November 28, 2024 • 44 mins
This week I chatted with Joel Alex, he's the founder of Blue Ox Malthouse in Maine. Blue Ox provides malt for the finest breweries in Maine. I'll have some beer that utilizes malt from Blue Ox, Allagash White and Lunch from Maine Beer Company.
Blue Ox Malthouse
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Blue Ox Malthouse
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is Beer in Front, part of the Beer Media Group.
Every week I'll talk to people in and around the
beer world and get their stories all about beer. That's
Beer in Front and it's coming up now. Welcome to
episode two hundred and thirty five of Beer in Front.
(00:31):
I'm your host, Dave Zalatorus, and Beer in Front is
a charter member of the Beer Media Group. I have
a good show for you today. I'm talking to Joel
Alex over at Blueox Malt House. They're located in Maine
and they provide malt to all sorts of world class breweries, distilleries,
(00:51):
and bakeries, so stay tuned for that. You may have
noticed something was a little different than the intro. I
have left the Odd Pods media at work. I love
all the people that are there, but I want to
start pursuing this beer media group a little bit more. So.
I'm flying solo now, so I'm not to say there's
(01:11):
not going to be ads in the future, but for
the time being, please enjoy this ad free experience of
Beer in Front. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
Ruby and I had a good time. We had We
went to Costco. They had everything all done forty Bucks,
the turkey, the green beans, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes,
(01:35):
little cups of cranberry, throw it in the oven. Hour
and a half hour and forty minutes later you were
good to go. So keep that in mind for next
year if you have a small family like we do.
Forty Bucks and hey in the cart, it went good.
Couple shows lined up for you. Next week, I'm going
to talk all about the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame,
(01:57):
so that should be good. Stay tuned for that next week.
I'm on vacation this week and I have a ton
of interviews lined up to hit record on, so there's
gonna be a good month of episodes coming out. So
please subscribe if you haven't already, so you could always
catch the latest edition of Beer in Front. Also, be
(02:19):
sure to follow me over on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube.
Follow me there at Beer in Front. I'll post some
videos of you know, various beer reviews, and on Monday,
I'm putting out a special, quick little video, so you'll
have to follow me and keep an eye out for
that on Monday. In Beer and Beverage News, Ravenni a
(02:50):
brewing company. They've announced they're gonna have a new name.
Their new name will be steep Ravine Brewing Company. They
put out a press release. The nonsense with the music
festival is over with, thankfully, and they can continue making
great beer. But there is some bad news about this
(03:11):
that the location in the city in Logan Square, they're
going to close on December fourteenth. They're still going to
continue to brew there, but the brewpub itself is going
to close, and they'll keep the Highland Park one open.
So I'm glad for steep Ravine. I'm glad all his
shits behind him and they can continue on. But I'm
(03:34):
sad that was a great location over on Diversy that
I love going to. I loved the food that was there,
so I'm sorry to see that go. But I wish
them all the success in the world, and now they
could just focus on making great beer and also a
lot of Chicago most and cores. They acquired a Cruz Blanca,
(03:55):
which I mean, this came out the day before Thanksgiving
kind of a news dump, so it was kind of
surprising to a lot of people. But Molson course has
bought them, the owner and the head brewer staying on.
According to the article that I'm reading over on Brewbound
and also the owners are going to continue having the
(04:17):
brew pub and I guess they're going to license the
IP now for Molson Corps. So it was kind of surprising,
but Molson Cores is the new owner of Cruz Blanca.
In January, President elect Trump promised that he's going to
put a twenty five percent tariff on all imported goods
from Canada from Mexico. Also there's going to be an
(04:40):
additional ten percent on China. This is kind to effect
alcohol consumption. You get a lot of people buying Mexican
beer brands like Corona Pacifico Medello. You know, how's that
going to affect them? Also, you have tequila that's made
there Canadian whiskey, so the ice of certain things might
(05:01):
be going up. In January, all right, welcome back. Blue
Ox Malt House has been in operation since twenty thirteen.
Their twenty thousand square foot facility is the largest of
(05:21):
its kind in the world outside of Europe. Blue Ox
Malt House is a one hundred percent floor malting company
that provides grain for the finest brewing, distilling, and baking
companies across the Northeast, Joining me today is Joel Alex,
founder of Blue Ox Malt House. Joel, thank you so
much for taking time out to talk about malt today.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Oh, thanks so much for having me, Dave. I'm excited
to share a lotville about what we do and hopefully
hopefully answer some questions and providing the information.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Why start the walt house, It's a good question.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Prior to this, my background, all professional background was teaching
and trail access community organization in rural Maine. So my
academic background was in environmental studies like international policy, so
it wasn't an obvious choice to go into malting. But
(06:22):
after college, I worked in rural Maine doing that kind
of trail access development work, and a lot of my
friends were farming or were somehow involved in agriculture or food,
and I was continuing to kind of look at sustainable
(06:43):
development and what that meant for my region and what
that looked like, and you know, it was just paying attention.
I made a lot of furidated, a lot of fermentation
at home, and I just saw this like up tunity
in the food system where we had all this grain
(07:04):
that was leaving our leading our state, and all this
malted grain that was being imported and we were kind
of losing the economic value of that, and I basically
had the dangerous why. Initially the thought I was talking
to a craft brewer, one of one of the OG's
(07:26):
at Oak Pond Brewing in Maine, which is, you know,
a great little craft brewery that goes back to the
nineties in Maine, very rule, very up there, very out.
If you've been to Maine, you well, we haven't heard
of them, but they're still there. They're good, they're outside
of Skochegan, and yeah, we were just it was just
at that moment Adam was like their head brewer was like, yeah,
(07:49):
we can't use any local grain because nobody's malting it.
And I was like, somebody has to do that. That's like,
that's a brilliant that's that's amazing. Well, it's amazing that
no one's doing that, and then it would be an
amazing thing to do. I was in the process of
going to grad school to study kind of rule economic development,
But once I kind of got that all out of
(08:10):
the way, I was like, well, what would I want
to do with this degree? And I was like, I
want to do something like this. What if I just
tried to do it, and at the time there was
there are only maybe four or five other craft malt
houses in the country to look at Valley Malt down
in Massachusetts, River Bend down in North Carolina, Colorado Malting,
(08:34):
and Colorado. So there's there's a few of them out there,
but not very many of us.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, you would think, like, I mean, it's perfect. The
area that you're in is ideal, with so many great
breweries there that it would make sense for you know,
breweries to use locally sourced products.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Well, when I when I started working on this in
twenty twelve, I was like, there's so many breweries. We've
got thirty three breweries in the state of main I know,
I don't have I actually don't. There's brewing licenses. There's
over two hundred now, but you know, I think some
of those are like multiple type tasting rooms and tap rooms.
(09:11):
But I don't actually know the amount of brewerize that
are crome operating in the state of Maine. I feel
like I should, but I don't. But it's it's approaching
two hundred, I believe. So.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Anyway, well, at the time, there there's like thirty three
and I was like, there's so many and they're importing,
you know, millions of pounds of malted grain. But I
think one of the things that really makes made Main
interesting for the Northeast, and what made me kind of
(09:44):
believe that this was possible here, is that we have
a potato growing industry in the northern part of the
state where you see a scale of agriculture that you
really don't see in the Northeast until you get maybe
down to northern New York and Pennsylvania, and down there
it's a lo of corn, but corn doesn't really grow
(10:04):
well up in northern Maine, and we have that potato culture,
and as part of that culture, there's a grain rotation.
And since around a little around two thousand, Canada Malting
started to put some contracts for grain out of northern Maine.
So there's barley multi barley being grown in Maine that
(10:27):
was just going to Canada, and then anybody who wanted
to use it was buying back a blend through BSG
Distorbusian Center in New York. So it just seemed like
there's I don't know, it seemed like me it was
right to just bring it all home.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I was looking at your website earlier and one thing
that I noticed is that you try to at least,
if not all, of your grains come from the local
area farmers. Was this always part of the plan, like
part of your mission statement when starting.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Blue Ox, Because basically, as I was talking about before,
one of the motivating factors for me was trying to
figure out a way to support working landscapes in Maine
and support my friends because I had so many friends
who were doing agriculture, and I had some friends who
were doing grain specifically, because we were just starting to
(11:21):
get some local gristmills and excitement around local grain for
baking and milling in the state. So I knew I
didn't want a farm that wasn't like my place in
the story, but I wanted to figure out how to
(11:42):
provide accessible, premium, mid size markets for these farms that
are really small compared to out west. For example, I
think some of the recent data, these are approximate numbers,
is that we have about like fifty fifty four thousand
acres of potatoes in Maine in any one season. You know,
(12:05):
in rotation with those potatoes, you can you know equiplate
that there's an equivalent or similar amount of acres in
grains or small grains, and I met somebody. I'm part
of the National Barley Improvement Committee with the American Malting
Barley Association. I work with them a couple of years.
(12:27):
Sit down with a farmer from North Dakota and he
talks about his fifty thousand acre farm and I'm like, Okay,
you've got as much a bridge on your as we
have in Maine. And I bring that up only because
the economy of scale is really different here. Of creating grain,
(12:50):
and growing grain in Maine has a different cost than
growing grain in North Dakota. And in order for these
farmers to increase survivability of their their farms, to really
see benefit from growing this grain and making a high
quality grain that brewers can use, you have to be
able to pay them a premium. You know, if they're
(13:12):
getting the commodity market, if they're getting paid what it
costs somebody in North Dakota to make their grain, they're
losing money. So I wanted to kind of change that.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Now you use it blue ox floor malting. What's the
difference between floor malting and how other malt houses manufacture
their malt?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Sure, well, your most maybe most or at least many
of your listeners probably already know something about the malting process.
But like quick review, for anyone who doesn't, malting is
basically an ingredient. I mean, I think everyone listening to
this podcast probably knows that.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
If not keep listening, I take all the listeners I
can get.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, but the process is taking live grain, soaking it
in water and getting it hydrated, then letting it germinate
and grow, and then baking that grain down in order
to kind of get rid of some flavors, add flavors,
app color depending on the temperature you bake it down at.
(14:21):
And you know, to put it simply, for anyone who
doesn't hasn't made a connection. It's it's basically we do
that because if you take raw grain and you add
hot water, you get a porridge like oatmeal. You don't
get that fermentable liquid that the yeast can then use.
So there are you know, and just like with brewing
or any process, you can apply different methods. You know,
(14:42):
you have those three steps. Those are always the three
steps of malting, you know, whether you have a floor
melting or a pneumatic malting system, it's all always those
three steps are happening. But in our process, what we
do a little differently is that we take that germination
step where the grain is growing and modifying over say
(15:03):
four or five days, and we're doing that on concrete
malting floors, as they historically did a lot in Scotland
in the distilleries. They still you know, many of your listeners,
I'm sure you know, have know of or have used,
(15:24):
you know, for maulted checkpills, or worked with some of
the environments for malted products, but it's not something that's
really been done in North America very much. So right
now I think we have eleven thousan square feet of
like malting floor, which I'm pretty sure is the most
(15:46):
you know, the largest amount of malting floor uh in
in North America. So you know, But but we do
have some good competitors that you know, friendly competition with
the guys out at Admiral for that. Yeah, do you
have to shout out to them well.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Doing like floor malting, I would think that uses less
automation and it's more of a personal, hands on approach
to the grain itself that has to make a difference
in the taste and quality of what you're getting from
blue ox correct.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I mean we believe so, yeah, we definitely I mean,
you know that last card, we certainly believe have yea.
And as far as the process this goes, it is,
I mean, I like to say that we have you know,
we combine modern technology with like the traditional traditional floor malting,
because it is that germination step on the floor that
that makes us a floor molster. That said, we have
(16:43):
steep tanks. We're using modern steeping techniques. You know, one
hundred years ago they would serve barley for two weeks
in a large sister, not change the water things like that.
We don't do any of that. We use modern steeping
techniques to get a nice like clean, bright flavor. You know.
The mald help clean the the grain that we're using.
(17:04):
And then yeah, and then we will transfer it manly,
manually onto the forest and then over the course of
for days, every few hours, me one of my staff
members are in there turning the malt over because it's
it's starting to grow rootlets, there's some heat build up.
(17:27):
And one of the things that I think really makes
floor malt stand out is it's really gentle on the
grain while it's hydrated and growing. And that's when the
grain is most fragile. The pneumatic malting that's sort of
alternative that we see in most places in North America
(17:48):
is it's all mechanized. It's all augs moving it. That
can be really hard on the grain when it's being
like rushed through these mechanical processes. We have a multi
rate redesigned. We just have a turner redesigned. It's very
gentle on the grain, keeps the embryo happy and whole
(18:12):
during that process. And yeah, because we are interacting with
it every few hours over the course of that germination,
there's no set and forget. We're constantly smelling and feeling
and seeing what's happening with the grain, which allows us
to make a lot of modifications multiple times throughout the day.
(18:32):
You know, there's no set and forget, you know, and
we'll adjust or all lengthen the germination time or otherwise
sort of adjust something if we're not really seeing what
we want. So it creates a really nice, well modified,
you know, clean.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Tasting.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
It keeps saying clean tasty, but I just mean like
we're not getting like a lot of vegetable or are
kind of like flavors that you wouldn't hope. Sometimes you
want them, but most of the time you're hoping not
to have that. And you know, one thing that does
make us also a little different with just the floor
malting pieces. I mean, we do that all in climate
(19:17):
controlled spaces, so it's one of the reasons why we're
sort of like modern floor malting. You know again, lookie
way back, you'd see the foror maltings in like the
old Scottish distilleries, they would just open windows on either
side and hope to get a breeze going through to
kind of lower the temperatures. But we do a lot
(19:38):
because malting is all of a temperature and moisture. After
grain selection, you are just trying to help that grain
do its thing by adding moisture, removing moisture, removing temperature,
adding temperature.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I notice on your website you have specialty grains like
rye in oats. Do these use the same floor malting
process as well?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, everything that we malt is floor malted, So we
do rye wheat. I mean, obviously we do barley, but
we do rye wheat oats. You've done some trit to kelly,
which is fun with this kind of new expansion that
we just did. We're gonna be have the sort of
production slots to be able to play around with some
(20:22):
more brains the subqum year, so that will be fun.
But yeah, it's everything's for malted. I mean that that
is definitely part of what makes us very unique. When
it was the last time that somebody listened to this
podcast used it, Flora malted trit to Kelly Vaults, you know,
I don't think there's it's it's a pretty unique product,
(20:45):
tastes amazing, It's it's one of my favorite malts that
we have right now. It's got just like a lovely ready, cracky,
cracker toasty flavor. I I don't mean you know, it's florally,
it's it's just it's just delicious.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Already breweries out there using that right now in a
in a beer that's like widely available or is it
all pretty pretty local? No, it's not widly.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
It's not something that we've we've seen wide adoption on Maine.
Beer Company has done a little bit with that, and
there's actually many small berries like we have to many
customers who have done so it's hard to call it
someone someone anyone in particular but we have seen some
(21:33):
distillers also get excited about that. So I think we're
gonna I think we're going to see some more of
that coming out locally in our region.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, you've got a great lineup on your website. Look
and you had all star lineup. But they do, and
you're really excited.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
One of the things change change tompas. But one of
the things that I've always wanted to do with this
is it's about making local grain available for whoever wants
to use it. So we definitely have heard from customers
that only buy eight hundred thousand pounds of malt a
(22:11):
year from us, you know, bank us for giving them
the like customer service and making this available, where as
they don't get the same attention from the big suppliers
and the big malt houses that you know, an Alagash
or a main vea company get. You know, they're they're
always they've got they've got reps knocking on their door.
(22:32):
But you know, it's just awesome to see anybody who
wants to use local, local grain and that's important to them,
you know, to have access to it, I think. And
so yeah, we we work with a range and we
work with hundreds of a brewery. I mean one of
one of my kind of philosophies also around that is
(22:53):
that local. I don't think local necessarily means better, you know,
across the board and for food. I mean think you know,
probably people can think of their own examples with with beer.
But you know, just just because something is grown locally
doesn't inherently mean that it's it's better quality. But I
think it can. I think if we really want to
(23:16):
support our communities, it has to. And so we really
have to create high quality local beer.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I mean, I think our.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Job, as I see it is to help our customers
do that. So I mean, we have some great customers
who you know, who work with us, who create beer,
you know, I want to say, regardless of whether they
work with us or not. And you know, we hope
we elevate and we think we do elevate a lot
of the stuff that they do. But you know, even
the small berry that is you know, just a three four,
(23:49):
you know, three five barrel system sells other beer out
of the top room. You know, we have a team
of former production brewers that are there to support those
people and help those people, you know, improve their beer.
You know, work with our product and you know, make
sure that they're putting out really really like high quality
(24:11):
products themselves. So it's it's all about you know, we
we really want quality to shine in our local products.
And I think that's that's performance, that's consistency, that's flavor.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
If you noticed, like throughout your time in Blue Ox,
Like I remember it was a couple of years ago,
I was watching the show on I think it was
Netflix called Chef's Stable and the one episode really stuck
with me where it was a pizza chef there. But
he made it part of his mission. He wanted to
get flour and use the grains that were locally sourced
(24:50):
and he just said it was the best in the
world and tries to get all the ingredients of tomatoes
and everything in certain tomatoes you would have to get promittedly,
but he made it as point to get the grains
from Arizona where he was at. Do you see more
and more breweries or in the twelve year old thirteen
years that you've been in existence, if more and more
(25:11):
companies started doing that, like caring more where they.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Get sonately, that is that has been something that we've observed,
you know, and a lot of it has to do
with the same reason that that chef was talking about,
which is his flavor, uniqueness of flavor. The concept of terwar.
I think arwar is a really interesting thing because it
certainly exists in beer, certainly exists in you know, the
(25:37):
water and the grain. You know, the same variety grown
in Maine is going to act differently, taste different than
the same You know that that same variety growing in
Michigan or in South Dakota. And you know, as a
brewers on this on this podcast, no, then you're processing it.
(26:02):
So you know, we as monsters make so many choices
about what flavors to bring out. Our process lends so
much uniqueness to that ingredient as well, and then the
finished product brewers obviously make that one's a million million,
They make dozens of choices more on how to tease
(26:26):
out flavors. So it's really complex. I think when you
look at cider and wine, where you're primarily working with
a fruit juice, and everything historically is just like all
tied to that fruit juice. The concept of terroir is
an easier one to unpack, but but it's really complicated
in beer because it's just there's so many aspects and
(26:51):
ingredients that go into it. I will say that you know,
the you know, so there there's definitely that like with
that shift, there's also other reasons why we've really seen
an uptake in crap, you know, in our product and
focus on local with our customers is because you know,
(27:13):
there's this one which everyone expects me to say, which
is which is true, but is expected, which is increasingly
the like beer consumer, it's our value driven you know.
You see these younger generations, they really want to support
businesses that are aligned with their values. And so one
way to you know, demonstrate your values is to use
(27:34):
local grains to advertise that, to to tie that you know,
story to your brand. But what we've actually you know,
seen in addition to that, which has nothing to do
with the consumer per se, is that local supply chains
are more robust and resilient to global factors. And I
(28:01):
joke that, you know, my kind of mission is to
build more robust, resilient and sustainable like food systems in
in the region. And you know, a more decentralized food
system is a lot more stable and I you know,
you know, my sustainability background you know, ecological background is
(28:23):
all you know, supports that. And it was like and
all it took was a pandemic and a war in
Russia to approved me right, And we just saw we
just saw you know, rate in the last couple of
years with all the geopolitical stuff happening in Europe and
supply getting shipping and supply just just being a little
(28:45):
bit more uncertain. We've we want customers that way, they said,
we we just need to add a local supplier so
that if something happens, we're not fully you know, out
and we're not we're not screwed. So I mean, you've
seen we've just seen that too. There's there's a lot
(29:06):
there's a lot more resiliency instability if you can build
a local supply chain for something and we have customers
that are working with us for that reason.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
That's awesome. Now not only do you make grain and
wall to for breweries, but also distilleries and bakeries and distilling.
Is that it's is it picking up to like where
craft beer is in main or is that more in
the startup phase.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I would say that craft distilling feels to me in
Maine specifically, I you know, I will say that, like,
I know, there's a lot happening nationally with it, and
there's actually a lot happening in main and I'm not
saying that to say that there isn't, because I believe
that craft distilling feels to me like it is where
(29:53):
craft beer was when I started twelve years ago working
on this. I think it's it's definitely still in the
front side of its kind of growth decade that craft
beer just had, and I think we're gonna see a
lot of that craft as far as it relates to us.
(30:14):
And like malting, obviously, distillers, well maybe not obviously. Again,
I don't know how much different listeners know about this
still in process, but you have to make a fermented
beverage like beer before you can distill it. But it's
all a little bit different on the distilling their needs.
And then there's available commercial enzymes, like you really can't
(30:35):
use it growing, but you can use the distilling. So
you see those enzymes being used a lot in your
You've got a lot of corn based spirits or other
product based spirits. There's not always malted grain and every
spirit that you drink. But what's exciting is that for
(30:58):
for us and for the multi grain inside of it
is that there's a new category of American single more
whiskey and potentially it probably has come up on this
podcast before. I would suspect and that that is a
new category of whiskey that a lot of craft distillers
(31:21):
are developing products in. It is it has to be
all produced in you know, one distillery made of all
malted grain. I I do think that there are definitions
that you can find on the web, and I don't
trust myself on the spot to give you the right one.
(31:44):
But but what's really exciting for us is that, you know,
we have a stilling customer, wiggly Bridge, that has been
working with us since the beginning of our facility back
in twenty fifteen. And they you know, sat on there
on the on the whiskey that they're working with asan
(32:05):
for a while. But they've been doing this like single
Multimerican whiskey for a while and you know, have Jeff
just actually won some awards for it. I think one
of the as you know, brewing, I know a little
more about distilling. You know, we're I'm still learning a
lot about it. And I remember Dave Woods, the distiller
(32:28):
and owner just talking about how he uses one of
our more specialty like higher kilned moths, and one of
the reasons he does that for his whiskey is he's like,
distilling is a stripping process, so you're moving things, you're
not adding anything, and so you having that really high
quality ingredient, that ingredient that is giving a lot of
(32:50):
you know, extra flavoring character is adding to his whiskey
because he can keep that in there if it's in there,
but it can't add it if it's not in there.
So you know, he really you know, has like has
leaned it into that and and produces a really delicious product.
So we're we're excited. We're working with some more distilleries too.
(33:12):
So you know, recently as pick up.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Now you recently expanded. What new capabilities does this added
space provide for you? Are you doing different things now
that you weren't able to do, say six we.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Were doing things that we could see Now we're producing
like twice as much malted.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
That we could we tred good for you.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, Yeah, we were sort of capped out on our
old maulting for for several years now, so it's been
fun to get these larger floors operational because what we've
been able to do is move our pail and our
pills and our malts over to and in some of
(33:55):
our mute malts over to the large systems, and that
screed up this old system for us to do really
fun projects with. So we are, for example, taking a
grain a grain from a grower that is just a
town over from us, and they don't have very much grain.
It sounds it might sound like lots done initiative, but
(34:16):
they've got like three four thousand pounds up and we're
going to be able to take that grain, malt it
and provide it to the breeze that are located in
that town or adjacent to it. So they're going to
do this like hyper local project or really excited about it.
That's definitely a project we want to have the production
(34:37):
space for if we hadn't opened this up. But we're
also doing some really fun other projects. Smoking is one
that again with the new floors, we've been able to
open up time and production space to really r and
d with our smoking. So we do a lot of
sort of custom smoking project and we've got some smoking
(35:01):
projects around Seaweeds right now. Which create these really delicious
unanis or smoked malts, And we just did some alder
smoked malt for a customer. And we're happy to play
around with anything. I mean, you always ask if we
do a pete. I don't do pete because my background
(35:23):
and sustainability is like pete's not a renewable resource, so
I don't like to cut that out of the ground.
But we're really happy we're playing with some like waste
products from the coffee uh brought the coffee roasting process
and really trying to be creative with that. So that's
been really fun. And then the big new piece of
equipment that we're just getting sort of going during recording
(35:47):
this podcast is our roaster. So in the past we've
done some really fun chocolate rise and some other really
delicious roasting malts. Malted grain tends to catch on fire
really quickly, so a lot of coffee roasters don't like
(36:08):
to don't like to let us roast our grain and
in their roasters. So we were producing some roasted malts
a few years ago, pre pandemic, and then the cop
the roaster decided that it was a little too dangerous.
He was a little uncomfortable. We've we've been out of
roasted malts for several years, but excited to add that
back into our schedule. So that's going to be a
(36:32):
really fun for us as well.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Oh, it sounds good that the partners on the fire. Yeah. Well, Joe,
I thank you so much for coming on. This has
been fascinating to learn a little bit more about malt,
to learn about your company. Later on in the show,
I'm going to have a couple of beers from breweries
that use malt from Blue Ox, so I'm looking forward
to that. Check out Blue Ox Malt. Howles, Joel, thank
(36:57):
you so much again, I really do appreciate it. Thank
you so much, Dave.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
I really enjoyed speaking with you, and I appreciate your
thoughtful questions.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
All Right, the beer that's in front of me now
is a classic one from Main Beer Company. This is Lunch.
I've had this on the show before and it's a
great beer. But I wanted to have some beers from
Blue Ox and the malt that they provide, so Lunch
is one of them. Maybe that's why it's so good.
(37:35):
So I'm gonna have this and I'm gonna have another
one later on. In the show. So let's crack open
the lunch. Lunch is a nice, beautiful color here, a
little darker than your usual. I pa good use of
(37:58):
caramel malts here, really look great. Good, couple fingers of foam.
Smells really good. I get a lot of like citrus here,
like grapefruit, maybe some orange in the aroma. It smells
really good. Some sweetness from the malt. I can't wait.
(38:20):
This is such a great beer. Yeah, that's really good,
well balanced. Like the sweetness hits me up front. You
get those caramel malts in there, so you get some
of that. Then the hops hit you. They use Amarillo
Centennial in simcohops. This is a seven percent beer and
(38:41):
it's just great, and especially I don't know how old
the last one I had was, but since this is
only a couple weeks old, it really hits the spot. Yeah,
that's that's just perfect. Like this is something you would
have every day. It's phenomenal. I remember Ruby and I
were there before I really even heard of them, Like
(39:02):
this was probably eight years ago and we were there,
and you know, you go somewhere, yo, you've got a
Google breweries near me, And this was one of the
ones that popped open, so we hit them up and
it was like, oh, yeah, this is good. I wish
we had this in Chicago all the time, but Lunch
is a great beer. If you could pick it up,
definitely have to. It's a classic beer. It's well renowned.
(39:26):
Everybody loves this beer. You never heard anybody say a
bad word about this. So if you see this from
Main Beer Company, you definitely have to put this one
in the carts, all right. I wanted to do another
(39:47):
beer that utilizes malt from Blue Ox, and what better
one to have than ali Gash White. This is a
highly decorated Belgian white beer. It's probably the one you
think of the most. It's iconic. It's just a terrific beer.
(40:07):
I talk about it on the show before. It's just
a phenomenal beer and you can find it everywhere. And
one of the main reasons why it's because it's so good.
So let's crack open the Allagash White. This is a
Belgian style wheak beer five point two percent alcohol and
it's brewed with coriander and kirasow orange peel. It's just
(40:43):
such a beautiful light, hazy color, but like super bright.
Good couple fingers of egg shell foam here looks great
and like the foam looks rich and creamy too. Not
like something that's gonna dissipate. This is something that's gonna
to your mustache. Smells really good. Definitely get like the
orange peel and the coriander from the aroma. Just a
(41:06):
lovely smelling beer that's just so good. I mean, there's
a reason why you could find this at every liquor store,
gas station, grocery store around because it's iconic and it's
just so flipping good. I think for me and my
taste buzz, the coriander is really like coming through, that's
(41:28):
hitting me up front. I get a little of the
orange at the end, but that coriander that really like
slaps me up front and off the subject. But I
am one of the ten percent that I can't eat cilantro.
To me, it tastes like dish soap and coriander is
(41:51):
part of the cilantro family. But coriander doesn't like affect
me like I could have this and it's fine, just
does not taste like this show. It tastes delicious, But
all right, back to the beer. But no, the coriander
really hits me up front that orange is coming through
at the end. It's just a beautiful beer finish as well.
(42:15):
The foam is still here. It hasn't died down at all.
It's just a lovely beer. Like before this came out
or before it was available, you know, here in Chicago
where I'm from, I remember back in the late nineties
drinking cell Us White from Pierre Cellus that was distributed here.
That was probably my first entry into this style, and
(42:39):
I still love that beer. I you know, three years ago,
maybe man, maybe even four years ago, I did a
show on that and I talked to an author about
Pierre Cellis that's a great beer. Years ago, before I
even started doing this podcast, I went down to Austin
because his fan, Emily, opened up a brewery there with
(43:02):
allegedly his recipes. And it's such a cool story. If
you're a fan of this, you should definitely if you
have one already, some people are novices. If you're not.
If you don't know the story of Pierre Cells you
should look it up because it's a fascinating story. And
he was the one that started like Hugarden and then
(43:23):
brought the beer over here to America. So you definitely.
If I'm drinking Alligash white, you need to give a
shout out to Pierre Cellis who started this whole Belgian
white style. But Aligash is phenomenal. If you see it,
and I mentioned you could get it anywhere, put it
in the cart. It's just a fabulous beer and it's
(43:45):
made better with Blue Ox Malt. All right, that's going
to wrap things up for this edition of Beer in Front.
I thank you very much for listening. I want to
thank Joel Alex who's the founder of Blue Ox Malt House,
for coming on and talking Walt. So Joel, thank you
very much. If you need to get a hold of me,
you can email me Dave at beerinfront dot com. If
(44:09):
you'd like to support the show, please head over to
Patreon dot com slash beer in Front and you could
help support the show. Since I'm flying solo. Now, have
a great week. I'll talk to you next week, and
remember sometimes the beer in front of you is the
best one yet.
This is Beer in Front, part of the Beer Media Group.
Every week I'll talk to people in and around the
beer world and get their stories all about beer. That's
Beer in Front and it's coming up now. Welcome to
episode two hundred and thirty five of Beer in Front.
(00:31):
I'm your host, Dave Zalatorus, and Beer in Front is
a charter member of the Beer Media Group. I have
a good show for you today. I'm talking to Joel
Alex over at Blueox Malt House. They're located in Maine
and they provide malt to all sorts of world class breweries, distilleries,
(00:51):
and bakeries, so stay tuned for that. You may have
noticed something was a little different than the intro. I
have left the Odd Pods media at work. I love
all the people that are there, but I want to
start pursuing this beer media group a little bit more. So.
I'm flying solo now, so I'm not to say there's
(01:11):
not going to be ads in the future, but for
the time being, please enjoy this ad free experience of
Beer in Front. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
Ruby and I had a good time. We had We
went to Costco. They had everything all done forty Bucks,
the turkey, the green beans, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes,
(01:35):
little cups of cranberry, throw it in the oven. Hour
and a half hour and forty minutes later you were
good to go. So keep that in mind for next
year if you have a small family like we do.
Forty Bucks and hey in the cart, it went good.
Couple shows lined up for you. Next week, I'm going
to talk all about the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame,
(01:57):
so that should be good. Stay tuned for that next week.
I'm on vacation this week and I have a ton
of interviews lined up to hit record on, so there's
gonna be a good month of episodes coming out. So
please subscribe if you haven't already, so you could always
catch the latest edition of Beer in Front. Also, be
(02:19):
sure to follow me over on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube.
Follow me there at Beer in Front. I'll post some
videos of you know, various beer reviews, and on Monday,
I'm putting out a special, quick little video, so you'll
have to follow me and keep an eye out for
that on Monday. In Beer and Beverage News, Ravenni a
(02:50):
brewing company. They've announced they're gonna have a new name.
Their new name will be steep Ravine Brewing Company. They
put out a press release. The nonsense with the music
festival is over with, thankfully, and they can continue making
great beer. But there is some bad news about this
(03:11):
that the location in the city in Logan Square, they're
going to close on December fourteenth. They're still going to
continue to brew there, but the brewpub itself is going
to close, and they'll keep the Highland Park one open.
So I'm glad for steep Ravine. I'm glad all his
shits behind him and they can continue on. But I'm
(03:34):
sad that was a great location over on Diversy that
I love going to. I loved the food that was there,
so I'm sorry to see that go. But I wish
them all the success in the world, and now they
could just focus on making great beer and also a
lot of Chicago most and cores. They acquired a Cruz Blanca,
(03:55):
which I mean, this came out the day before Thanksgiving
kind of a news dump, so it was kind of
surprising to a lot of people. But Molson course has
bought them, the owner and the head brewer staying on.
According to the article that I'm reading over on Brewbound
and also the owners are going to continue having the
(04:17):
brew pub and I guess they're going to license the
IP now for Molson Corps. So it was kind of surprising,
but Molson Cores is the new owner of Cruz Blanca.
In January, President elect Trump promised that he's going to
put a twenty five percent tariff on all imported goods
from Canada from Mexico. Also there's going to be an
(04:40):
additional ten percent on China. This is kind to effect
alcohol consumption. You get a lot of people buying Mexican
beer brands like Corona Pacifico Medello. You know, how's that
going to affect them? Also, you have tequila that's made
there Canadian whiskey, so the ice of certain things might
(05:01):
be going up. In January, all right, welcome back. Blue
Ox Malt House has been in operation since twenty thirteen.
Their twenty thousand square foot facility is the largest of
(05:21):
its kind in the world outside of Europe. Blue Ox
Malt House is a one hundred percent floor malting company
that provides grain for the finest brewing, distilling, and baking
companies across the Northeast, Joining me today is Joel Alex,
founder of Blue Ox Malt House. Joel, thank you so
much for taking time out to talk about malt today.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Oh, thanks so much for having me, Dave. I'm excited
to share a lotville about what we do and hopefully
hopefully answer some questions and providing the information.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Why start the walt house, It's a good question.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Prior to this, my background, all professional background was teaching
and trail access community organization in rural Maine. So my
academic background was in environmental studies like international policy, so
it wasn't an obvious choice to go into malting. But
(06:22):
after college, I worked in rural Maine doing that kind
of trail access development work, and a lot of my
friends were farming or were somehow involved in agriculture or food,
and I was continuing to kind of look at sustainable
(06:43):
development and what that meant for my region and what
that looked like, and you know, it was just paying attention.
I made a lot of furidated, a lot of fermentation
at home, and I just saw this like up tunity
in the food system where we had all this grain
(07:04):
that was leaving our leading our state, and all this
malted grain that was being imported and we were kind
of losing the economic value of that, and I basically
had the dangerous why. Initially the thought I was talking
to a craft brewer, one of one of the OG's
(07:26):
at Oak Pond Brewing in Maine, which is, you know,
a great little craft brewery that goes back to the
nineties in Maine, very rule, very up there, very out.
If you've been to Maine, you well, we haven't heard
of them, but they're still there. They're good, they're outside
of Skochegan, and yeah, we were just it was just
at that moment Adam was like their head brewer was like, yeah,
(07:49):
we can't use any local grain because nobody's malting it.
And I was like, somebody has to do that. That's like,
that's a brilliant that's that's amazing. Well, it's amazing that
no one's doing that, and then it would be an
amazing thing to do. I was in the process of
going to grad school to study kind of rule economic development,
But once I kind of got that all out of
(08:10):
the way, I was like, well, what would I want
to do with this degree? And I was like, I
want to do something like this. What if I just
tried to do it, and at the time there was
there are only maybe four or five other craft malt
houses in the country to look at Valley Malt down
in Massachusetts, River Bend down in North Carolina, Colorado Malting,
(08:34):
and Colorado. So there's there's a few of them out there,
but not very many of us.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, you would think, like, I mean, it's perfect. The
area that you're in is ideal, with so many great
breweries there that it would make sense for you know,
breweries to use locally sourced products.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Well, when I when I started working on this in
twenty twelve, I was like, there's so many breweries. We've
got thirty three breweries in the state of main I know,
I don't have I actually don't. There's brewing licenses. There's
over two hundred now, but you know, I think some
of those are like multiple type tasting rooms and tap rooms.
(09:11):
But I don't actually know the amount of brewerize that
are crome operating in the state of Maine. I feel
like I should, but I don't. But it's it's approaching
two hundred, I believe. So.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Anyway, well, at the time, there there's like thirty three
and I was like, there's so many and they're importing,
you know, millions of pounds of malted grain. But I
think one of the things that really makes made Main
interesting for the Northeast, and what made me kind of
(09:44):
believe that this was possible here, is that we have
a potato growing industry in the northern part of the
state where you see a scale of agriculture that you
really don't see in the Northeast until you get maybe
down to northern New York and Pennsylvania, and down there
it's a lo of corn, but corn doesn't really grow
(10:04):
well up in northern Maine, and we have that potato culture,
and as part of that culture, there's a grain rotation.
And since around a little around two thousand, Canada Malting
started to put some contracts for grain out of northern Maine.
So there's barley multi barley being grown in Maine that
(10:27):
was just going to Canada, and then anybody who wanted
to use it was buying back a blend through BSG
Distorbusian Center in New York. So it just seemed like
there's I don't know, it seemed like me it was
right to just bring it all home.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I was looking at your website earlier and one thing
that I noticed is that you try to at least,
if not all, of your grains come from the local
area farmers. Was this always part of the plan, like
part of your mission statement when starting.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Blue Ox, Because basically, as I was talking about before,
one of the motivating factors for me was trying to
figure out a way to support working landscapes in Maine
and support my friends because I had so many friends
who were doing agriculture, and I had some friends who
were doing grain specifically, because we were just starting to
(11:21):
get some local gristmills and excitement around local grain for
baking and milling in the state. So I knew I
didn't want a farm that wasn't like my place in
the story, but I wanted to figure out how to
(11:42):
provide accessible, premium, mid size markets for these farms that
are really small compared to out west. For example, I
think some of the recent data, these are approximate numbers,
is that we have about like fifty fifty four thousand
acres of potatoes in Maine in any one season. You know,
(12:05):
in rotation with those potatoes, you can you know equiplate
that there's an equivalent or similar amount of acres in
grains or small grains, and I met somebody. I'm part
of the National Barley Improvement Committee with the American Malting
Barley Association. I work with them a couple of years.
(12:27):
Sit down with a farmer from North Dakota and he
talks about his fifty thousand acre farm and I'm like, Okay,
you've got as much a bridge on your as we
have in Maine. And I bring that up only because
the economy of scale is really different here. Of creating grain,
(12:50):
and growing grain in Maine has a different cost than
growing grain in North Dakota. And in order for these
farmers to increase survivability of their their farms, to really
see benefit from growing this grain and making a high
quality grain that brewers can use, you have to be
able to pay them a premium. You know, if they're
(13:12):
getting the commodity market, if they're getting paid what it
costs somebody in North Dakota to make their grain, they're
losing money. So I wanted to kind of change that.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Now you use it blue ox floor malting. What's the
difference between floor malting and how other malt houses manufacture
their malt?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Sure, well, your most maybe most or at least many
of your listeners probably already know something about the malting process.
But like quick review, for anyone who doesn't, malting is
basically an ingredient. I mean, I think everyone listening to
this podcast probably knows that.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
If not keep listening, I take all the listeners I
can get.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, but the process is taking live grain, soaking it
in water and getting it hydrated, then letting it germinate
and grow, and then baking that grain down in order
to kind of get rid of some flavors, add flavors,
app color depending on the temperature you bake it down at.
(14:21):
And you know, to put it simply, for anyone who
doesn't hasn't made a connection. It's it's basically we do
that because if you take raw grain and you add
hot water, you get a porridge like oatmeal. You don't
get that fermentable liquid that the yeast can then use.
So there are you know, and just like with brewing
or any process, you can apply different methods. You know,
(14:42):
you have those three steps. Those are always the three
steps of malting, you know, whether you have a floor
melting or a pneumatic malting system, it's all always those
three steps are happening. But in our process, what we
do a little differently is that we take that germination
step where the grain is growing and modifying over say
(15:03):
four or five days, and we're doing that on concrete
malting floors, as they historically did a lot in Scotland
in the distilleries. They still you know, many of your listeners,
I'm sure you know, have know of or have used,
(15:24):
you know, for maulted checkpills, or worked with some of
the environments for malted products, but it's not something that's
really been done in North America very much. So right
now I think we have eleven thousan square feet of
like malting floor, which I'm pretty sure is the most
(15:46):
you know, the largest amount of malting floor uh in
in North America. So you know, But but we do
have some good competitors that you know, friendly competition with
the guys out at Admiral for that. Yeah, do you
have to shout out to them well.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Doing like floor malting, I would think that uses less
automation and it's more of a personal, hands on approach
to the grain itself that has to make a difference
in the taste and quality of what you're getting from
blue ox correct.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I mean we believe so, yeah, we definitely I mean,
you know that last card, we certainly believe have yea.
And as far as the process this goes, it is,
I mean, I like to say that we have you know,
we combine modern technology with like the traditional traditional floor malting,
because it is that germination step on the floor that
that makes us a floor molster. That said, we have
(16:43):
steep tanks. We're using modern steeping techniques. You know, one
hundred years ago they would serve barley for two weeks
in a large sister, not change the water things like that.
We don't do any of that. We use modern steeping
techniques to get a nice like clean, bright flavor. You know.
The mald help clean the the grain that we're using.
(17:04):
And then yeah, and then we will transfer it manly,
manually onto the forest and then over the course of
for days, every few hours, me one of my staff
members are in there turning the malt over because it's
it's starting to grow rootlets, there's some heat build up.
(17:27):
And one of the things that I think really makes
floor malt stand out is it's really gentle on the
grain while it's hydrated and growing. And that's when the
grain is most fragile. The pneumatic malting that's sort of
alternative that we see in most places in North America
(17:48):
is it's all mechanized. It's all augs moving it. That
can be really hard on the grain when it's being
like rushed through these mechanical processes. We have a multi
rate redesigned. We just have a turner redesigned. It's very
gentle on the grain, keeps the embryo happy and whole
(18:12):
during that process. And yeah, because we are interacting with
it every few hours over the course of that germination,
there's no set and forget. We're constantly smelling and feeling
and seeing what's happening with the grain, which allows us
to make a lot of modifications multiple times throughout the day.
(18:32):
You know, there's no set and forget, you know, and
we'll adjust or all lengthen the germination time or otherwise
sort of adjust something if we're not really seeing what
we want. So it creates a really nice, well modified,
you know, clean.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Tasting.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
It keeps saying clean tasty, but I just mean like
we're not getting like a lot of vegetable or are
kind of like flavors that you wouldn't hope. Sometimes you
want them, but most of the time you're hoping not
to have that. And you know, one thing that does
make us also a little different with just the floor
malting pieces. I mean, we do that all in climate
(19:17):
controlled spaces, so it's one of the reasons why we're
sort of like modern floor malting. You know again, lookie
way back, you'd see the foror maltings in like the
old Scottish distilleries, they would just open windows on either
side and hope to get a breeze going through to
kind of lower the temperatures. But we do a lot
(19:38):
because malting is all of a temperature and moisture. After
grain selection, you are just trying to help that grain
do its thing by adding moisture, removing moisture, removing temperature,
adding temperature.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I notice on your website you have specialty grains like
rye in oats. Do these use the same floor malting
process as well?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, everything that we malt is floor malted, So we
do rye wheat. I mean, obviously we do barley, but
we do rye wheat oats. You've done some trit to kelly,
which is fun with this kind of new expansion that
we just did. We're gonna be have the sort of
production slots to be able to play around with some
(20:22):
more brains the subqum year, so that will be fun.
But yeah, it's everything's for malted. I mean that that
is definitely part of what makes us very unique. When
it was the last time that somebody listened to this
podcast used it, Flora malted trit to Kelly Vaults, you know,
I don't think there's it's it's a pretty unique product,
(20:45):
tastes amazing, It's it's one of my favorite malts that
we have right now. It's got just like a lovely ready, cracky,
cracker toasty flavor. I I don't mean you know, it's florally,
it's it's just it's just delicious.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Already breweries out there using that right now in a
in a beer that's like widely available or is it
all pretty pretty local? No, it's not widly.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
It's not something that we've we've seen wide adoption on Maine.
Beer Company has done a little bit with that, and
there's actually many small berries like we have to many
customers who have done so it's hard to call it
someone someone anyone in particular but we have seen some
(21:33):
distillers also get excited about that. So I think we're
gonna I think we're going to see some more of
that coming out locally in our region.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, you've got a great lineup on your website. Look
and you had all star lineup. But they do, and
you're really excited.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
One of the things change change tompas. But one of
the things that I've always wanted to do with this
is it's about making local grain available for whoever wants
to use it. So we definitely have heard from customers
that only buy eight hundred thousand pounds of malt a
(22:11):
year from us, you know, bank us for giving them
the like customer service and making this available, where as
they don't get the same attention from the big suppliers
and the big malt houses that you know, an Alagash
or a main vea company get. You know, they're they're
always they've got they've got reps knocking on their door.
(22:32):
But you know, it's just awesome to see anybody who
wants to use local, local grain and that's important to them,
you know, to have access to it, I think. And
so yeah, we we work with a range and we
work with hundreds of a brewery. I mean one of
one of my kind of philosophies also around that is
(22:53):
that local. I don't think local necessarily means better, you know,
across the board and for food. I mean think you know,
probably people can think of their own examples with with beer.
But you know, just just because something is grown locally
doesn't inherently mean that it's it's better quality. But I
think it can. I think if we really want to
(23:16):
support our communities, it has to. And so we really
have to create high quality local beer.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I mean, I think our.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Job, as I see it is to help our customers
do that. So I mean, we have some great customers
who you know, who work with us, who create beer,
you know, I want to say, regardless of whether they
work with us or not. And you know, we hope
we elevate and we think we do elevate a lot
of the stuff that they do. But you know, even
the small berry that is you know, just a three four,
(23:49):
you know, three five barrel system sells other beer out
of the top room. You know, we have a team
of former production brewers that are there to support those
people and help those people, you know, improve their beer.
You know, work with our product and you know, make
sure that they're putting out really really like high quality
(24:11):
products themselves. So it's it's all about you know, we
we really want quality to shine in our local products.
And I think that's that's performance, that's consistency, that's flavor.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
If you noticed, like throughout your time in Blue Ox,
Like I remember it was a couple of years ago,
I was watching the show on I think it was
Netflix called Chef's Stable and the one episode really stuck
with me where it was a pizza chef there. But
he made it part of his mission. He wanted to
get flour and use the grains that were locally sourced
(24:50):
and he just said it was the best in the
world and tries to get all the ingredients of tomatoes
and everything in certain tomatoes you would have to get promittedly,
but he made it as point to get the grains
from Arizona where he was at. Do you see more
and more breweries or in the twelve year old thirteen
years that you've been in existence, if more and more
(25:11):
companies started doing that, like caring more where they.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Get sonately, that is that has been something that we've observed,
you know, and a lot of it has to do
with the same reason that that chef was talking about,
which is his flavor, uniqueness of flavor. The concept of terwar.
I think arwar is a really interesting thing because it
certainly exists in beer, certainly exists in you know, the
(25:37):
water and the grain. You know, the same variety grown
in Maine is going to act differently, taste different than
the same You know that that same variety growing in
Michigan or in South Dakota. And you know, as a
brewers on this on this podcast, no, then you're processing it.
(26:02):
So you know, we as monsters make so many choices
about what flavors to bring out. Our process lends so
much uniqueness to that ingredient as well, and then the
finished product brewers obviously make that one's a million million,
They make dozens of choices more on how to tease
(26:26):
out flavors. So it's really complex. I think when you
look at cider and wine, where you're primarily working with
a fruit juice, and everything historically is just like all
tied to that fruit juice. The concept of terroir is
an easier one to unpack, but but it's really complicated
in beer because it's just there's so many aspects and
(26:51):
ingredients that go into it. I will say that you know,
the you know, so there there's definitely that like with
that shift, there's also other reasons why we've really seen
an uptake in crap, you know, in our product and
focus on local with our customers is because you know,
(27:13):
there's this one which everyone expects me to say, which
is which is true, but is expected, which is increasingly
the like beer consumer, it's our value driven you know.
You see these younger generations, they really want to support
businesses that are aligned with their values. And so one
way to you know, demonstrate your values is to use
(27:34):
local grains to advertise that, to to tie that you know,
story to your brand. But what we've actually you know,
seen in addition to that, which has nothing to do
with the consumer per se, is that local supply chains
are more robust and resilient to global factors. And I
(28:01):
joke that, you know, my kind of mission is to
build more robust, resilient and sustainable like food systems in
in the region. And you know, a more decentralized food
system is a lot more stable and I you know,
you know, my sustainability background you know, ecological background is
(28:23):
all you know, supports that. And it was like and
all it took was a pandemic and a war in
Russia to approved me right, And we just saw we
just saw you know, rate in the last couple of
years with all the geopolitical stuff happening in Europe and
supply getting shipping and supply just just being a little
(28:45):
bit more uncertain. We've we want customers that way, they said,
we we just need to add a local supplier so
that if something happens, we're not fully you know, out
and we're not we're not screwed. So I mean, you've
seen we've just seen that too. There's there's a lot
(29:06):
there's a lot more resiliency instability if you can build
a local supply chain for something and we have customers
that are working with us for that reason.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
That's awesome. Now not only do you make grain and
wall to for breweries, but also distilleries and bakeries and distilling.
Is that it's is it picking up to like where
craft beer is in main or is that more in
the startup phase.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I would say that craft distilling feels to me in
Maine specifically, I you know, I will say that, like,
I know, there's a lot happening nationally with it, and
there's actually a lot happening in main and I'm not
saying that to say that there isn't, because I believe
that craft distilling feels to me like it is where
(29:53):
craft beer was when I started twelve years ago working
on this. I think it's it's definitely still in the
front side of its kind of growth decade that craft
beer just had, and I think we're gonna see a
lot of that craft as far as it relates to us.
(30:14):
And like malting, obviously, distillers, well maybe not obviously. Again,
I don't know how much different listeners know about this
still in process, but you have to make a fermented
beverage like beer before you can distill it. But it's
all a little bit different on the distilling their needs.
And then there's available commercial enzymes, like you really can't
(30:35):
use it growing, but you can use the distilling. So
you see those enzymes being used a lot in your
You've got a lot of corn based spirits or other
product based spirits. There's not always malted grain and every
spirit that you drink. But what's exciting is that for
(30:58):
for us and for the multi grain inside of it
is that there's a new category of American single more
whiskey and potentially it probably has come up on this
podcast before. I would suspect and that that is a
new category of whiskey that a lot of craft distillers
(31:21):
are developing products in. It is it has to be
all produced in you know, one distillery made of all
malted grain. I I do think that there are definitions
that you can find on the web, and I don't
trust myself on the spot to give you the right one.
(31:44):
But but what's really exciting for us is that, you know,
we have a stilling customer, wiggly Bridge, that has been
working with us since the beginning of our facility back
in twenty fifteen. And they you know, sat on there
on the on the whiskey that they're working with asan
(32:05):
for a while. But they've been doing this like single
Multimerican whiskey for a while and you know, have Jeff
just actually won some awards for it. I think one
of the as you know, brewing, I know a little
more about distilling. You know, we're I'm still learning a
lot about it. And I remember Dave Woods, the distiller
(32:28):
and owner just talking about how he uses one of
our more specialty like higher kilned moths, and one of
the reasons he does that for his whiskey is he's like,
distilling is a stripping process, so you're moving things, you're
not adding anything, and so you having that really high
quality ingredient, that ingredient that is giving a lot of
(32:50):
you know, extra flavoring character is adding to his whiskey
because he can keep that in there if it's in there,
but it can't add it if it's not in there.
So you know, he really you know, has like has
leaned it into that and and produces a really delicious product.
So we're we're excited. We're working with some more distilleries too.
(33:12):
So you know, recently as pick up.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Now you recently expanded. What new capabilities does this added
space provide for you? Are you doing different things now
that you weren't able to do, say six we.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Were doing things that we could see Now we're producing
like twice as much malted.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
That we could we tred good for you.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, Yeah, we were sort of capped out on our
old maulting for for several years now, so it's been
fun to get these larger floors operational because what we've
been able to do is move our pail and our
pills and our malts over to and in some of
(33:55):
our mute malts over to the large systems, and that
screed up this old system for us to do really
fun projects with. So we are, for example, taking a
grain a grain from a grower that is just a
town over from us, and they don't have very much grain.
It sounds it might sound like lots done initiative, but
(34:16):
they've got like three four thousand pounds up and we're
going to be able to take that grain, malt it
and provide it to the breeze that are located in
that town or adjacent to it. So they're going to
do this like hyper local project or really excited about it.
That's definitely a project we want to have the production
(34:37):
space for if we hadn't opened this up. But we're
also doing some really fun other projects. Smoking is one
that again with the new floors, we've been able to
open up time and production space to really r and
d with our smoking. So we do a lot of
sort of custom smoking project and we've got some smoking
(35:01):
projects around Seaweeds right now. Which create these really delicious
unanis or smoked malts, And we just did some alder
smoked malt for a customer. And we're happy to play
around with anything. I mean, you always ask if we
do a pete. I don't do pete because my background
(35:23):
and sustainability is like pete's not a renewable resource, so
I don't like to cut that out of the ground.
But we're really happy we're playing with some like waste
products from the coffee uh brought the coffee roasting process
and really trying to be creative with that. So that's
been really fun. And then the big new piece of
equipment that we're just getting sort of going during recording
(35:47):
this podcast is our roaster. So in the past we've
done some really fun chocolate rise and some other really
delicious roasting malts. Malted grain tends to catch on fire
really quickly, so a lot of coffee roasters don't like
(36:08):
to don't like to let us roast our grain and
in their roasters. So we were producing some roasted malts
a few years ago, pre pandemic, and then the cop
the roaster decided that it was a little too dangerous.
He was a little uncomfortable. We've we've been out of
roasted malts for several years, but excited to add that
back into our schedule. So that's going to be a
(36:32):
really fun for us as well.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Oh, it sounds good that the partners on the fire. Yeah. Well, Joe,
I thank you so much for coming on. This has
been fascinating to learn a little bit more about malt,
to learn about your company. Later on in the show,
I'm going to have a couple of beers from breweries
that use malt from Blue Ox, so I'm looking forward
to that. Check out Blue Ox Malt. Howles, Joel, thank
(36:57):
you so much again, I really do appreciate it. Thank
you so much, Dave.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
I really enjoyed speaking with you, and I appreciate your
thoughtful questions.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
All Right, the beer that's in front of me now
is a classic one from Main Beer Company. This is Lunch.
I've had this on the show before and it's a
great beer. But I wanted to have some beers from
Blue Ox and the malt that they provide, so Lunch
is one of them. Maybe that's why it's so good.
(37:35):
So I'm gonna have this and I'm gonna have another
one later on. In the show. So let's crack open
the lunch. Lunch is a nice, beautiful color here, a
little darker than your usual. I pa good use of
(37:58):
caramel malts here, really look great. Good, couple fingers of foam.
Smells really good. I get a lot of like citrus here,
like grapefruit, maybe some orange in the aroma. It smells
really good. Some sweetness from the malt. I can't wait.
(38:20):
This is such a great beer. Yeah, that's really good,
well balanced. Like the sweetness hits me up front. You
get those caramel malts in there, so you get some
of that. Then the hops hit you. They use Amarillo
Centennial in simcohops. This is a seven percent beer and
(38:41):
it's just great, and especially I don't know how old
the last one I had was, but since this is
only a couple weeks old, it really hits the spot. Yeah,
that's that's just perfect. Like this is something you would
have every day. It's phenomenal. I remember Ruby and I
were there before I really even heard of them, Like
(39:02):
this was probably eight years ago and we were there,
and you know, you go somewhere, yo, you've got a
Google breweries near me, And this was one of the
ones that popped open, so we hit them up and
it was like, oh, yeah, this is good. I wish
we had this in Chicago all the time, but Lunch
is a great beer. If you could pick it up,
definitely have to. It's a classic beer. It's well renowned.
(39:26):
Everybody loves this beer. You never heard anybody say a
bad word about this. So if you see this from
Main Beer Company, you definitely have to put this one
in the carts, all right. I wanted to do another
(39:47):
beer that utilizes malt from Blue Ox, and what better
one to have than ali Gash White. This is a
highly decorated Belgian white beer. It's probably the one you
think of the most. It's iconic. It's just a terrific beer.
(40:07):
I talk about it on the show before. It's just
a phenomenal beer and you can find it everywhere. And
one of the main reasons why it's because it's so good.
So let's crack open the Allagash White. This is a
Belgian style wheak beer five point two percent alcohol and
it's brewed with coriander and kirasow orange peel. It's just
(40:43):
such a beautiful light, hazy color, but like super bright.
Good couple fingers of egg shell foam here looks great
and like the foam looks rich and creamy too. Not
like something that's gonna dissipate. This is something that's gonna
to your mustache. Smells really good. Definitely get like the
orange peel and the coriander from the aroma. Just a
(41:06):
lovely smelling beer that's just so good. I mean, there's
a reason why you could find this at every liquor store,
gas station, grocery store around because it's iconic and it's
just so flipping good. I think for me and my
taste buzz, the coriander is really like coming through, that's
(41:28):
hitting me up front. I get a little of the
orange at the end, but that coriander that really like
slaps me up front and off the subject. But I
am one of the ten percent that I can't eat cilantro.
To me, it tastes like dish soap and coriander is
(41:51):
part of the cilantro family. But coriander doesn't like affect
me like I could have this and it's fine, just
does not taste like this show. It tastes delicious, But
all right, back to the beer. But no, the coriander
really hits me up front that orange is coming through
at the end. It's just a beautiful beer finish as well.
(42:15):
The foam is still here. It hasn't died down at all.
It's just a lovely beer. Like before this came out
or before it was available, you know, here in Chicago
where I'm from, I remember back in the late nineties
drinking cell Us White from Pierre Cellus that was distributed here.
That was probably my first entry into this style, and
(42:39):
I still love that beer. I you know, three years ago,
maybe man, maybe even four years ago, I did a
show on that and I talked to an author about
Pierre Cellis that's a great beer. Years ago, before I
even started doing this podcast, I went down to Austin
because his fan, Emily, opened up a brewery there with
(43:02):
allegedly his recipes. And it's such a cool story. If
you're a fan of this, you should definitely if you
have one already, some people are novices. If you're not.
If you don't know the story of Pierre Cells you
should look it up because it's a fascinating story. And
he was the one that started like Hugarden and then
(43:23):
brought the beer over here to America. So you definitely.
If I'm drinking Alligash white, you need to give a
shout out to Pierre Cellis who started this whole Belgian
white style. But Aligash is phenomenal. If you see it,
and I mentioned you could get it anywhere, put it
in the cart. It's just a fabulous beer and it's
(43:45):
made better with Blue Ox Malt. All right, that's going
to wrap things up for this edition of Beer in Front.
I thank you very much for listening. I want to
thank Joel Alex who's the founder of Blue Ox Malt House,
for coming on and talking Walt. So Joel, thank you
very much. If you need to get a hold of me,
you can email me Dave at beerinfront dot com. If
(44:09):
you'd like to support the show, please head over to
Patreon dot com slash beer in Front and you could
help support the show. Since I'm flying solo. Now, have
a great week. I'll talk to you next week, and
remember sometimes the beer in front of you is the
best one yet.
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