Hudson Valley Malt

Last week we took a trip up to see Dennis and Jeanette at Hudson Valley Malt, our close partners in brewing local beer. Hudson Valley Malt has been floor malting barley for us since we started brewing, but in the last two years, we’ve been able to include an increasing amount of local grain in all of our recipes. Our Sour IPAs now use 75% NYS grown barley and wheat and the ingredients of our Sour Farmhouse program are 100% NYS sourced.

On this trip, we were able to stop by some fields of grain that will eventually make it to our mash tun. We met up with Ken Migliorelli, at Migliorelli Farm, who walked us through a field of a new malting barley variety his farm is growing in collaboration with Cornell University. We also stopped to see John Kukon, at Kukon Brothers Farms, who showed us 20 golden acres of our soft red wheat. The 20 acre field should supply us enough wheat for about a year of brewing!

We also got to see how raw barley grains are transformed into a malt that is ready for us to use in our beer. Dennis and Jeanette showed us how to rake through the drying grains to ensure an even amount of moisture and germination, let us crack barley kernels in our teeth, and walked us through the process of making their wonderful pilsner-style malt.

It was a first hand look into the wonderful work of our partners in brewing, and a reminder that beer is an agricultural product, grown from the ground up, and cared for by lots of folks before we get to drink it.

Valley Beer Summer 2021 | 5%

Sour Farmhouse Ale brewed with 100% locally grown barley and raw wheat, fermented in our foudres with wild yeast & souring bacteria, aged for one year in oak wine barrels, and bottle conditioned with local wildflower honey for 9 months