Cooking / Beer H i BREWING LOCAL e BREWING r o n y m Explore Local Flavor Using Cultivated u s LOCAL and Foraged Ingredients B Americans have brewed beers using native ingredients since pre-Columbian times, and a new wave of brewers has always been at the forefront of the R AAMMEERRIICCAANN -- GGRROOWWNN BBEEEERR locavore movement. Brewers use locally-grown, traditional ingredients as well as cultivated and foraged flora to produce beers that capture the essence of the E place they were made. In Brewing Local, Stan Hieronymus examines the history of how distinctly American beers came about, visits farm breweries, and goes W foraging for both plants and yeast to discover how brewers are using novel ingredients to create unique beers. The book introduces brewers and drinkers to the ways herbs, flowers, plants, trees, nuts, and shrubs flavor distinctive beers. I N No one writing about beer brings as much insight, detail, or revelation to the subject as Stan Hieronymus, and Brewing Local may be his best work to G date. Ostensibly directed at brewers looking to bring a little local flair into their beer (which it delivers, in spades), it accomplishes something more profound. By connecting beer to place and time, Hieronymus reintroduces us to this L beverage we think we know so well. It's one of the few books with the capacity to O make you think anew about beer. —Jeff Alworth, Author of The Beer Bible C You could be happy just buying it [Brewing Local] for the valuable information on A a wide range of unusual botanicals and how to use them in beer. But once you start reading, you get swept away on an unexpected journey, ultimately ending L up deep inside the minds of people doing some of the most exciting things in beer today. —Randy Mosher, Author of Tasting Beer $19.95 U.S. BByy SSttaann HHiieerroonnyymmuuss FFoorreewwoorrdd bbyy SSaamm CCaallaaggiioonnee ® BREWING LOCAL AMERICAN-GROWN BEER Explore Local Flavor Using Cultivated and Foraged Ingredients By Stan Hieronymus Brewers Publications A Division of the Brewers Association PO Box 1679, Boulder, Colorado 80306-1679 BrewersAssociation.org BrewersPublications.com © Copyright 2016 by Brewers Association All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. Neither the authors, editors, nor the publisher assume any responsibility for the use or misuse of information contained in this book. Printed in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-13: 978-1-938469-27-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hieronymus, Stan, author. Title: Brewing local : American-grown beer / by Stan Hieronymus. Description: Boulder, Colorado : Brewers Publications, a division of the Brewers Association, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016022746 (print) | LCCN 2016032153 (ebook) | ISBN 9781938469275 (pbk.) | ISBN 1938469275 | ISBN 9781938469374 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Beer--United States. | Flavored alcoholic beverages--United States. | Brewers--United States. Classification: LCC TP577 .H547 2016 (print) | LCC TP577 (ebook) | DDC 663/.420973--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022746 Publisher: Kristi Switzer Technical Editor: Jason Perkins, Mark “Merriwether” Vorderbruggen Copyediting: Christina Echols Indexing: Doug Easton Production and Design Management: Stephanie Johnson Martin and Jason Smith Cover and Interior Design: Kerry Fannon Production: Justin Petersen Interior Images: Stan Hieronymus Cover Photography: Kerry Fannon Interior Illustrations: From the public domain. Source: commons.wikimedia.org For my wife, Daria Labinsky, the first and still the most popular beer writer in our family. Table of Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................vii Foreword ..............................................................................................................ix Introduction: The Importance of Being Local ...........................................xiii Part I – Local, Now and Then 1 Beer From a Place ........................................................................................3 2 Tiswin to Choc .............................................................................................25 3 King Corn .......................................................................................................61 Part II – Where Beer Is Grown 4 Cultivating Beer ...........................................................................................87 5 Foraging for Beer .......................................................................................113 6 Foraging for Yeast .................................................................................133 Part III – From Farms, Gardens, Fields, and Woods 7 Grains ...........................................................................................................167 8 Trees ..............................................................................................................177 9 Plants ...........................................................................................................203 10 Roots ...........................................................................................................237 11 Mushrooms ................................................................................................247 12 Chiles ..........................................................................................................255 Part IV – Brewing Local 13 History + Local = Recipes .......................................................................263 Le Pamplemousse Enorme .......................................................................266 1835 Albany Ale .............................................................................................268 Kentucky Common ........................................................................................270 Your Father’s Mustache ...............................................................................272 Indigenous: All-American Chile Corn Lager .........................................274 The Great Pumpkin Ale ...............................................................................276 Rosemary Pumpkin Belgian Ale ...............................................................278 Sweet Potato Ale ..........................................................................................280 D.A.M.'s Bloom BRU Kölsch ........................................................................282 Our Mother the Meadow ............................................................................284 Single Tree: Hickory .....................................................................................286 Dead Leaves & Burdock .............................................................................288 Birch Sap Black Bière de Garde ..............................................................290 Paw Paw ..........................................................................................................292 Pecan Porter ...................................................................................................294 Cucumber Crush ..........................................................................................296 Beet Berliner Weisse ....................................................................................298 Beets, Rhymes, and Life .............................................................................300 2015 Hibernal Dichotomous ......................................................................302 Wee Shroomy .................................................................................................304 Golden Shroomy ...........................................................................................306 Dark Old Ale ...................................................................................................308 Appendix: Resources .............................................................................................311 Bibliography .............................................................................................................315 Index ..........................................................................................................................323 Acknowledgments I have had the good fortune, in writing four books for Brewers Publications, to have people smarter than I tell me something that provided focus for each book. For Brew Like a Monk it was Hedwig Neven, brewing director at Duvel Moortgat, explaining the importance of “digestibility” to the beers such as his own Duvel or the ones brewed in monasteries. The book you have in your hands would not be the one it is were it not for conversations with Caleb Levar in Minnesota, Aaron Kleidon at Scratch Brewing, and Mark Jilg at Craftsman Brewing. Were I to try to condense what I took from the three into in one sentence, it would be: “Everything is everywhere, you can make it somehow better in the simplest of ways, and we shouldn’t be afraid to talk about the importance of a brewer’s intent.” Brewers understand that they make wort and yeast makes the beer. I hope that everybody at Brewers Publications and the people whose names should be in bigger type than they are at the bottom of the second page understand I con- sider it the highest compliment to say they perform the same magic as yeast. Publisher Kristi Switzer found a vision for this book before I did and patiently waited for me to catch up. Also, thanks to Mark “Merriwether” Vorderbruggen, author of Idiot’s Guide: Foraging, and Jason Perkins at Allagash Brewing Co. for vii Brewing Local their technical expertise; to Christina Echols for fine-tuning my words; and to Kerry Fannon for the design and Justin Petersen for the actual production. In addition, special thanks to Sam Calagione for a foreword that captures the spirit of what so many brewers are doing with ingredients somehow known both as “traditional” and “nontraditional.” More thanks to Greg Casey, who shared much of the research he did on his own book, Americans Drink Beer with Their Eyes, likely available in 2017. It will be the most extensive investigation ever into the role adjuncts played in American brewing history, and I’ll be the first in line to buy it. A few oth- ers who went above and beyond include Conrad Selle, Jace Marti, Dave Berg, Randy Mosher, Nathan Zeender, Marika Jospehson, Ryan Tockstein, and Ann George at Hop Growers of America. As always, none of this would happen without the support of my family, Daria and Sierra, who for some reason never say no when I suggest some- thing like “I need to drive down to Krebs, Oklahoma this weekend.” I also fully understand that books like this would not exist if nobody were there to buy them, so thank you. viii Foreword Mildred: “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” Johnny: “Whadda you got?” T his famous exchange with Marlon Brando as Johnny in the movie The Wild One is a great starting point for a discussion of brewing locally in America at this moment in time. Americans are blissfully rebellious in nature. It is awesome to see so many American brewers (pro and home) brewing outside the box in 2016, the 500th anniversary of the German purity law, the Reinheitsgebot. The pilgrims who settled the Plymouth Colony in the northeast United States, like ancient brewers around the world, brewed beer with whatever beau- tiful, natural ingredients they could find that came from the earth. They tasted lovely, fermented miraculously, and made them feel closer to their gods and ancestors. Today it’s no different. The rise of small breweries we are currently enjoying here in the United States is often called a revolution by the media. That’s inaccurate. It’s a Renaissance, not a revolution. Prior to Prohibition, there were over 4,000 indie, artisanal, small-scale breweries making distinct regional beers in this country. For everything you have heard about the rise ix