Local farm-brewer collaboration makes Pittsburgh beer better

Brewers prefer to use local ingredients whenever possible, but local ingredients for making beer are hard to find in a place like western Pennsylvania. That includes the preferred main ingredient, malted barley, sometimes called malt.

Until very recently, most Pittsburgh-area brewers have had to import their malted barley. Most of the world’s malted barley comes from Australia, followed by France, Ukraine, Russia and Canada. Montana, North Dakota and Idaho grow the most in the U.S.

So, are local beers made with malted barley from some place else really … local? And are Pittsburgharea craft brewers interested in making them so — enough, for example, to encourage farmers to add hops or barley into their annual crop rotations?

Encouraging brewers

This was the question that Food21, the organization I serve, sought to answer with the Farm to Tap program.

A 2021 survey of 100 western Pennsylvania regional craft brewers and distillers had found that a little over one in five were already purchasing some local malt and more than half had established relationships with local malt houses. Some of the reasons they gave for buying local included reducing their carbon footprint, supporting local growers and keeping their product consistent.

Exchanges with Penn State University and Ohio State University Agriculture Extension, as well as area farmers, suggested that barley would be less complicated than hops to incorporate into existing regional growing regimens. (Hops have to be grown on a trellis.) Moreover, barley is an excellent cover crop and rotates well with soybeans for sustainable farming.

The Farm to Tap pilot included two 25-acre test plots of spring barley planted in March and April of 2020. Two Westmoreland County farmers participated: Fred Slezak, a certified crop advisor and the owner of Lone Maple Ag Services, who had grown barley in the past; and Alquin Heinnickel of Heinnickel Farms, a beef farm that also raises commodity crops.

The results of the cultivation were mixed. Weather played a significant role in harvest amounts. Though the two planting sites were less than five miles apart, rainfall timing and amounts differed greatly.

The Lone Maple site never got enough rain and under-performed expectations, delivering about 18 bushels of barley per acre with a crop that averaged 20 inches in height. Experienced spring barley farmers say that 40 bushels per acre would be a good crop.

The Heinnickel plot fared better. This crop was more robust and healthier in appearance and the average per bushel yield came in at 38, and met all testing specifications. From a practical point of view, the 2020 growing season was an ideal learning environment, producing both acceptable and unacceptable crops.

Barley is very weather-dependent. In fact, wet weather is the primary factor that leads to excessive disease and potential pre-harvest sprout, which damages the grain, hindering germination and proper malting. (Malted barley has been soaked in water till it germinates, which creates starches that brewing will convert into fermentable sugars.)

Also, barley can grow a fungus — vomitoxin — that passes through during the malting process and can cause illness when the beer is consumed. Both farms added two sprays of fungicide to prevent this. It’s a costly application, but it adds value to the crop.

In a fortunate coincidence, in October of 2022, Pennsylvania announced the award of $1.78 million in grants to promote the development of Pennsylvania’s beer and wine industries. Food21 received funds to support the launch of Allegheny Mountain Malt.

Creative programming

Barley was planted again in the fall of 2022. One-hundred acres were planted at six different farms, yielding a harvest of over 7,000 bushels in June of 2023. In partnership with CNC Malt in Butler County, this produced approximately 280,000 pounds of Allegheny Mountain Malt, now being marketed to local craft and specialty brewers.

The Farm to Tap program shows how local organizations, universities, businesses like breweries and farms can work together both to make a better local product and boost the local economy.