classic styles, such as oatmeal stout, now brewed by craft brewers worldwide. Finkel and his wife, Rose Ann, then became supporters of a new wave of craft brewers like Redhook Brewery (now partially owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev) and Bert Grants now defunct Yakima Brewing & Malting Company.

In 1989, when the Finkels started Pike Brewing Company, the field was growing rapidly. By 2015, Washington had more new breweries than any other state, and was second to California in the total number of craft breweries.

Wherever theres craft beer, theres got to be grain. Washington State University maintains a research station in Mount Vernon to monitor a project that would double the local yield by producing two crops a year. We grow thousands of different barley and wheat types each year to see what does well, says Dr. Stephen Jones. Because of that, we can work directly with farmers and the end users to identify types that work throughout the whole system, from the field to the end product.