Local! Its not only about Hops....

While there have been many reports coming out of places like New York, North Carolina and Virginia regarding hop farming and  meeting the demands of the Craft Beer industry, hops are certainly not the only commodity of sorts being explored by regional brewers.

Local sourcing is the preferred method for many young, new brewers and breweries. This sourcing for ingredients is certainly no longer simply tied to hops. Some of the elements that truly make a beer local is not merely where it is produced but what the brewers use to produce it. "Local" is to be a term associated with distance or within a certain number of miles on map addressing where the end product was produced or manufactured, but now in 2014 it also is taking on a greater meaning with regard to the location of where the actual ingredients were grown.

Many Craft beer lovers are moving more towards this as well in terms of their buying patterns. They want to know where the ingredients come from, what local farms are supporting the breweries and vice versa. Hops seemed like the natural option for brewers wanting to move more "local" but after the last few years with success of such brewing programs like Hardywood Park Craft Brewery's Reserve Series many other local breweries are following suit with other ingredients.

Hardywood has been successful with its incorporation of local farming products like Ginger (Hardywood Gingerbread Stout), pumpkin (Hardywood Farmhouse Pumpkin) Blackberries and Strawberries (Hardywood Blackberry and Hardywood Strawberry) and even as far as working with local coffee retailers like Black Hand Coffee (Hardywood Mocha Belgique) and Lamplighter (Hardywood Sidamo). This year on Saturday Feb. 1st, Hardywood will release a Bourbon barrel variant of the Hardywood Sidamo! Hardywood also does its RVA/IPA release annually by using 100% local Virginia Hops. Homegrown Hopyards as been an advocate for this release as it has become quite the community project with local growers contributing hops grown within the community to the project for brewing. In years past Homegrown Hopyards  in Richmond, Va has contributed significant numbers of varieties and pounds to the offering. In 2014, B&B Hops program will also be a large supporter of Hardywood !

While Hops may take a few years to propagate successfully enough to establish support for a brewing program, other local forward thinking entrepreneurs are addressing other needs by the regional brewers. SouthYeast Labs out of South Carolina is working towards creating a large yeast strain bank for breweries. Just as the "terroir" impacts Virginia hops, it to creates local yeast that can be captured and cultured on behalf of breweries so that they can incorporate it into their brewing regimen.

David Thornton and Even Skjervold are operating SouthYeast Labs in Greenville, SC within Brewery85. SouthYeast Labs is about locally captured, domesticated wild yeast strains often times from local fruit itself. Nothing can get more local than that and are active in enlisting breweries but have almost a dozen or so working with the yeast strains as trials.

To learn more about SouthYeast Labs and even contribute to their future see here:
http://clemsonideas.com/campaigns/southyeast-labs/

The four main ingredients of Beer are of course; Hops, Yeasts, Malts and Water

Demands for hops are being met by various local growers though mostly small operations scattered throughout the region. Yeasts are being addressed by such start-ups as SouthYeast Labs and the malt is being addressed by such companies as Riverbend Malt House.

Riverbend Malt House located in Asheville, NC  is dedicated to bringing locally farmed, artisan malts into the hands of brewers. Asheville is like the Southern Mecca of the Southern Beer Economy. With dozens of breweries and more on the way in Western North Carolina, there is a huge opportunity to get brewers into using locally sourced barley for instance. Brett Manning and Brian Simpson are offering a sustainable approach that not only will benefit brewers with a far higher level of local quality malt but also provide farmers in North Carolina with a more stable market.

Local Hops, Local Yeast and Local Malts will be the backbone of the Southern Beer Economy!