Brian Simpson rakes malt at Riverbend Malt House in Asheville, NC.

Spend enough time in a tavern or a taproom and you’ll almost certainly hear it.

Hophead: a beer lover with a bad case of the bitters. From extra-pale ales to imperial stouts, nothing makes them happier than a pint exploding with hop flavor and aroma. You know who you are. Plenty of brewers put themselves in the same camp, too, creating beers with names like Palate Wrecker and Hopzilla that clock in at 100 IBUs or more.

Of course, as any brewmaster will tell you, those big beers only work by starting off with lots and lots of barley. Barley that needs to be malted first.

For the most part, the majority of the malt produced for the beer industry comes from a relatively small number of large businesses—companies like Briess, Cargill and Country Malt in North America, or Bairds, Castle and Weyermann in Europe. In the United States however, recent trends in craft brewing are showing signs of gradually changing the norm.

Across the country, breweries have been opening at an astonishing rate. As of March, the Brewers Association, a trade organization that works to protect and promote small and independent brewers, estimated that 409 new brewpubs and microbreweries had opened in 2012, pushing the total number of breweries over 2,400.

Many of these newcomers work on a small scale and occasionally face challenges when sourcing the top-quality ingredients they need to make their ales and lagers. A steady supply of malt (or hops for that matter) from a big maltster or grower typically requires a contract, something that can be tough for a new brewery to quickly secure. In other words, it doesn’t take young brewers long to realize that their new vocation is about more than mashing, sparging and boiling—it’s about sourcing, too.

Over the last handful of years, the beer community in the United States has been buzzing about the appearance of small hop farms, particularly in the East. Veteran growers and aspiring farmers, encouraged by educational institutions like the University of Vermont, Cornell University and Michigan State University, are already tending to and expanding starter hop yards. They’re counting on a rising demand for this sought-after brewing ingredient to turn their half-acre gardens into viable commercial enterprises. Interest from brewers has been strong, and signs point to continued development in the years ahead. Fueling this trend in part is an increasing appetite from consumers for locally grown products, whether it’s carrots, corn or Cascade hops.

On the heels of this news comes the emergence of small-scale, or micro-malting operations. Working with nearby farms that cultivate barley, as well as a portion of wheat and rye, these micro-maltsters are reviving a trade that goes hand in hand with craft brewing. And they’re responding to some of same forces that motivate hop growers—food miles as a meaningful unit of measure and locavores as a desirable demographic to reach.

Out of this new class of maltsters, Valley Malt in western Massachusetts has probably received the most attention so far and can already be called a success. But it is far from the only company occupying this niche. FarmHouse Malt quietly opened in Newark Valley, NY, earlier this year, Riverbend Malt has stepped up to the plate in North Carolina, Rebel Malting has built a business in Reno, NV, Pilot Malt House of Grand Rapids, MI, recently began shipping 50-pound sacks of barley to brewers throughout the Midwest, and Colorado Malting in Alamosa continues to grow fast. The question to ask, then, isn’t whether or not micro-malting has caught on. It’s how many more entrepreneurs will take the plunge in the years ahead.

Lance Jergensen was one of the first people to venture into micro-malting, building a unit in Reno, NV, in 2004 to process organic grains for his family’s Los Angeles-area beer business, Jergensen Brewing Co. Converting his garage into a malt house and fabricating the systems himself, he kept his overhead low and decided that his Rebel Malting would be more likely to succeed if he concentrated on the local Nevada market. Much of his demand comes from homebrewers, but to date he’s worked with Great Basin Brewing, The Brewer’s Cabinet, Under the Rose Brewing, Stoneyhead Brewing and Silver Peak Brewery, all in Reno. Now that his business has begun to mature, Jergensen is also attracting customers from farther afield, including Cowlitz River Distillery in Washington State.

“My current capacity is 27 tons a year,” he says, “with most of this going to homebrewers and three local commercial breweries.”

Nonetheless, his business of late has grown a steady 10 to 15 percent annually. Several area two-row barley farms with close to 2,000 acres also make expansion a real possibility for Rebel Malting in the future. For now, though, Jergensen sees alternative grains (primarily rye and corn but also millet and emmer wheat) as a niche that will keep him sufficiently busy. He’s also begun to work on sprouted grains to be milled into flour for baking. Given the limitations of his facility and his focus on local distribution, he views this related activity as another emerging market for his little malt house.

Ultimately, Jergensen says, his goal is to become his own “end user” by opening a distillery in the town of Tonopah, NV, about halfway between Reno and Las Vegas. “That way I don’t have to go out and do sales calls,” he explains.

When Andrea and Christian Stanley decided to start Valley Malt in 2010 (after considering the idea of a small brewery along the Norwottuck Trail, a bike path linking Amherst and Northampton in Massachusetts), they went to Jergensen for advice. They also found videos on YouTube that explained the process.

As longtime homebrewers and ardent supporters of New England’s craft beer scene, they figured malting might be a good opportunity. “It was totally different, and more exciting than starting a brewery,” says Andrea Stanley. “We thought: ‘This seems awesome.’”

So they wrote a business plan, applied for a loan and constructed a small system based on information collected from British malting texts and booklets published by the Department of Agriculture. Christian, with a background in mechanical engineering, did the design work. They’ve since upgraded to a much larger system that allows them to produce malt in 4-ton batches, but they began by learning the basics malting 10 pounds at a time. With their newfound understanding, the Stanleys launched Valley Malt in 2010 with the ability to malt 1 ton of barley per batch.

Regional craft breweries quickly came calling, from Allagash and Peak Organic in Maine to Throwback in New Hampshire, and Notch, Wormtown, Cambridge Brewing and Ipswich Ales in Massachusetts. With their niche business expanding, Andrea quit her job as a vocational rehab counselor to devote her time to Valley Malt. Christian, meanwhile, continues to work as a mechanical engineer. Today the couple produce pale, pilsner, chocolate, wheat and rye malt for roughly 30 breweries and distilleries, sourcing their grain from about 20 regional farmers.

“Peak Organic is our biggest customer,” Andrea says. “Every one of their beers uses quite a bit of our malt now, and they’ve told us that they want to eventually use all Valley Malt.”

On the other side of the country, one Oregon brewery has released a handful of beers using ingredients from a single malt house: its own. Rogue Ales started out by planting its own hops during the hop shortage in 2008, but in the words of Brett Joyce, the company’s president, “We had so much fun, and there was so much to learn, we thought why not try the same thing with barley?”

It has since planted over 200 acres of two-row proprietary Dare and Risk barleys along with 35 acres of Dream Rye in the state’s Tygh Valley. In fact, the Rogue Nation Department of Agriculture now includes a 42-acre micro hopyard, an apiary, a 10-acre pumpkin patch, apple, cherry, peach, plum and hazelnut orchards as well as chickens, turkeys and even a couple of potbellied pigs.

In 2011, the brewery also announced the completion of its Farmstead Malt House, a facility Rogue Farms uses to micro- and floor-malt the barley used in Good Chit Pilsner, Single Malt Ale, and Oregon Single Malt Whiskey. According to Joyce, a single-malt vodka might also appear in the near future.

The diversification of the business didn’t come without its share of setbacks, though: A wave of slugs wiped out the first crop of Dream Rye. And snow and hungry geese have been challenges to the barley crop. Building the malt house took time, too. But according to Joyce, Rogue really likes doing things itself and wasn’t going to be discouraged by slugs, geese or weather.

“More breweries are growing their own stuff, working with local farms to get the product profile they want,” he remarks. “We’re always looking at other ideas and other crops. We’re not even close to being done.”

Brian Simpson, a hydrogeologist who ended up in Asheville, NC, after a consulting stint for a biodiesel co-op in Wilmington, agrees with his beer industry colleague. Committed to sustainable practices and inspired by the floor malting techniques that have won awards for Copper Fox Distillery in Sperryville, VA, he and business partner Brent Manning started Riverbend Malt House in 2011.

“Small farms can definitely take advantage of this niche,” he says. “We are seeing a nationwide movement of micro-malt operations. So if the region is supporting locally crafted products, there’s an opportunity. We use a couple of farmers, but mostly one farm owned by Buddy Hoffner near Salisbury.”

Simpson (and Manning, for that matter) came to his new occupation somewhat unexpectedly, after an eye-opening conversation about the meaning of local food and its relationship to the thriving beer scene in North Carolina’s de facto brewing capital.

“It was brought to my attention that almost all the ingredients in local beer came from 1,500 to 3,000 miles away,” he says. “Not very local!”

In many ways, that realization nudged him closer to a new career in malting. Information from the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association proved to be invaluable to Simpson and Manning’s plan, as did a number of homebrew trials using smoked malt procured from their visit to Copper Fox. Once they learned that the state’s growers planted about 20,000 acres of barley and 700,000 acres of wheat, they decided to take the plunge.

“We decided that one malt house might be better than the 14th brewery opening near Asheville,” Simpson quips. “It’s funny, the viability of the business seemed pretty good once we figured out how much malt tonnage is being brewed in NC. We also thought that the sustainable, local niche had a place and was definitely needed. We were focusing on a triple bottom line: people, planet, profit.”

Today they sell six-row heritage malt, six-row pale malt, Carolina rye malt, Appalachian white wheat malt and Appalachian red wheat malt, and have worked with Weeping Radish Brewery, Fullsteam Brewery, Top of the Hill Brewery, Pisgah Brewing Co., Wedge Brewing Co., Wicked Weed Brewing and Asheville Brewing Co., among others.

Like the Stanleys in Massachusetts, Erik May and his business partner Paul Schelhaas thought about opening a brewery before seeing more opportunity in malting instead. Noticing a conspicuous lack of local malt houses in Michigan, the two weighed their options, assessed their probability of success, and decided to follow their entrepreneurial instincts into a new line of work.

May, an Air Force veteran and an active member of the Michigan Air National Guard, takes care of sales and marketing for Pilot Malt House, their ambitious little startup, while Schelhaas, a licensed electrician with experience as a homebrewer, handles malt production and distribution. Both share a passion for craft beer, and neither lets the fact that Michigan has a small number of barley farms get in the way of their aspirations.

“Just as many of our local breweries are not necessarily trying to compete with the likes of MillerCoors or Anheuser-Busch, we aren’t trying to compete with the massive malt houses in Wisconsin, Minnesota and westward,” May explains. “We feel that we provide a higher-quality, hand-crafted malt that ultimately provides brewers and distillers with an exceptional local option.”

May and Schelhaas currently work with about half a dozen farmers through the Michigan State University Extension office, but remain confident that they will increase the number of growers along with acreage as Pilot continues to attract more business from area breweries. Due to a shortage of local grain, the pair currently purchase a portion of their supply from North Dakota. Nevertheless, May remains hopeful that they’ll be able to transition to a 100 percent Michigan-grown malt house by the end of the year. He also hopes to be able to eventually offer as many as 14 different malt varieties.

“We do anticipate the demand for locally sourced grains to continue to grow,” he says. “As malting becomes more localized, the more adventurous the malt varieties will become—just like the brews themselves. We hope to be the malt house that is tactical (stealing one of my military terms) enough to be able to brainstorm with breweries on whatever they’d like to see in a malt variety and artisanally craft that variety specifically for that brewery. This is the type of accessibility we see ourselves being able to thrive on.”

Again and again, micro-maltsters return to the notion of beer brewed with a sense of place. They talk about grain as an ingredient with terroir, an idea that is echoed by brewers looking to distinguish themselves in a crowded market. So while the appeal of hop flavor isn’t likely to diminish any time soon, perhaps we’re witnessing the emergence of a second type of beer drinker, the malt maniac. And maybe, like Rogue and a handful of others, brewers will begin to call attention to the provenance of their barley, wheat and rye.

From a business perspective, emphasizing terroir also makes sense for small maltsters who can’t match the prices offered by their much-larger competitors.  By working with breweries that share an interest in promoting native beers, micro producers like Pilot Malt House and Rebel Malt don’t have to go head to head with big malt companies that have an advantage in terms of price per pound.

“Our product has been extremely well-received thus far,” says Erik May of Pilot. “The Buy Local and Farm to Table movements have definitely taken hold in Michigan.”

Jergensen in Nevada, with a few more years of malting under his belt, goes into more detail, explaining his view on the cost-benefit calculation breweries must make if they decide to work with micro-malting operations like his own:  “The issue of price per pound and the marketability between breweries seems to narrow down to volume produced and appeal to the target customer,” he says. “Our largest brewer in Reno (Great Basin), makes lots of beer, and the 30-cent price difference between my malt and their silo malt is a huge cost factor. They use a few tons a year for seasonal offerings,” he says. “The other scenario is a start-up two-barrel nano (Stoneyhead) that uses 100 percent Rebel Malt, and Paul just wants to support local business.”

Others think the argument that micro-malted grains are too expensive is just an excuse. They contend that the grain bill makes up a very small part of the overall cost of a beer and stand behind the quality of their local products.

“You can actually taste the grain,” says Jason Cody, president of the fast-growing Colorado Malting Co. “And you know you’re not drinking Wisconsin or Minnesota.”

In 2008, after growing two-row barley on contract with Coors for 48 years, Cody and his family were looking for a way to add value to their farm. Knowing that white spring wheat, red winter wheat and rye all also grew well in the high-altitude San Luis Valley and figuring they could start by selling malt to homebrewers, they converted an old 540-gallon milk tank into a unimalt system and set to work making base malt.

They also decided to move away from exclusively growing Coors barley varieties, got help from a few of the macro brewer’s former malting advisers and benefited from something else many new businesses hope for but can’t always count on: good timing.

“Wynkoop called us the first day we opened and ordered 40,000 pounds,” Cody says. “We were very surprised.”

San Luis Valley Brewing Co. in downtown Alamosa came calling soon thereafter, and before long the Codys were moving all the malt they could produce. Converting a barn into a dedicated malt house and adding another tank to their operation enabled them to meet demand for a while, but this proved to be a temporary fix when breweries like New Belgium, Dogfish Head and Oskar Blues began placing orders.

In its first year, Colorado Malting produced an average of 2,000 pounds of malt per month. Now it’s up to 40,000 pounds every 30 days, and Cody has plans to add two more malt vessels before the year is done. He also estimates that his company will bring in $1 million in revenue in 2014.

“We have some of the best quality malt in the whole world,” Cody declares. “And we’ve been pretty successful with that.”

The beer community in Boston rallied to support victims of the bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15. Photo by Mike Johnson.

By Heather Vandenengel

It did not take long for the New England beer community to join together and rally support for victims, friends, families and the Boston community after the bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15.

The morning after the attacks, which killed three and injured more than 250, the Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont, MA, announced that it was donating more than $1,700 to the victims and the families of the bombings; it had originally raised the money to help launch the new location for a beer store in Winchester, MA.

Meanwhile, David Carlson, owner of Marshall Wharf Brewing Co. in Belfast, ME, posted a thread on a BeerAdvocate forum saying he wanted to “help heal Boston with beer.” With help from Framingham, MA-based lager brewery Jack’s Abby, he held an event at a Framingham bar one day later featuring beer donated from 25 breweries and a raffle with prizes donated from local beer stores and beer geeks. The event raised almost $9,000 for The One Fund Boston, established to help those most affected by the attacks.

For the second year, marathon sponsor Boston Beer Co. released Sam Adams 26.2 Brew, a limited-edition gose brewed for the marathon and sold at bars along the marathon route and around Boston. This year, it donated all profits from the sales of the beer, as well as donations accepted from visitors who toured the brewery in April, to the Greg Hill Foundation, which responds to immediate needs of families affected by tragedy.

There are many more of these stories: Mystic Brewery in Chelsea, MA, donated sales from the tasting room release of its 14-month barrel-aged flor-sherry yeast-fermented ale, Entropy; Night Shift Brewing in Everett raised over $1,200 with sales from the taproom-exclusive release of its Berliner Weisse-style beer, Ever Weisse; Harpoon Brewery announced three “Brewed for Boston” nights, where all beer and pretzel sales at its beer hall would be donated to The One Fund.

Rich Buceta of SingleCut Beersmiths in Queens, NY. Photo courtesy SingleCut Beersmiths.

By Sarah Annese

When thinking about great beer cities in the United States, Portland, Denver, Seattle and San Francisco might come to mind. But New York? Probably not. At least not yet.

At the forefront of mixology culture and the setting of more than a few wine bars, New York has lacked in local brews. That’s not to say contributions from institutions like Brooklyn Brewery, Chelsea Brewing or the Heartland chain haven’t had an impact on the local scene, but for a long time they were the only names in the game.

Now, a spate of dedicated homebrewers are opening craft and nano breweries throughout the city, particularly in the outer boroughs. These brewers are so committed to improving New York City’s beer landscape that many fit brewing into the off hours from their full-time jobs.

Paul Sciara had been brewing with his brothers John and Jeff for years. Since the response to their beers was so positive, they decided to launch City Island Beer Co. in the Bronx. Their flagship pale ale is contract-brewed at Paper City Brewery in Holyoke, MA, while the brothers look for space for a brewery in their home borough. “We’re a local brand,” says Sciara, who works as an engineer by day. “Craft beer is a big growth area in the city. … It’s more exciting than you can imagine.”

Queens was a veritable brewing desert until 2012 when three breweries opened in the borough. Ethan Long and Marcus Burnett, friends and longtime homebrewing partners, led the trend with Rockaway Brewing Co. As California transplants, they felt New York City needed more local beer. “If Portland can have [more than 70] breweries, New York City can have more than a handful,” Long says. He works for a scenery fabrication operation and Burnett works as a cinematographer during the day.

Though the brewery takes its name from the Rockaway neighborhood, Long and Burnett brew out of Long Island City. Being a part of the brewing trend is “pretty amazing,” Long said. “I was calling it a small wave, but it’s really like a tsunami.”

Bridge and Tunnel Brewery opened in Maspeth, Queens, in late 2012. It’s a one-man nano brewery by homebrewer Rich Castagna. He manages to fit in brewing between family obligations (he has a wife and three kids) and a full-time job arranging exports for a shipping company.

In December Rich Buceta opened SingleCut Beersmiths in Astoria, Queens. Buceta began homebrewing in the ’90s. He aims for SingleCut to be a “true local brewery.”

With a focus mainly on lagers, Buceta takes inspiration from guitar and rock legends, such as Cult guitarist Billy Duffy, who has two of SingleCut’s IPAs named for him. The 19-33 Queens Lagrr is a shout-out to the year Prohibition ended. “I hold the standard very high,” he says. “My heroes are the brewers on the West Coast and in Vermont. Opening a local brewery isn’t good enough. It has to be great.”

This trend of homebrewers going pro in New York City shows no signs of stopping in 2013.

EST Brewing will debut in mid-2013 at the Brooklyn Flea’s Smorgasbar section of its summer food market Smorgasburg. EST is the brainchild of Erica Shea and Stephen Valand, owners of a successful homebrewing kit business, the Brooklyn Brew Shop, along with their production manager, Tim Evans.

“It’s the coolest thing in the world to realize that you can do this at home and serve your friends something delicious,” Shea says. “We like re-creating that experience for people, but we also really like drinking our beer.” EST’s beers will reflect food and flavors of the seasons, the first being a jalapeño saison.

Slated to launch in autumn 2013 is Finback Brewery, started by homebrewers Basil Lee and Kevin Stafford. Lee and Stafford are closing in on a location for their 20-barrel system. Meanwhile, the pair has been bringing beers to homebrewing events. “The homebrewing community is pretty awesome in New York City,” Lee says. “Everyone’s excited and fundamentally interested in making the beer.”

It’s been two years since Gov. Mark Dayton signed the so-called “Surly Bill,” allowing Minnesota breweries to serve their beer on site. The legislation was in response to a then-proposed $20 million brewery from Surly Brewing Co., but the microbreweries and their fans have been the biggest beneficiaries. Neighborhood breweries, like Fulton Beer in Minneapolis, have been able to welcome thirsty Minnesotans into their homes for a drink in their taprooms.

Before passage of the bill, the brewing scene was comparatively bleak. Brian Hoffman, co-founder of Fulton Beer, says only a few breweries were producing quality beer and growth was stagnant. “In the five years or so before the passage of the law, less than 10 new breweries had opened their doors,” he says, noting that the small number didn’t reflect the increase in craft beer consumption in the state over the same five years.

Omar Ansari, president and founder of Surly Brewing Co., says the model for a successful brewery was different from today’s. “We had to sell a lot of our beer in restaurants, bars and liquor stores to make it,” he recalls.

Hoffman agrees. “Since the passage of the bill, there have been around 10 new breweries that either opened their doors or are currently working to make it happen,” Hoffman says. Although he doesn’t attribute the rapid growth entirely to the passage of the Surly Bill, he acknowledges the prospective revenue stream from taprooms made the economics of opening a brewery less frightening.

Ansari notes the recent opening of Indeed Brewing, the first Minnesota brewery built specifically with a taproom in mind. “It’s one of the first places conceptualized after the law change.”

Those that were already open have already seen a noticeable economic impact. Fulton has added eight employees, comprising brewing staff, business staff, taproom managers and bartenders. “We have been able to fund some considerable growth,” Hoffman boasts.

Best of all, removal of Minnesota’s draconian brewing laws allows the brewer to connect with the customer. “It’s a lot of fun for us to be able to get feedback on beers or styles folks would like to see brewed,” Hoffman says. “In the end, that’s why we do what we do. We love beer.”

On the island of Nantucket in Massachusetts, Cisco Brewers, Nantucket Vineyard and Triple Eight Distillery live in harmony and serve libations that can please any kind of drinker, any kind of taste.

Stand for just a moment with your back to the large white event tent and soak in the scene. Directly in front of you is the winery and its tasting room. To your left is the distillery, where aging barrels hold copper-colored liquid and other spirits. Across the stone plaza and to your right is the brewery itself and its pale ales, sour brews and one-off concoctions that delight the palate. All of this is in just one location on the island of Nantucket in Massachusetts, in what CEO Jay Harman calls “Boozney Land.”

It’s where Nantucket Vineyard, Triple Eight Distillery and Cisco Brewers live in harmony and serve libations that can please any kind of drinker, any kind of taste. It’s a triple threat, a hat trick, and becoming more common around the United States.

The wine boom of the 1970s and 1980s led into the craft beer revolution that began in the decades after and continues today. Now artisanal distilleries are  gaining momentum. Most beverage entrepreneurs have long been content with running one business, but there are a growing number of breweries—including Rogue Ales, Dogfish Head, Samuel Adams, New Holland and others—that are adding distilling to their operations. There are wineries linked to breweries, including Wagner Valley in New York, Old North State in North Carolina, Corcoran Vineyards in Virginia and Firestone Walker in California.

Only a handful of companies, however, try all three.

Pick Your Poison

“You have to be a little crazy,” says Bryan Siddle, director of operations at Missouri’s Crown Valley, when asked why he would chose to run a winery, brewery and distillery. All three play a part in a tourist destination crafted by Siddle, south of St. Louis in Ste. Genevieve. In addition to the libation-making facilities, there are  lodging, a restaurant, cattle and buffalo farms, a golf course, soda-making facilities and—wait for it—a tiger sanctuary.

“The hardest part is that is different. I have three bottling lines for three different products. Then there is the marketability, the production and making sure each is made consistently,” Siddle says. “It’s not easy.”

So why do it? “Well, wine is out of style, craft beer is hotter than Hades, and craft distillers are getting hot,” he says. Siddle is trying to have something that appeals to everyone, to entice people to visit Crown Valley and then stick around for a while afterward. He hits all the demographics with what he offers, but admits there are people who come to the brewery who don’t visit the winery and vice versa.

“You get so many types of personalities that for us, with agritourism, it makes sense to have many different beverage operations,” he says. The winery was conceived in 2000 and opened two years later. Three years after that, he opened a sparkling wine facility. Noticing the trend (and because of his own fondness for beer—his grandfather was a brewer at Stag in Illinois), in 2007 he converted an old schoolhouse into a brewery. Then, for good measure, “I said, Why not just do some spirits?”

Carillon Brewing Co. will brew beer at Carillon Historical Park in Dayton, OH, using equipment and techniques from the 19th century.

Carillon Historical Park in Dayton, OH, is set to become the first museum in the United States that produces and sells its own beer using equipment and techniques from the mid-19th century. Costumed actors will demonstrate the historic process, producing wine, cider and cheese along with ample amounts of beer for patrons to enjoy.

The $3 million brewery will be in a new building in the museum’s Kettering Family Education Center. Carillon Brewing Co. is set to open at the end of 2013 on the 65-acre campus, joining 30 exhibit buildings and structures.

The idea was proposed at a meeting in 2006 with Brady Kress, president and CEO of Dayton History, which runs the park. “[We] laid out about 200 new initiatives that we were going to start and map out,” he recalls. “One of those was a re-creation of a 19^th century brewery.”

In its heyday, Dayton and surrounding Montgomery County boasted close to two dozen breweries, wineries and distilleries. “All of them had their own stories and personalities with the individuals who started them,” Kress says. “And we wanted to create something where we could not just reproduce some product, but most importantly demonstrate the processes using period tools and techniques to teach all of our 160,000 annual visitors those 19^th century stories.”

Emphasizing that brewing will be the facility’s main purpose, Kress adds, “The building that we’re constructing and designing [will be] copying architectural details from other mid-century commercial buildings built here in Dayton.”

Within the walls of the brewery, Carillon will brew a variety of styles. “Since we’re focused on the middle of the 19^th century, it provides a unique opportunity for us to do both ales and lagers and talk about that transition and what that meant from a cooling standpoint, and be able to talk to all of our guests about top- and bottom-fermenting yeasts.”

Vail Miller Jr. of Heidelberg Distribution Co. provided the lead gift to get the Carillon project off the ground. “My great grandfather, Albert W. Vontz, was a brewer,” Miller explains. “When he sold his Cincinnati brewery, Old Vienna, he became the Dayton distributor for Heidelberg Brewery in Covington, Kentucky.”

Miller and Kress first discussed the idea over a few cold pints. “It was during our conversation over beers when the conversation turned to Dayton’s rich brewing history and the current reality—we don’t have any Dayton local breweries in operation,” Miller says. (That changed in 2012 with the opening of the Dayton Beer Co.) Miller decided that supporting the brewery would be a perfect way to celebrate civilization’s 10,000-plus-year infatuation with beer, not to mention Heidelberg’s 75^th anniversary.

“Remaining dollars were private donations from our members and donors here at the park,” Kress says. Funds will be used to pay for everything from construction of the facility to costuming for the interpreters.

Operation of the facility will require a brewer. “We’re discussing whether it would be advantageous for us to find a current brewer or if it makes more sense to find a historic trades interpreter that can learn those processes, instead of trying to reverse engineer it,” Kress says. He and his staff are open to either option, so long as nothing is lost in the interpretation and teaching of the techniques and challenges brewers of that time faced, before the advances modern brewers enjoy today. But beyond learning the techniques, Kress wants a brewer who will help design the brewery.

“We want them to be part of the team that puts the finishing touches on the facility,” Kress says. “We’re going through the below-ground, mechanical pieces and putting the blueprints together for the structure, and we want to have somebody here for a year prior to opening, so they help lead that process in creating our 19^th century brewery.”

Only non-believers completely lacking in dogma could embrace this anything-goes style of beer, a style that not only irreligiously rejects the confines of formal classification but whose original purpose was nothing less than the blasphemous inebriation of partakers on the otherwise solemn occasion of Christ’s birth.

Just take a look at some of the bottles who take the Christmas name in vain.

Great Lakes Christmas Ale is made with honey.

Schlafly Christmas Ale is made with juniper berries.

Blue & Gray Christmas Cranberry is made with, yup, cranberries.

Moylan’s White Christmas is made with rye and wheat.

And Bristol Brewing Christmas Ale is made with just about everything in your mother’s spice cabinet.

Anchor has proclaimed “Merry Christmas & Happy New Year” with tree branches and licorice.

And forget about Abita—it changes the recipe for its Christmas Ale every year.

Van den Bossche Father Christmas is corked. Sly Fox Christmas Ale comes in a can.

Gritty McDuff’s Christmas Ale is an ESB, Goose Island’s is a brown ale. Three Floyds Alpha Klaus Xmas is a porter. Weeping Radish Christmas Bier is a doppelbock.

Don’t look for any definitive guidance on the import aisle: France’s Brassier La Choulette makes a biere de garde for Noël; Brasserie Dubuisson’s Scaldis Noel from Belgium is a strong dark ale; Germany’s Brauerei Mahr makes a Christmas Bock; Harvey’s Christmas Ale from England is a barleywine. And forget about Denmark: Its Mikeller Red/White Christmas is a mix-and-match blend of British red ale and Belgian witbier.

The only thing they seemingly share in common is their head-banging potency that gives “Silent Night” a whole ‘nother meaning—especially when it’s labeled “Stille Nacht” and it contains no less than 12 percent alcohol.

Heretics! Infidels! Pagans!