Latest / The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel / Brent Manning of Riverbend Malt House | Craft Malt & Brewing Ingredients | Episode 98 Part 1

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Brent Manning of Riverbend Malt House | Craft Malt & Brewing Ingredients | Episode 98 Part 1 · The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel

• 0:01
  Stand by Well, hey everybody, I'm Steve
• 0:40
  and of course he's Scotch. And yes, we are the Brewery
• 0:43
  Underground podcast. And you know, Scott, we, we, we
• 0:46
  take on a lot of different avenues.
• 0:48
  Sometimes here on the podcast, sometimes we talk a beer,
• 0:51
  sometimes we talk about breweries and we talk about, you
• 0:56
  know, rating beer. Well today we're going to be
• 0:57
  talking about malts and the guy to do that with us is Brett
• 1:02
  Manning. He is the co-owner and Co
• 1:05
  founder of Riverbend Malthouse and one of the best brewery
• 1:09
  towns in America, Asheville. The best brewery town.
• 1:14
  Yeah, the best. I would die on that hill.
• 1:19
  Brent, welcome. Hey man, you bet.
• 1:21
  Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23
  Well, before we hit the record button, we were, we were talking
• 1:27
  about a great many things involving, you know, water and
• 1:32
  things that you guys do and for for breweries.
• 1:35
  And I'm really curious, you know, Riverbend Mall House for
• 1:39
  people our audience. I know I was started researching
• 1:42
  this a couple of weeks ago when we knew we're going to have you
• 1:45
  on. Let me just say that your
• 1:47
  website is such a plethora of great information and hopefully
• 1:53
  we're going to do a lot of education for people once we get
• 1:57
  done with this podcast today. But in in kind of simple terms,
• 2:01
  can you give an overview of what's Riverbend Malt House is?
• 2:05
  For sure. So we're, we're a craft malt
• 2:07
  house like you say located in Western North Carolina.
• 2:10
  And what we do is we bring locally sourced barley, wheat,
• 2:14
  rye, oats, corn, etcetera into the malt house and put it
• 2:18
  through a three-step process, steeping, germinating and
• 2:22
  kilning to create a variety of different malts.
• 2:25
  They're used in brewing and distilling and to kind of step
• 2:28
  back and define malting. What we're basically doing is
• 2:31
  managing the enzymatic digestion of the cell walls that are
• 2:35
  inside each and every kernel of barley, corn, wheat, rye,
• 2:39
  whatever, and managing that conversion process as they
• 2:42
  convert to a starch or simple sugar.
• 2:44
  And so obviously we, we kind of set the table for Brewers and
• 2:48
  distillers by making kingly starches and simple sugars
• 2:52
  readily available for, for the mashing process.
• 2:55
  The coolest thing about making malt is, you know, these three
• 2:58
  steps are the same regardless of scale.
• 3:00
  We're one of the larger craft malt houses in the nation.
• 3:03
  We're going to produce about £5,000,000 a year, which sounds
• 3:07
  like a lot until I tell you that Sierra Nevada and Mills River
• 3:10
  takes in about £1,000,000 a week when they're processing it
• 3:14
  bores. We at a even at that eye popping
• 3:18
  clip of £5,000,000 a year. We're a rounding error for what
• 3:21
  the craft beer community looks for just in the southeast.
• 3:25
  So it's a it's a pretty wild topic to wrap your head around.
• 3:29
  Most of the southeastern states grow about half a million acres
• 3:34
  of small grains and we only need probably a couple 1000 acres to
• 3:39
  supply the malthouse with those grains.
• 3:44
  And this was one of the things as I was, as I was kind of
• 3:46
  researching you guys and stuff is malt.
• 3:49
  I'll let you tell me, are malt and grain the words kind of
• 3:54
  synonymous or are they two different things?
• 3:56
  Malt kind of makes up the grains, right?
• 3:58
  Are grains make up malt? Grains.
• 4:00
  We take grains to make malt and we can malt a lot of different
• 4:05
  things. So I can malt pumpkin seeds if
• 4:07
  you send them to me. It's really the mechanics are
• 4:10
  the same. We're just essentially tricking
• 4:13
  the plant into growing by creating the perfect conditions
• 4:17
  for that growth to take place. But if you're a gardener, you
• 4:21
  know who's ever taken like tomato seeds and put them in a
• 4:25
  wet napkin, in a paper, in a plastic bag, or to get that that
• 4:29
  jump on that spring crop, It's the same mechanics.
• 4:32
  We're just hydrating a seed to a certain level, typically around
• 4:37
  45% moisture, keeping the temperature and humidity in
• 4:41
  place base to allow that plant to continue to grow.
• 4:45
  And the the trick is though, as maltsters, we don't want to let
• 4:48
  the plant actually begin to photosynthesize.
• 4:51
  So we're just wanting that early growth, that sort of starch
• 4:55
  reserve that the plant uses to kick start its growth and get up
• 4:59
  through the soil and before it can begin to photosynthesize.
• 5:03
  That reserve is what Brewers and distillers are tapping into to
• 5:07
  then eventually feed yeast. We want.
• 5:09
  To feed instead of the plant grow.
• 5:11
  OK. Is that process?
• 5:12
  Is that germination? Yes, yeah.
• 5:14
  So steeping, germinating and kilning are three main steps and
• 5:19
  it takes about 7 days to execute that process regardless of
• 5:24
  scale. So we'll do a A2 ton floor malt
• 5:27
  badge or a 10 ton, what we called GKV batch or a germ kiln
• 5:31
  vessel. You know, now our friends at the
• 5:33
  larger malt houses, we'll do 250 to 500 ton batches.
• 5:39
  Process is the same. Barley doesn't care how many of
• 5:41
  its friends it's surrounded by. Okay, there's a picture on your
• 5:44
  website and it's probably your malt houses or warehouse or
• 5:47
  something where it's spread out on the floor, right?
• 5:50
  And I think it even says something about you guys still
• 5:52
  kind of hand rake the thing out there.
• 5:54
  Talk about that process. Is it because we see the
• 5:56
  picture, it's like looks like maybe there's a certain level or
• 5:59
  a certain amount or certain depth to that all the way
• 6:02
  across. There's probably some science
• 6:03
  behind that, right? So they do what they're supposed
• 6:05
  to do correctly. For sure floor molting was where
• 6:08
  we started. You know, our our first malt
• 6:10
  house one point O we had a massive one ton batch, which is
• 6:14
  ridiculously small, but we did it all floor molted.
• 6:18
  We were just trying to like understand the processes and the
• 6:22
  nuances of making malt. And the best way to learn that
• 6:26
  is by floor melting. You're literally in touch with
• 6:29
  the grain every day. You spread it out on about a
• 6:32
  four to six inch deep bed. The germination process
• 6:36
  continues on. You've got a nice cool humid
• 6:39
  room. The rootlets as they begin to
• 6:41
  grow kind of bind up and they called it, they call it felting.
• 6:44
  And we'll pull a rake through that material three times a day,
• 6:48
  morning, mid afternoon and late evening, gently breaking that
• 6:52
  felted material apart, mixing the grain that's in the bottom
• 6:56
  to the top, getting some fresh air in there.
• 6:59
  And basically what's happening is we're keeping the grain kind
• 7:02
  of under control by doing that. If that felted layer on top
• 7:07
  continued on, it would basically act like a blanket and lock in
• 7:11
  all the heat that's a byproduct of that germination prostate.
• 7:15
  So even if the room 60°F, the bed temps can hit 100 Fahrenheit
• 7:20
  quite easily. And so at that point you've got
• 7:23
  all the building blocks for some pretty nasty things to start
• 7:26
  growing, you know, molds, etcetera.
• 7:28
  And so we really want to make that raking event, you know,
• 7:32
  happen in a steady cadence and keep everything nice and cool in
• 7:36
  there. And you get this a nice sort of
• 7:38
  sinusoidal wave of the heat building, the rake occurs, and
• 7:41
  then it drops back down. And this is kind of one of the
• 7:44
  key and key differences between floor molting and what we call
• 7:48
  pneumatic molting is pneumatic molting at larger scales is
• 7:52
  basically a uniform temperature throughout floor molting.
• 7:56
  You kind of get this rise and fall.
• 7:58
  And researchers think that that's part of the
• 8:02
  differentiating factor of what makes floor molt pace different
• 8:06
  is you've got this sort of rise and fall that may favor
• 8:09
  different enzymes versus the standardized sort of this is the
• 8:14
  temperature, it's 62°F for four days.
• 8:17
  And that's all there is to it. You know, so floor malting is
• 8:21
  kind of the historic deal as well.
• 8:23
  I mean, that's, that's how people made malt long before we
• 8:27
  had the Industrial revolution. And so malt houses of old were
• 8:31
  vertical and say the malt would take one trip up steep in a
• 8:35
  tank, drop down into one floor, it would go through.
• 8:38
  It would have lots of cross ventilation, lots of windows.
• 8:41
  They only malted in the cool months.
• 8:43
  So it only went like, you know, they'd start in September and
• 8:47
  stop in April and lots of cross ventilation and and then once
• 8:51
  germination was done, it would drop down into the kiln, tried
• 8:55
  to grain down, build some color and then they would package it
• 8:58
  off as finished malt and yet another floor below that.
• 9:01
  And so they built up. And so that that's how the old
• 9:05
  malt houses look. Once we had, you know, motorized
• 9:09
  augers and blowers and all kinds of things, malting took on a
• 9:13
  very different turn. They built something called a
• 9:15
  Saladin box wherein all the augers were in a row and the
• 9:19
  grain was much, much deeper, like a meter deep, and they blew
• 9:23
  air from underneath in addition to turning it.
• 9:25
  So lots of different technologies came about with the
• 9:28
  Industrial revolution and batch sizes got bigger, malt houses
• 9:32
  got larger and more efficient. And I guess that that's sort of
• 9:36
  the history of malting and three, no.
• 9:38
  It's great. What do you?
• 9:40
  Because you have that picture, do you still do some formalting
• 9:43
  too? What kind of percentage is that
• 9:45
  versus pneumatic? It's about 10% of our product
• 9:49
  line right now. We've got several customers that
• 9:52
  you know they've got a, a dedicated beer or spirit that
• 9:56
  this is part of the personality of that product and people will
• 10:02
  we typically will use that. We'll also use floor melting as
• 10:06
  our R&D process. So if we've got a new variety of
• 10:10
  barley or wheat to test out or we want to, you know, get a feel
• 10:15
  for a a different kilning recipe, we'll start at that two
• 10:19
  ton scale and make small mistakes 1st and then scale it
• 10:23
  up into the 10 ton system. It's like a small batch system
• 10:26
  like a brewery might have. Absolutely can still make some
• 10:28
  small stuff and kind of put in the tap room or screw up if you
• 10:31
  want to, but if. We can mass produce Yelp it it's
• 10:35
  and and it's definitely been helpful.
• 10:37
  You know, like I said, we've got customers that that, you know,
• 10:41
  want to explore in that space and build a custom malt and we
• 10:45
  can use that two ton malt system for those types of projects as
• 10:50
  well. You know, we were talking about
• 10:52
  water chemistry earlier. We've actually done a couple of
• 10:55
  batches where we're actually tinkering with the water
• 10:58
  chemistry of the steep water to mimic a Belgian malt house's
• 11:02
  water profile as a way way of sort of seeing if that affects
• 11:06
  flavor of germination rates, etcetera.
• 11:09
  So we're able to really play around and do some fun stuff
• 11:13
  with the two time lot of science.
• 11:14
  Is involved in this, isn't there?
• 11:16
  It is, it is. And that's, that's really the,
• 11:19
  the fun part for us is it truly is one of those art and science
• 11:23
  things because, you know, each, even each year over year, you
• 11:27
  know, just like wine grapes have differences in, in their crop
• 11:31
  year, barley does too, you know, not as pronounced, but borrow
• 11:36
  like crop A from 2024 might require a little bit more time
• 11:40
  in the steep cycle than the crop from 2025.
• 11:44
  And we don't always have a great answer for why that's the case,
• 11:48
  but it just is. And so we know that hey, look at
• 11:52
  this Avalon from this year's harvest or this farmer's lot
• 11:56
  needs two or three more hours in the steep cycle to get the same
• 12:00
  target moisture as it did last year.
• 12:03
  Make a note of that and then put that into the recipe going
• 12:06
  forward. Hey, you know on your website,
• 12:09
  as I said earlier, your website is fantastic. riverbendmalt.com,
• 12:13
  I'm looking at the section where it has like standard malts and
• 12:17
  talking about shop by a type of grain.
• 12:20
  Can you go through a lot of that because it's very fascinating
• 12:23
  and I would imagine for, you know, Brewers, they have to they
• 12:27
  have to love this page because you have so many different
• 12:30
  things on there. You know that that different
• 12:32
  styles for different beers. Can you go there a little bit
• 12:35
  about that? For sure.
• 12:36
  Yeah. So you know, we kind of what
• 12:39
  we're basically trying to do is, is walk people through, you
• 12:43
  know, the flavor profiles of each of the main products.
• 12:45
  You know, most of what we sell, no surprise, are barley based
• 12:49
  products, but we spend just as much time, you know, educating
• 12:54
  folks about the heirloom rye that goes into our Carolina rye
• 12:58
  product. You know, we want them to know
• 13:00
  like, hey, this pack's a little bit more punch than the
• 13:03
  standard, you know, mass produced stuff that you might
• 13:06
  have come into contact with. You know, here's the flavor
• 13:09
  wheel that introduces you to some of the main, you know, top
• 13:13
  line flavors that we're picking up.
• 13:15
  Here's kind of a basic spec sheet and here are some styles
• 13:18
  that we think this will work well in.
• 13:20
  And then when it comes to base malts, we're we're just kind of
• 13:23
  trying to help people make connections with certain flavor
• 13:27
  profiles. And then also like where some of
• 13:30
  these products will fit in and replace products that they're
• 13:34
  more comfortable using, let's say.
• 13:36
  So like if you're, if you're a home Brewer that specializes in,
• 13:40
  you know, British or English special bidder, extra special
• 13:45
  bidders, what am I going to do? I don't see a British pale ale
• 13:49
  on this. Well, we have a product called
• 13:51
  Southern Select and that's kilmed darker than our
• 13:54
  traditional base camp, which are sort of workhorse baseball.
• 13:59
  And the the discussion points in that web page about Southern
• 14:04
  Select kind of clearly define like, hey, if you're building a
• 14:07
  pub ale, this is your base malt to start with.
• 14:11
  Yeah, but yeah, you're exactly right there.
• 14:13
  There's because people are coming to this website with a
• 14:15
  lot of from a lot of different backgrounds and.
• 14:18
  I would think. We try to help people find their
• 14:21
  way from a lot of different pathways in and help them build
• 14:25
  recipes because we we really, it sounds kind of crazy, but
• 14:28
  sometimes we actually will lead off with customers by saying
• 14:33
  please don't put this malt in your flagship beer because your
• 14:38
  flagship beer is your flagship beer.
• 14:40
  And maybe this will make it. It's going to make it different.
• 14:43
  It might be better different, but it's going to be different.
• 14:46
  And so we kind of like to walk people in with, you know, here's
• 14:50
  the flavors that we picked up. We suggest you do the same.
• 14:53
  You know, we'll do the hot steep with them.
• 14:55
  I don't know if y'all had a chance to do that, but it's
• 14:57
  basically making a malt tea. That's the same concentration
• 15:01
  that a Brewer will create in the brewhouse.
• 15:03
  And we'll build some teas, sometimes even doing complete
• 15:07
  recipes then this way so that people can get a feel for the
• 15:11
  mouthfeel, aromatic profile, all these things so that we kind of
• 15:15
  want them to build a recipe from the flavors that they perceive.
• 15:19
  My opinion isn't just that, my opinion.
• 15:22
  So yeah, we kind of want to get them, get the wheels turning and
• 15:26
  then have them say, yeah, no, I get that flavor note rent, but
• 15:31
  I'm over here. I want to do a, you know, a
• 15:34
  dunkle with this, you know, not not what you were thinking
• 15:37
  about. And so that's really why we lay
• 15:40
  out all of this information on the website is like, if you
• 15:42
  can't have the one-on-one with us, we hope there's enough sort
• 15:45
  of bread crumbs there for you to find your way to a a new recipe
• 15:50
  that's of interest to you. And how often have you heard
• 15:53
  back from folks that have used these where they're like, do you
• 15:56
  have, what kind of success stories do you have folks that
• 15:59
  they you've been able to help? They a lot of them, you know,
• 16:02
  we've had a lot of fun, you know, we're always looking for
• 16:06
  like the, what's next in the, in the beer trends and whatnot, you
• 16:11
  know, so like when hazy IPA blew up, I was like, we don't have
• 16:16
  any oats, what are we going to do?
• 16:18
  And so we started with a, a naked oat that we called
• 16:22
  streaker oats, so no hull on it and had this beautiful almond
• 16:26
  character. And people were really excited.
• 16:28
  We got some good feedback. But the one thing we heard was
• 16:32
  loudering was kind of a pain. And so we were like, OK, well,
• 16:36
  we also have hulled oats, traditional oats.
• 16:38
  And everyone was like, they use those and they're like, Oh my
• 16:42
  God, this is perfect. We get the mouthfeel oats and we
• 16:45
  get beautiful loudering. And I was like, and I was
• 16:48
  talking with this with a friend of mine, Jen from Wicked Weed.
• 16:50
  And, and she said, well, so of course you're going to call the
• 16:53
  product hall and Oates. And I was like, well, and now
• 16:56
  you know, like, because that's fantastic.
• 16:59
  So we had some fun with, with Oates during the, the hasty IPA
• 17:03
  run up. And then as loggers came to the
• 17:07
  forefront, we, we really took this opportunity to kind of try
• 17:11
  to deliver as much diversity in the Pilsner malt space as
• 17:14
  possible. Again, kind of back to the
• 17:17
  varietal and back to the farm aspect.
• 17:20
  We really spent a lot of time zeroing in on, you know, what
• 17:24
  does variety A versus variety B taste like in its unblended and
• 17:30
  adorned format? Very low color malt, not a lot
• 17:33
  of tricks in the malthouse, just straight ahead.
• 17:37
  So what we came with, what we started with was Chesapeake
• 17:40
  Pilsner, all Violetta barley and you get nice sort of floral,
• 17:45
  grassy, sort of dry, crispy profile out of this mall.
• 17:49
  And that's perfect for Jeremy Pilsner.
• 17:52
  And we had another variety called Calypso and now a new one
• 17:56
  called Avalon. It's more bready rounded, you
• 18:00
  know, sort of Melanie kind of character to it.
• 18:03
  And we're like, that'll be great, Nahelis.
• 18:05
  And you know, so having some of the some folks, you know, come
• 18:09
  back to us and they're like, yes, you know this, that German
• 18:13
  Pilsner was absolutely fantastic.
• 18:16
  Like y'all killed it. And I was able to, you know,
• 18:19
  displace one of the the big sort of international stars of malt
• 18:23
  wireman in a few occasions, like where people were like this malt
• 18:27
  was good enough. I'm putting local malt in place
• 18:30
  of a classic German malt for a German beer style and.
• 18:33
  That's fantastic. Anytime you get that kind of a
• 18:36
  phone call, that's a good day. Yes.
• 18:39
  We have we have set on here in the last 4-5 years and it may be
• 18:43
  a combination of things of our appreciation more of loggers and
• 18:48
  pilsners in the craft beer, but I think they've gotten better
• 18:51
  and I was given 100% credit to the Brewers.
• 18:54
  Hey man, you guys are making great logger and they're
• 18:57
  fantastic. And then we we start reaching
• 18:59
  research and even I'm like, wait a minute, it starts with you
• 19:02
  guys. That's.
• 19:03
  Right. It's definitely it's, it's
• 19:06
  definitely a partnership, no doubt.
• 19:08
  You know, again, we want to sort of lay out a buffet of options
• 19:12
  for for Brewers to to build lager recipes with.
• 19:16
  The the most recent step we took was, you know, as as checklogger
• 19:22
  started to to bubble off this sort of the latest sort of sub
• 19:27
  genre to explore. Yeah.
• 19:30
  And again, this is going to get a little a little geeky, but let
• 19:32
  me let me roll for a minute. And so if you look at a modern
• 19:37
  pilsner malt, it's pretty much what we would consider fully
• 19:41
  modified, meaning Brewer or maltsters pushed it as far as it
• 19:45
  can go to maximize sugar delivery in the brew house.
• 19:49
  So most beer for your buck basically and that's great kiln
• 19:53
  nice and light. So we still have that piece of
• 19:56
  the story in place, light colored crispy pilsner, but
• 20:00
  maximum extract. So when we looked at the
• 20:03
  certificate of analysis for. Czech pilsner still coming out
• 20:08
  of that part of the world. We said, wow, look at this
• 20:12
  crane, this is really under modified material like this is
• 20:16
  this could be a real disaster if we handed this to a Brewer and
• 20:20
  they didn't know what they were doing because they basically
• 20:23
  have to step mash or decock this material to get to sort of
• 20:29
  finish out that conversion step of the process.
• 20:32
  And we said, well, some of most of our customers do not have the
• 20:37
  equipment to step into cocked, but they, they kind of, but
• 20:41
  there's also a flavor change that happens the, the less
• 20:44
  modification you allow to happen in the malthouse, the sort of
• 20:48
  you really keep that sweetness component at Bay.
• 20:51
  And so we said, what would that look like if we sort of took a
• 20:55
  few steps in that direction to make it a crispier, drier, you
• 21:01
  know, under modified pilsner, How would we do that?
• 21:03
  Well, we starve it with moisture and then we would keep
• 21:07
  germination shorter and cooler to sort of tamp down all that
• 21:11
  germination energy. And so we kind of took those
• 21:14
  steps and said, OK, here you go. This this is going to be a
• 21:18
  little bit more complicated to the work in the brewhouse.
• 21:22
  You might need a little bit more conversion time.
• 21:24
  If you want to step or decoct, you can, but here you go.
• 21:28
  And we, we had a brewery, a group called Rock Solid in
• 21:32
  Georgia, win a medal with the Czech Pilsner and another one of
• 21:37
  our products, Double Kill Munich in the Czech dark lager
• 21:40
  category. And that was pretty special.
• 21:43
  Again, anytime you put local malt into an international
• 21:47
  category and take home some hardware, that's an awesome day.
• 21:51
  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's so funny.
• 21:54
  I think about this, you know, Scott and I were out, had a
• 21:56
  couple of breweries over the weekend and I think about some
• 21:59
  of the beers we were drinking, whether they were loggers and
• 22:02
  Czech loggers and things like that.
• 22:04
  And then I think, you know what also what about like pumpkin
• 22:06
  beers? And then you have, we've been,
• 22:08
  we've been into the style lately.
• 22:10
  Every once in a while we'll try them where it's like a peanut
• 22:12
  butter. And what was it?
• 22:14
  The BlackBerry. BlackBerry.
• 22:17
  Yeah, Marble fox that we had. And so as as those kinds of
• 22:21
  things have evolved, we know it's not maybe the typical brew
• 22:25
  that you're going to see at every brewery across the United
• 22:27
  States, but you see it popping up.
• 22:30
  How do you guys keep up with those sort of trends?
• 22:33
  I have a great answer for that. You know the heavy adjunct
• 22:38
  stouts and all of that. All I would say is that we would
• 22:43
  make something that sort of plays nicely with those flavors
• 22:47
  and kind of give a Brewer a solid base to jump off from.
• 22:51
  You know, typically when they're putting that level of adjuncts
• 22:55
  in, anything I'm doing in the malt house, it is going to get
• 22:59
  washed away. So but yeah, you, you said y'all
• 23:02
  were at at GAPF. Did you get by cohesion?
• 23:05
  No, I didn't get to cohesion. Next time you're in in there or
• 23:09
  they just I was thinking check logger specialist and.
• 23:14
  Are they are they in the Denver area or just one of the
• 23:16
  outlying? Yeah, they're they're in Denver.
• 23:20
  OK. The, they are big fans of craft
• 23:24
  malt as well. They work with a, a group in
• 23:26
  that area called Troubadour. It's again, it's that same sort
• 23:29
  of lovely relationship of these malts make these types of
• 23:33
  flavours and, and, you know, it's sort of traditional check
• 23:37
  process with local malt mixed into it.
• 23:40
  So it it they're, they've got a neat story going on there.
• 23:44
  Oh, that's cool. I just wrote them down because
• 23:45
  I'm we're always looking for a new now that the Denver area
• 23:48
  needs like, I mean, there's so many places, but like we're
• 23:51
  always looking for places like, oh, with recommendations when we
• 23:53
  get out that way because there's just so many, you know.
• 23:55
  Yeah, yeah, they're great. Hey.
• 23:57
  Before we go any further, we're all drinking beer, at least I
• 24:00
  think Steve is. I don't know if I saw you
• 24:02
  drinking 1 yet. Brent, what are you drinking?
• 24:04
  Because and I want to ask, do you have Riverbend Malt House in
• 24:07
  that beer? I actually don't, but I just
• 24:10
  there's a chill in the air right now.
• 24:12
  We're in Asheville and I have an on Decks Doppelbock in the
• 24:16
  refrigerator and this is an absolute banger of a doppelbock,
• 24:22
  classic style. They just nail it and it's,
• 24:26
  yeah, probably. I don't even know what malt they
• 24:28
  use in it, but it is just a beautiful beer.
• 24:32
  And, and it's, it's that time of year, like you said, it's that.
• 24:34
  Time of year we need something with a little bit of heft to it
• 24:37
  and this what I always forget they've been in.
• 24:40
  They've been making beer since 1455.
• 24:42
  Wow, you. Think they know what they're
• 24:44
  doing yet? They cleared a few things out.
• 24:47
  It's it's pretty special. Yeah.
• 24:51
  Man, I have got this zool. There you go, right?
• 24:54
  Here. Oh yeah, speaking, Speaking of
• 24:56
  adjuncts, actually that's probably just a double IPA,
• 24:59
  right? Yeah, this is the their double
• 25:01
  IPA. It's got Citra and Pete
• 25:04
  Tangerine. This thing is pretty good man.
• 25:07
  Nice. Yeah, Zul's making some big
• 25:09
  waves in in Tennessee. They've.
• 25:11
  Yeah, they are. Making some they're in our.
• 25:13
  Backyard or about? Positions right on OK Are y'all
• 25:16
  based in Nashville? Nashville, yeah.
• 25:18
  Right on. Cool.
• 25:20
  Yeah, I heard Marble Fox. I was like, yeah, yeah.
• 25:23
  Marble Fox is great. And then, yeah, some Zul's thing
• 25:25
  is are taking over this 2 Southern Southern Grist
• 25:28
  locations that are here. So that's we love Southern
• 25:31
  Grist, but it's exciting also at the same time.
• 25:33
  So we're coming to town. Yeah, tough.
• 25:36
  We'll see how that shakes out with I've I've got 1 and it's
• 25:39
  Steve, you know about these Stoke House and and they're
• 25:42
  they're new. It's their West Coast IPA and
• 25:44
  these guys were at tenfold prior brand of new tenfold and the
• 25:49
  cool and I wish I'd had when I thought I bought it the other
• 25:51
  day, but I didn't. Stoke House I believe is a
• 25:53
  customer of yours. Yep, for sure they.
• 25:55
  Buy your for their signature beer I believe, which is their
• 26:01
  their dark dark English ale. I think because he told us on
• 26:04
  the when we were talking to them recently, he brought your name
• 26:06
  up, specifically the Riverbend Molehouse.
• 26:09
  Yeah, yeah. Great, great folks.
• 26:11
  They're so excited to see them kind of jump out and do their
• 26:14
  own thing. It's yeah.
• 26:16
  Nashville's got a beautiful beer scene.
• 26:17
  We we do a bunch of stuff with, with Stoke House, Tenfold,
• 26:21
  Harding House and Jesse Beer works, Brew works.
• 26:25
  Yeah. So we've got great
• 26:26
  representation in the in the center of the state, which makes
• 26:29
  total sense because one of our major farmers is located just
• 26:34
  about an hour north of Nashville, right near the the
• 26:37
  Tennessee Kentucky line. And we get a a tremendous amount
• 26:41
  of material from them. So that that's kind of
• 26:44
  Tennessee's bread basket right there.
• 26:46
  From what I've heard that that area of the state and then also
• 26:50
  in between Nashville and Chattanooga has some good barley
• 26:53
  growing areas as well. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:56
  Before, before Chad mentioned this one, we actually heard
• 26:59
  about you from two other breweries that we've had on this
• 27:02
  podcast, actually both of them twice, Eric Latham, who's E who
• 27:07
  is a Johnson City Brewing. For sure.
• 27:09
  Yeah, he's great. He brought.
• 27:10
  You guys up one time and then Anthony Davis from East National
• 27:13
  Beer Works brought you guys up. You guys, I think you provide
• 27:16
  one for his Tennessee pills or the Tennessee pills thing that
• 27:19
  you do that. So your name has come up
• 27:21
  multiple times prior to today. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:24
  We've we, we've, we've done, done, done good work in
• 27:28
  Tennessee. It's a, you know, it's followed
• 27:31
  our kind of our general playbook is go out, get a grower or two
• 27:36
  from that state that grows good barley, work with the material
• 27:40
  and then go back and visit the Brewers and distillers and say
• 27:43
  here we've got XYZ products developed with material from
• 27:48
  your state. You can isolate it.
• 27:50
  We had great success with, we had a Cumberland Pilsner that
• 27:53
  was made with 100% barley from Tennessee.
• 27:58
  And then we also have malted corn from Tennessee.
• 28:01
  So we had tons of folks making beautiful American lagers with
• 28:06
  those two ingredients. So people got a lot of traction
• 28:09
  at market with like it's 100% Tennessee grain now.
• 28:13
  Yeah. No, Brent, I'll tell you when,
• 28:16
  when Scott had told me about you guys and we were going to get
• 28:20
  you on here and when I still started doing a lot of research,
• 28:24
  one of the things that really I wanted to hear about was when
• 28:28
  you all started this up around 2011, I believe.
• 28:33
  Can you really recall like when you start talking like the first
• 28:36
  farmers and breweries and others about trying to bring everybody
• 28:40
  together? I mean, how did those
• 28:42
  conversations start? Yeah.
• 28:45
  So the early ones, but you know, I, I can't say enough wonderful
• 28:49
  things about North Carolina and Virginia's AG Extension
• 28:54
  programs. They did exactly what they were
• 28:56
  designed to do, which is connect a market with the growers that
• 29:00
  make those products. And so we started very early on
• 29:05
  talking with the folk, the small grain specialist at North
• 29:09
  Carolina or NC State's eye extension program, They
• 29:13
  connected us with some barley growers early on.
• 29:16
  We did some test trial stuff, even working with the
• 29:20
  researchers who were doing, you know, small scale variety trials
• 29:24
  that are, you know, 1/10 of an acre plots or smaller.
• 29:28
  You know, they sent us home after a couple of meetings with,
• 29:31
  you know, burlap bags full of stuff from these trials.
• 29:35
  And so we humble beginnings you know, my Co founder Brian
• 29:39
  Simpson, you know, he had so I was the home Brewer.
• 29:42
  So I had all the home brew gear at my house and Brian had all
• 29:45
  our early molten gear in his place.
• 29:48
  And that consisted of a galvanized metal tub from a farm
• 29:53
  supply shop and a meat smoker with a bathroom fan duct tape to
• 29:58
  it. So humble beginnings, 10 LB
• 30:01
  batches, you know, enough to do a 5 gallon home brew run.
• 30:04
  And we started with six row barley, which you know, at me
• 30:09
  being the home Brewer, I had read Charlie Papazian's book, of
• 30:13
  course. And you know, he has this
• 30:15
  disparaging paragraph in there about like, you know, six row
• 30:19
  barley is only for the land of micro loggers and macro loggers
• 30:24
  and, you know, adjunct stuff. And I'm like, I don't know,
• 30:27
  Brian, you know, six row barley may not have a place.
• 30:31
  And we took a shot at it and I, it made great beer right out of
• 30:36
  the, I mean, the first couple of tries I was like, OK, I'm in,
• 30:39
  let's do this, you know, And we also met a gentleman, Rick
• 30:43
  Wasman out of Sperryville, Virginia, Copper Fox distilling.
• 30:47
  He was malting his own barley, the thoroughbred 6 row that we
• 30:51
  started with. He was making award-winning
• 30:54
  American single malt 15 years ago, if you can believe that.
• 30:57
  And so all of these things, all of these aha moments and light
• 31:00
  bulb moments kind of came together.
• 31:03
  And, you know, one of our earliest customers, Full Steam
• 31:07
  Brewing out of Durham, I had met the owner of that brewery, Sean
• 31:11
  Wilson. We were working together on a
• 31:13
  campaign called Pop the Cap in North Carolina to get rid of our
• 31:17
  6% alcohol law, which of course kept craft beer, you know,
• 31:22
  completely, you know, pinned down in terms of creativity.
• 31:27
  So Sean was one of the first people I approached.
• 31:30
  He was up here in Asheville doing an event.
• 31:32
  And I, I bellied up to the bar at the side at at Thirsty Monk.
• 31:35
  And I was like, Sean, I could make local malt using North
• 31:39
  Carolina grown barley. Would you buy it?
• 31:41
  And he was like, yeah, yeah, I would.
• 31:43
  Brent. And I was like, OK, well, here's
• 31:45
  our first customer, you know, keep going.
• 31:49
  So somehow or another that move made me Riverbend salesman from
• 31:54
  the word go. But anyway, we all got started
• 31:57
  that way and I like I say started with a one ton malt
• 32:01
  house in 2010, two 1011, went to a 10 ton facility in 2014 and
• 32:06
  then took the big leap and went into a 70,000 square foot
• 32:11
  facility with room to grow in 2018.
• 32:14
  So 50,000 this Year, 5 million this year.
• 32:20
  Do you think those early days was because not that selling it
• 32:24
  was easy, but because you were getting locally sourced stuff or
• 32:28
  selling it locally was a big selling point?
• 32:30
  Yeah, I mean it, it really in some cases it was, you know, we
• 32:35
  were learning our craft. So it at some point, you know,
• 32:38
  people would call and be like, hey, Brent, I really need, I
• 32:42
  want to do some malt. I want to make a beer.
• 32:43
  And I'd be like, well, I'll be honest with you, the batch we
• 32:46
  just finished is not what we expected.
• 32:49
  I think it's this color and it has these flavors to it and
• 32:53
  they're like, well, I'll just send it on.
• 32:54
  We'll make something out of it. And I'm like, well, thank you
• 32:57
  for that, you know, but you know, flash forward a decade or
• 33:02
  more later, you know, consistency is key.
• 33:05
  And if we want to be a part of, you know, year round IP as and
• 33:09
  loggers, we got to deliver the same stuff week in and week out.
• 33:13
  And sure, it's it. That's probably been the the
• 33:16
  greatest challenge. And, you know, kudos to our
• 33:19
  growers for growing with us is that, you know, over the years
• 33:24
  they've gotten better. We've gotten better.
• 33:26
  And that's the key to consistency.
• 33:28
  Your your customers have needs, right?
• 33:30
  You've talked about and we're going to talk about some more
• 33:32
  about them too. You have needs from your
• 33:34
  growers, right? How do those out of those
• 33:36
  conversations go, hey, I kind of need a little bit more of this
• 33:39
  Or can you, I don't know, can you talk to a grower and say,
• 33:41
  hey, can you refine this in a certain way or anything like
• 33:44
  that? Yeah.
• 33:45
  Sure. Yeah.
• 33:46
  So the conversation, so I'll back up and say the good thing
• 33:50
  about talking with growers in the Southeast is we are talking
• 33:53
  about winter barley. So it goes in the ground right
• 33:57
  about now mid-october and is harvested in June.
• 34:01
  So that keeps us out of the way of the main cash crops of of the
• 34:05
  South corn, soybeans, etcetera. So that's, that's an easy entree
• 34:10
  right there. So we're basically saying, hey,
• 34:13
  while your fields aren't doing a whole lot, could you plant
• 34:15
  something that will pay you for? OK, cool.
• 34:18
  So they I've got their attention, but we are kind of a
• 34:21
  pain. We want specific barley
• 34:24
  varietals. We want specific specs regarding
• 34:27
  germination, fungal growth limitations.
• 34:31
  We use a term called test weight as kind of an easy catch all.
• 34:35
  So a healthy high quality batch of barley should have at least
• 34:40
  £48 per bushel test weight. Fantastic quality barley will
• 34:45
  have late 50 or 52 LB test weight so we kind of set a floor
• 34:50
  on test weight. Now if we were selling into the
• 34:52
  feed market, no one cares about these things.
• 34:54
  It's just it's going into animal feed, no one cares.
• 34:57
  So we offer a premium price because we're asking for a
• 35:01
  premium grain. And so we kind of lay out all of
• 35:05
  these things and we say, you know, we need it cleaned, we
• 35:08
  need it in tote bags and Oh yeah, I also can't take all of
• 35:13
  it as soon as you harvest it, which is the other thing that is
• 35:17
  problematic. Our target growers will kind of
• 35:21
  had to have a dedicated river bend bin on site that's like,
• 35:26
  that's their barley. They order it, you know, couple
• 35:29
  truckloads at a time over the course of the year.
• 35:31
  And you know, it's on them to keep the bugs at Bay and keep
• 35:36
  the moisture levels at at where we need them.
• 35:39
  And so we're we're definitely kind of a pain, but but by
• 35:45
  putting all that out in front of everybody from the get go, you
• 35:49
  know, everybody knows where we stand and what everyone's
• 35:51
  expectations are. And so we just kind of lay it
• 35:54
  out clearly from the start. I want Avalon barley at this
• 35:59
  level of protein, this level of moisture, this level of
• 36:02
  germination. And I'm going to take it, you
• 36:05
  know, 50 to 100,000 lbs at a time over this coming year.
• 36:10
  Is that OK? And they say, yes, this is the
• 36:13
  price I need. And we say, OK, fair enough,
• 36:16
  let's do this, you know, the win, win.
• 36:18
  Yeah. Well, and the other thing about
• 36:20
  that too is we pull our customers out of the global
• 36:24
  market for small grain. So we're not talking about, you
• 36:28
  know, logging into the Chicago Board of Trade and looking at
• 36:32
  futures contracts and all of that business.
• 36:35
  You know, it's a handshake agreement on the back of a
• 36:37
  pickup truck. You know, it's really how we
• 36:40
  like to do business. And so pulling everybody out of
• 36:43
  that, they know exactly what they're going to get.
• 36:45
  We know exactly what we're going to get that keeps our prices
• 36:47
  from fluctuating. You know, regardless of what
• 36:50
  geopolitical things are going on, what kind of climatic issues
• 36:54
  are going on, you know, you know, you guys may remember a
• 36:57
  couple of years back there was a freak rain event out in the
• 37:01
  western US near harvest time. They got like an unexpected inch
• 37:05
  or two of rain and all the barley started sprouting in the
• 37:09
  head, basically starting to malt itself essentially.
• 37:12
  And you know, markets went crazy.
• 37:15
  It was completely, you know, everyone was freaking out
• 37:18
  because the malt quality was inevitably going to be impacted.
• 37:21
  And everyone kept calling me and they're like, what's going on?
• 37:24
  And I'm like, what do you mean what's going on?
• 37:27
  Our barley was harvested 3-4 months ago.
• 37:29
  We're fine. It's in the bin.
• 37:31
  Oh. Yeah.
• 37:32
  It's winter barley. Everything that grows out West
• 37:35
  is spring barley. And so, you know, we, we find
• 37:38
  that we have to continually message these kinds of key
• 37:41
  differentiating factors to everyone basically that, you
• 37:45
  know, by having this smaller supply chain, there's a whole
• 37:49
  host of benefits that everyone in the brewing and distilling
• 37:54
  world can take advantage of. It's amazing.
• 37:56
  It's a buffer. You've got this buffer built in.
• 37:59
  Yeah, for both sides. It's amazing.
• 38:01
  And it's true. Yeah.
• 38:01
  And people don't panic. Now you're like.
• 38:03
  Right. Got you.
• 38:04
  We haven't knock on wood. We haven't had a panic yet.
• 38:07
  And you know the other thing too is we space out our growers
• 38:10
  across the Southeast. So we're taking advantage of
• 38:13
  those microclimates. So we have growers in coastal
• 38:17
  Virginia, central Tennessee, we have and sort of in the Piedmont
• 38:21
  portion of North Carolina. And so, you know, if there's an
• 38:25
  early tropical storm or a late freeze or whatever, you know,
• 38:28
  we've got options going in to harvest that that have pretty,
• 38:34
  pretty well served us and we haven't had any shortages yet,
• 38:38
  but. How cool is it?
• 38:39
  But how cool is it, though, that, you know, we know farmers
• 38:42
  struggle. You know, that's a tough, tough
• 38:45
  business. That's a tough, tough life.
• 38:47
  But you guys, you know, you said you're a pain at times, but I'm
• 38:50
  sure they appreciate it because you're really helping, I would
• 38:55
  imagine a lot of farmers out there, yeah.
• 38:57
  You know, we, we try to be a good partner and, you know,
• 39:00
  we're always looking for farmers that are what we call students
• 39:03
  of the game. You know, the guys that show up
• 39:05
  at the AG Extension events where they're demoing a new, you know,
• 39:10
  approach to adding fertilizer or, you know, different
• 39:15
  techniques for planting or herbicide treatment or whatever.
• 39:18
  You know, the folks that are, you know, basically attending
• 39:21
  the equivalent of a continuing education kind of thing.
• 39:24
  Like those are the folks that are going to have the highest
• 39:27
  degree of success when it comes to getting good barley out of
• 39:30
  the field, which supports us making good malt, which supports
• 39:33
  Brewers making great beer.