From Maine, With Love - An Allagash Brewing Podcast

S5 Episode 1: 2 Million Pounds Later

• Allagash Brewing Company • Season 5 • Episode 1

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In this season opener of From Maine with Love, we’re sharing a milestone that’s been years in the making: in 2025, we brewed with more than 2 million pounds of Maine-grown and processed grain. What started back in 2015 as a conversation about barley—at a time when most Maine farmers were focused on potatoes—has grown into a statewide network of farmers, maltsters, and brewers all pulling in the same direction. We look back at the early trials, the first recipe tweaks, and the steady climb from tens of thousands of pounds to well over a million, fueled by partnerships that feel more like friendships.

Along the way, Brewmaster Jason Perkins and Senior Technical Brewer Branch Rothschild share stories from the fields and malt houses that make this possible. You'll learn how local grain affects Maine’s economy, our carbon footprint, and for the future of New England beer.

Brett Willis:

Uh it actually applies, it applies to my question for you branch, my my secret question. It really is a secret. Oh yeah, there's a secret question. I'm excited. I'm excited about these. You guys ready? This is from Maine with Love and Alagash Bring Podcast where we talk about beer, our community here in Maine, and things that generally make us happy. I normally don't hit community all that well. Community is a hard word to say. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. I'm joined by Jason Perkins, our probably most frequent guest, or at least one of the most frequent guests, our brewmaster here at Alagash. Thank you for being back on the show, Jason. Hopefully you're not tired of me by now. I'm not tired. Your episodes are doing well. I think I think we're doing great. Uh, and then our probably our least frequent uh visitor here on the show is Branch Rothschild.

Branch Rothschild:

Yeah, it's good to be here.

Brett Willis:

Thank you for coming. Uh, what your title, I wrote senior brewing manager. I'm not, is that right? Uh senior technical brewer. Senior technical, that is that's why you're here. That's right. That sounds right. Speak to technicalities. Um, and we're here to talk about a really cool milestone uh that we just hit. And the the fun part is, Branch, our very first episode of this podcast featured you and Jason about this exact same topic, but four years ago, I think, talking about our main grown grain initiative, buy more main grown grain, branches Mike cut out after five minutes, and he never returned onto the show.

Branch Rothschild:

I kept talking the whole time, it just didn't go anywhere.

Brett Willis:

It went off into the ether.

Jason Perkins:

Brett's got ready to pull the plug on the mic. Five minutes in. What did you have?

Brett Willis:

Five minutes. So really cram it in there. Um, the first, as always, this is the first episode of season five. We've been doing this for five years.

Branch Rothschild:

Amazing. When do you run the season? Uh yearly. Do you go into reruns?

Brett Willis:

People still listen, listen to old episodes. That's the beauty of a podcast. Go into syndication. Listen whenever, yeah. We're hoping not to jump the shark like the Simpsons like get bad after like five episodes or five seasons. I'm sure they're a Simpsons fan. I I'm a big fan of early Simpsons. Eight seasons. Eight seasons. Okay, thank you. That's that's a good number. All right, Branch. Your second question. Uh as a fan of science fiction, I understand you're a fan of science fiction. Uh would would you call yourself a fan of science fiction? Sure. Yeah. You like you like it. We've talked about books, sci-fi books. We've recommended some to each other. Uh, are we living in a simulation?

Branch Rothschild:

Uh it doesn't feel like it. It's a pretty crappy one. Yeah. I would agree. I'd agree.

Brett Willis:

Man, now my head's blown. I'm sorry, I just I wanted to give that to you. I thought of it, and I was like, that's that's that's a big one. There's like a whole Isaac Asimov uh debate series that happens, and one of them one year was is this a simulation with like famous theoretical physicists and stuff like that? Pretty interesting. Listen. Um what was the consensus? Uh I think I only got like halfway through. It was like two hours long. I was reading this fast. Uh, Jason, yours. What's your favorite downhill ski trail in Maine? Go from the real big to the narrow.

Jason Perkins:

I thought you were gonna ask me if birds were real.

Branch Rothschild:

That's the second part. Are they real? Oh, maybe a different podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Perkins:

You know, I might have to say the Alagash. Oh, really? Which is a trail at Black Mountain in Rumford.

Brett Willis:

What uh what level of trail?

Jason Perkins:

I mean, it's it Black Mountain's not a very big mountain, but it's a nice long cruiser. Is it a blue? It's nice views. I think it is a blue. It might be a black, but you know, blacks at Black Mountain are kind of bluey anyway. Right. So it seems on brand for me to say Alagash. So that's what I'm gonna say.

Brett Willis:

You're a professional. Professional brewer, professional podcaster. Yeah, I'm definitely in the like blue, double blue phase of my life uh on mountains of give me a cruiser, and you just get some speed, but I'm not like going hard.

Branch Rothschild:

They're double blues? Yeah. It's like twice as blue.

Brett Willis:

It's somehow not black, but it is ex especially blue. Um, I feel like it's just probably a pitch thing. Like it's not like moguls and craziness, but you get some good speed on it. Maybe it's more out west. I don't really know. All right. To the to the fact of the matter at hand, big reveal in 2025. Uh, how many pounds of maingrown and processed grain did we brew with?

Branch Rothschild:

I can't give you an exact number, but more than two million.

Brett Willis:

I can give you the exact number. It's two million twenty-five thousand six hundred and seventy-four pounds. So that's awesome. I learned this. Thanks to Branch, because I email him every year saying how much main grown grain did we brew with in the past year? And he came back. We everyone kind of had it. Jason, you said 1.0, you thought it was gonna be worth it.

Jason Perkins:

I thought we'd be 1.9 and some change. Yeah, so not that far off, but I I didn't think we'd break the two million barrier, so it was a kind of a nice little surprise. Yeah, yeah.

Branch Rothschild:

I'm not uh constantly telling I'm up on my board, but it looked and did it feel like two million pounds of main-grown grain? It felt more like a hundred, maybe one point nine seven.

Brett Willis:

Okay. I'm glad you found those extra three point three, uh.03. Anyway, uh, all right. So our focus on sourcing more main-grown grain started back in 2015. And Jason, am I right? The kind of the genesis of this initiative was Amber Lamke, the former director of the main grain alliance.

Jason Perkins:

Amber was a bit was a big part of it. Okay. Um, you know, we it certainly and Amber was certainly a big part of uh connecting us with farmers and getting us rolling down the down the line. I mean, we had used um some degree of local grains, just little one-offs bags here and there. Yeah um, and we'd used a lot of local fruit over the years that was very easy, like lots of cherries and raspberries and blueberries, et cetera, for us to access to. But we our our kind of eyes weren't really open to the possibility of grain at the level that we got have gotten to, yeah. Uh until we started talking to key grain people in the state of Maine and uh and uh in a short list of the most important grain people in the state of Maine, Amber is definitely one of them. Yeah. Um, you know, she started the Maine Grain Alliance. Um, the Maine Grain Alliance is still an incredible nonprofit organization that we support. Um and you know, there was just this premise of the state has lots of land and lots of institutional knowledge around growing small grains, but we've we've kind of lost a lot of it just from commercialization of of farming uh at the you know the the level for producing flour for baking, but certainly at the level for grain is for for brewing as well. Um so yeah, that's a long answer to your question, but amber was a was a big kind of piece of kind of getting us like, oh, wait a minute, there's a lot of more possibility for us to buy our grain here in the state, uh, as long as we meet the right people, get them growing the right things, and so on. Yeah.

Brett Willis:

It's not a lot to branch, you want to do a lot of it.

Branch Rothschild:

Was it 15 years ago Hugh Malone with h getting the main potato growers malts?

Brett Willis:

Really?

Branch Rothschild:

Yeah.

Brett Willis:

From from wait, Hugh Malone is an old uh Belgian style IPA that we brewed way back in the day.

Branch Rothschild:

It was uh 750mL bottle and it was a dollar every bottle to MOFGA. So really we wanted to use some local grain in that. Uh but it was a lot harder to source back then. So main potato growers traditionally they grew barley in rotation and had it malted in Canada. So it actually was grown somewhat locally, but then went international.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, yeah.

Brett Willis:

Amazing.

Jason Perkins:

So yeah, there was a period of time where they were uh isolating the grain that was grown in the state of Maine for malting in Canada. Okay. And you could buy, you could source uh not malted in the state, and that's a huge part of this project for us is we want the whole you know, whole chain to be in the state of Maine. Um, but we could at least get it at that point. They they no longer do that anymore, but um, but it is tells what branch it's getting at is part of the story here that barley has actually been grown by Maine farmers for a long time. Yep. More as a rotational crop for potatoes, so not not necessarily for for brewing. Yeah. Um, and so that has come in the last 10 years.

Brett Willis:

Yeah, and when we whenever we write it, we normally say main grown just because it sounds nice and it's short, but it's like main grown, processed, and packaged. I feel like we've even added at times to be super specific. So yeah. Uh, and like my ulterior motive to a certain extent for this podcast is to kind of go through the background to help other breweries or brewers who are interested in trying to do something like this in their own state. So just to give kind of like the the groundwork for like this is what it kind of took to get there, or at least kind of a playbook to a certain extent, because it's not gonna be the same for every state, but I think we there was just some really cool stuff that went into it. So the next part uh were either of you a part of that first conversation with the Bucks talking about barley, uh, for saying, hey, brewers use barley, because I read on their website they had like they have a cool little uh sort of thing that they went through with brewing buttons branchy smiling. Do you remember something like that?

Jason Perkins:

I know what you're talking about. Um we weren't we weren't the brewer he was they were talking to. Okay, okay. Uh it was, I think it was Kai from Sebago Brewing. Sure. Um but so yeah, the story, the way that story goes is you know, the the Buck family, third generation farmers um have grown barley off. They're traditional potato farmers and they've grown barley off and on as a rotational crop. And um, there's four sons who um you know were basically through um post-high school education of whatever kind and wanted to kind of come back to the farm. But the pot, you know, the the potatoes weren't doing awesome. Like I just, you know, despite it's being a unique place to grow and it's good flavor and all that, there was still some commoditization to it all.

Brett Willis:

Yep.

Jason Perkins:

And so they were trying to figure out like basically how how can we stake stay on the farm with a a value-added crop. And they the Buck family was pretty used to growing a variety of crops, so they they like to take chances and grow different things. And so they were like, Oh, hops. Yeah, let's grow some hops. We like beer, let's grow hops. Um, and I'm pretty sure it was Kai, uh, who's an old longtime friend of ours who is one of the owners and founders of Sabago Brewing, who said, Oh, you don't want to grow hops, hops are challenging to grow, which is true. Yeah, and said, Well, you should grow barley instead. And the the buck's response was, we do grow barley. Hold on. Beers made with barley. I mean, I don't know if it exactly went down that way. So uh, but yeah, funny story. That's awesome.

Branch Rothschild:

Yeah, I feel like that's how the bucks tell it, but I can't believe they were that naive.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, it's a good story though.

Brett Willis:

It is they know a good story, they know a good they had that's what they have on their website. That's like that's exactly what's there. Yeah. Uh but yeah, that's and so like so. The Buck family, they main malt house is their malt house, and we're gonna talk more about them, but they're kind of a one of the key players in this whole uh initiative. Um, so I have the numbers here, the history of our pledge, and the numbers that we went through to kind of get there. So the original pledge was in 2015. Rob, Jason, we kind of made as a leadership team, we made the decision we're gonna brew with one million pounds of main-grown grain by 2021. So we kind of said 2016 is kind of the first year we're kicking off this initiative because we had been brewing with some main-grown grain, like we said, and kind of one off, and then we had to be our 16 counties that was brewed with all main-grown grain or all main-grown ingredients, and or was it just grain at the time for 16 counties? All grain.

Jason Perkins:

There's a little bit of hops in there, but right, all grain.

Brett Willis:

So all grain. And so then it was okay, how do we how do we start this? So in 2016, we brewed with 65,000 pounds of main-grown grain. Do you guys remember what we brewed with in 2017? I have it all here, but I'm kind of interested to see.

Jason Perkins:

27 more I would say 175,000.

Brett Willis:

Oh, uh, 140. Oh, you're close. We it, I mean, so then next one we got 2018, 330. So we kind of doubled pretty much like every single so 2019, 650,000 pounds. That was a crazy doubling, I feel like, where everyone was like, holy crap, we're like almost there. And then 2020, it's a different year. Uh, and so we still upped it though, 728,000 pounds, even given everything during COVID and everything like that. And I feel like that was a real cool moment for us as a brewery to say there was all this change and craziness going on, and we still stuck to this pledge to say we're still going for uh million pounds by 20%.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, I mean, to put it in other terms, we lost about 20 plus percent of our volume that year. Um, there's you know, you read some stories about how well beers did in in um the 2020 year, and that's the case for a few few cases, but many did not, and we were one of them. So we lost 20 plus percent of our production and still maintain the commitment to these farmers because that was that's yeah, I know I may be getting ahead of the game here, but that was like the idea of this pledge was we're not gonna do it next year because we're not ready to, but you're not ready to farmers either. And so it was like this staged, like a promise of sorts to them that we were gonna continue to grow at a certain rate. Yeah. And I was at the end of that year, I was very proud of this company to be able to, in really hard times for us, still keep our commitment to the farmers that year.

Branch Rothschild:

Yeah. And was it 2020 or 2021 that was the bad crop year for wheat? Like one of them.

Jason Perkins:

I think it was the 20 crop for 21 usage, right? That's what I remember.

Brett Willis:

So that sounds about right. I actually think it is worth getting into that, Jason, that like the importance of not just working with the farmers to say, like, let's let's give it a go, but the importance of us putting the line in the sand saying by this date, we're gonna use this much. I guess like what how does that work between us and the farmers? Like, what does that allow them to do by putting a number on the ground? Because we we basically give them a new number every year, kind of okay.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah.

Brett Willis:

So like could you just walk through kind of how that how that sort of negotiation or just chat went to to figure that out?

Jason Perkins:

Uh yeah, I mean it's a it's a back and forth. Um in it depend very much on which the supplier was and their capabilities at the time. I mean, in some cases, even if we had said we're gonna get X amount next year, we might not have been able, they might not have been able to meet it.

Brett Willis:

Right.

Jason Perkins:

Um, but there was also a component on our end of of you know making sure that the quality of this stuff was what we needed to be and that the flavor match was there for a beer, especially a beer like this. A lot of this grain was going into Alagash White, our flagship for uh you know over 30 years now. Yeah, and we needed it to taste the same. So there was a lot of work on our end to do it. Uh and there's costs too. Like this, the local grain is more expensive. I mean, they're smaller farmers, um, they're not farming at the same scale. So, like, it's we still had to figure out how to make those finances work. So it was a little bit of both. It was a little bit for them to grow their businesses, yeah. Maybe lease the acreage they need, add storage uh capabilities for the grain once it comes out of the field. Right, so that kind of thing. Um, and then on stuff on our end too. So it was a little bit of both.

Brett Willis:

Yeah, I remember the Bucks proudly showing off their new malting machine because they had been doing floor malting and then they had made the machine and like we couldn't even take pictures. It was like, oh, you gotta get a close-up of grain in someone's hand, but you can't see the whole machine. That was great.

Jason Perkins:

They were they and they like built that them, like I think. Pretty much built it themselves, yeah. Yeah. Crazy.

Brett Willis:

All right, we stopped. We stopped in 2027, 28, 2021, we did it. A million and ninety thousand pounds. One million, thank you. Everyone in the Doctor Evil. Thank you, Jason and Branch. Yeah, we when we hit two million, you have to put up two pinkies for it. Yes, yes. That is a that is a dated reference, but those movies are like so old. Do you know when when did when did Austin Powers come out? Do you think?

Branch Rothschild:

I think I was in college, so like 95. I was gonna say 1997.

Brett Willis:

1997. I think I think 97 might be right. Sound really horrible. I'm gonna I'll look at it. Back in the 1900s. Back in the 1900s when we were watching Austin Powers. Uh, yeah, it's old. Uh so 2021 though, but we did it. We hit it on time, on schedule, even a little bit over, and that was awesome. But the next year, we went from a million ninety thousand in 2022. We went to 1,500,000. We basically went almost half like half again. What what happened there? Did we just have more capacity did people have more capacity? Did something else happen?

Branch Rothschild:

Or I think the the big thing there was uh the raw white wheat. Like uh we had great success, and at that point, like uh they were able to grow more, yeah, and uh we're gonna use it. Like raw wheat is a huge part of white beer, obviously. And at that point we'd established that it worked and uh we liked using it. It was more local, yeah, and uh we just went whole hog.

Brett Willis:

That's awesome. That's great. Yeah, I do also remember taking that taking a trip or two up there, and they would like point at a field of like white beet and that's Alagash is white wheat.

Jason Perkins:

Like, well, yeah, I mean, can we digress for a moment on the white wheat? I mean the white wheat's such a great story because you know, we've so just high level, like there's lots of different wheat varieties out there, and they can it can be winter wheats and summer wheats and red and white and whatever, but we've always historically used a high percentage of unmalted white wheat. So this is you know, raw, also called raw wheat in Alagash White, and it's a key component of of the flavor profile, the appearance, etc. Um there was none of that being grown in the state of Maine. Um, there was some red wheat, which is predominantly what's used for baking, but there wasn't any white wheat. And so as we're talking to the Buck family, they you know, they're they're wanting to know how they can grow more stuff for us and so on. And you know, they catch wind of this white wheat, and they're like, again, they're just kind of like, okay, we'll try that. Uh and they uh did a small plot, um, I don't know, maybe a handful of acres the first year.

Branch Rothschild:

I think they said it was gonna be a few, but then they got more seed than they thought they were gonna get, and it was like 40 acres or something like that.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah. And then so they, I mean, to some degree, you can't do something real small as a farmer. Like you gotta plant a decent amount at once. So they kind of went for it and did some trials back and forth with them. It worked for us, and then it grew and they grew, and we went from buying a small portion of it, and now was it two years ago we started?

Brett Willis:

That's right.

Jason Perkins:

100% of our unmalted raw white wheat is from Maine.

Brett Willis:

Wow.

Jason Perkins:

And 100% of our oats are now from Maine as well. Yeah, that came around the same time. But it's just a cool story of like this this is a there's a many reasons why we like to do this.

Brett Willis:

Yeah.

Jason Perkins:

But one of them is just that one on one relationship you have with the farmers where in it and in the end it's a win win for both. Like they're growing more stuff, they're growing what we need in the state of Maine. Yep, et cetera.

Branch Rothschild:

And it's also just much uh closer, like transportation costs are so much less. Yep. Uh when I mess up my orders and forget to order it in time, like they can help us in it. It's not driving the driver doesn't have to take two days to get here.

Brett Willis:

Yeah. That's good to know. That's good to know that other people for just me. No, that never happened. No, why wouldn't that happen? Um the so I that that's actually something I'd love to get into. Is like the let's talk about the farms and what we get from each farm. We've got Maine malthouse, which we've talked about. It's up in Mapleton, Maine. What are we so we're getting white wheat from them and anything else?

Branch Rothschild:

We get some oats. Okay. Uh rolled oats. Yep. Um, and we're get a lot of corn from them for surfass.

Brett Willis:

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Branch Rothschild:

It's taken some experimenting, but uh yeah, we're getting that. Yeah. And then a lot of uh pale malt from them also.

Brett Willis:

Okay. What would what do we use? Pale, would do we use any pale malt in not in Alagash White, but in other or do we? That's okay.

Jason Perkins:

Um Yeah, I mean it pale malt is like it could also just be called base malt. Okay. It's what they call Mapleton, Mapleton Pale, they call it. Okay, yeah. Mapleton's a town they're in. Um but it's basically their base malt. One of their base malt.

Branch Rothschild:

I think that's basically it. We might we've gotten a little bit of malted wheat from them here and there.

Brett Willis:

Right, try out some different stuff over time. Okay, then we have Aurora Mills and farm in Linneous, Maine. Uh they're also a really cool farm. Second generation farm, all organic, my understanding. Um, and what are we getting from them?

Jason Perkins:

Oats predominantly. I mean, we get a lot of oats. Majority of our oats come from them. That's right. Um, and that's like our consistent every year, but we've gotten some other stuff from them in the past. Um spelt. We're getting spelt buckwheat. Buckwheat.

Brett Willis:

What have we used?

Jason Perkins:

Spelt in uh copaine.

Brett Willis:

Oh, that's right. Okay. That's one of our base beers for our sour, uh somewhere, sour beers. Okay.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, but like you said, they're just, you know, um second generation. The the dad is retired, but still there every day. Yeah. Um, just small, really small family, uh, doing some really great stuff, growing some beautiful loads.

Brett Willis:

We're gonna oh, we're gonna get into each farm uh a little bit more in a slightly more detail in the next question.

Branch Rothschild:

So I I would they are all organic. I mean, they're it's trying to be all organic. It's some some of their stuff we actually get is transitional because when if they do get more land and want to make it organic, that's not an immediate process. So at some point they have to grow it organically for a period of time, I think three years. Oh, right. There's that strictly.

Jason Perkins:

If the if the land wasn't uh used for organic before, which is typically the case. Right.

Brett Willis:

Yeah.

Jason Perkins:

It's pretty hard to find organic land in Maine, probably everywhere.

Brett Willis:

I'm sure. Yeah. All right, and lax last, I believe, Blue Ox Malthouse in Lisbon Falls, Maine, which they are a malt house, so they're not actually growing what they have, but I looked it up and they get their uh they get their ingredients or the raw sort of uh grains from Porter Farms, Aurora Mills. So uh sends uh something to some stuff to Blue Ox, Marquee Farms in Van Buren, Maine, and Wood Prairie Farm in uh Bridgewater, Maine. But yeah, Blue Ox, do we get a variety of stuff? They seem to have a pretty solid variety of different types of stuff too, right?

Branch Rothschild:

Yeah, we get a lot of their pill malt. Um and then basically all the pilsner malt that we use of late is uh theirs, the Yankee pills.

Brett Willis:

Oh, really?

Branch Rothschild:

Key part of Alagash Lager.

Brett Willis:

Oh that's cool.

Branch Rothschild:

Nice. Um and we do get some specialty stuff, but more for one-off beers, right?

Brett Willis:

Right. So what I was alluding to, Jason, when I I I didn't want to be like mean about it, like don't talk about these farms. But what I was alluding to is like these are not just suppliers, like these are people that we work with, like people that we've developed relationships with that are really just like satisfying, gratifying, awesome people to work with. And so I wanted to ask both of you is there a particular thing you enjoy about each place? Like, and I'm thinking of for me personally, it's like main malthouse with that family, it's like grandma buck's jokes. Grandma Buck, amazing character, tells some off-color jokes at dinner, has a whole shtick. You gotta get her on the podcast. That would be an E podcast. The explicit is there, I mean, for for each person, I feel like everyone has something when you go visit them. It's something cool that they're doing.

Branch Rothschild:

Well, at Aurora, I got stung by bees.

Jason Perkins:

Oh, that's right. But that's actually a really funny story. It's a really funny story because uh they were so kind to give us these two ginormous jars of honey, three maybe even. Uh because Ria got one too, right? Oh, yeah. And um this beautiful honey. I mean, I'm talking like I don't know how big, like 32-ounce jars, maybe. Yeah, that's a big part of the organic growing process is to have uh oh, pollinators. Pollinators, yeah, and then so then we were we we had the jars and we went out into the field near the buckwheat, and because it's buckwheat honey, yeah, and the hives are right there, and we thought it would be a funny Raya, of course, thought it'd be a funny picture to take a picture of branch in because the buckwheat's beautiful when it's blooming, like white flowers, it's gorgeous. Yeah, yeah. Standing in front of the buckwheat flowers with two jars of honey in his arms right next to the bees. Well, the bees apparently were like, What the hell, man? That's our honey. And they they saw him with the honey and it came in hot.

Branch Rothschild:

Yeah, I was really hamming it up, but I don't I wasn't trying to antagonize them. You know, if you don't mess with them, I don't mess with you.

Jason Perkins:

You're gonna be less don't don't like want your honey in front of the honey bees.

Brett Willis:

You're doing the inadvertent bee dance, just the like the real antagonistic bee wiggle. How many times did you get stung? Uh just a couple.

Jason Perkins:

Just a couple in the back of the stinks. You got on camera too, that's the great part. Really? Yeah. There's like a series of photos of like smile to like painful face. It's pretty good.

Brett Willis:

I'll I'll make that into a little carousel on the blog about this. So yeah, you get to see that. I was thinking more that they bake bagels every time you go to a that's what I was gonna say.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they've got a little uh mini brick oven like right in there, like kind of in their living room. You've seen it. Oh, yeah. And uh that's become the part of that tradition of visiting them, and they have freshly baked bagels with the their flour.

Brett Willis:

Yeah.

Branch Rothschild:

Because yeah, they're a mill as well as that's right.

Brett Willis:

Farm. Yeah, that mill. That the mill where it's like, what was it, rolling the oats? That was such a cool because it's like you hear rolled oats and you're like, sure, okay, whatever. But it's like, no, it's like two giant rollers that just squeeze this thing. Yeah, it's mush it into an old oat. It's cool.

Branch Rothschild:

Yeah, just the fact like all the cleaning equipments, this old wooden equipment. It really is. If you go on their website, you'll see it. It's like legit wooden contraptions. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, which is what main grains does also. It's turns out wood's a pretty great thing for that. Like fewer explosions, less stare. Is that is that why? I think that's part of it.

Brett Willis:

Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, main grains. It may wait, okay. Yeah, main grains meaning like the Skowhegan prison main grains. Yes. Okay. Yes. That's a cool place too.

Jason Perkins:

Very cool place. Yeah. Yeah. And we're we're we we don't buy as much from them anymore, but we did buy some from them for a while. They're really geared mostly for bakers. Yeah. But incredible place. Um just had I actually just had dinner at the Miller's table on Saturday night. How was it? Delicious. Pizza there is incredible. Where is is that in the big in like the like the low level, the first floor of the of the the jail, former jail. Last night. Not it's still a jail. Saturday night.

Brett Willis:

Okay. I was gonna say, I was like, that's a long drive. Yeah, yeah.

Branch Rothschild:

I feel like they're moving more towards uh bakers, but then when the pandemic hit and everybody started baking, it was like Oh, yeah, yeah.

Brett Willis:

We should do more of this. Yeah, yeah. Um, and then I mean for Blue Ox, funny. I mean, there's so many connections there of our former brewer of Surf House, aforementioned Surf House Joe, works there now.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's just like I guess to high level it, like these folks are all just like our friends. Like, yes, they're they're our suppliers to put it in a formal term, but they they're just like they're all good friends of ours, every single one of them. And um, it's just a that's just a part of doing business with them is getting to spend time with them. And we just um yesterday, last minute sent a crew, our our packaging team to Blue Ox for a tour. Long story for another podcast. We have a big mechanical problem at the brewery, and so we had to shut we haven't been able to package for the last few days, and so I just called Ian up up at Blue Ox and I said, Hey, I know this is super short notice, but what do you think? No problem. So we sent a crew up there, they gave them an awesome tour to put them to work, turn on the beds.

Branch Rothschild:

What's that? Did they put them to work?

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, it sounds like at least Nolan did some raking. Nice, yeah.

Brett Willis:

Yeah, you literally hold a rake behind you and walk through this grain that is in the process of kind of budding. Would that be correct? And then you are turning it over.

Branch Rothschild:

Well, and they have a fancy mechanical one now, like a machine. Oh, but I don't think they let the guest use that.

Brett Willis:

Use the fancy machine, that makes sense.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing with with Blue Ox is, and this is the case with all of them, but Blue Ox, there's a it's just a level of passion for the grain industry at that company that comes right from Joel, the founder. I mean, he really he started Blue Ox because he saw a need, but like a like a like an opportunity, I guess. Yeah. But he also saw like a gap in the supply chain in the state of Maine. And he he's very mission-driven um business to open. And that trickles right down to every like to Ian, to Joe, to all the rest of the staff there. Like, yeah, um, if you if you start a conversation about green with them, you better have some time.

Brett Willis:

Do you know my do you know my Joel fun fact, right? About me? I don't remember. Did you go to college? I went to college with Joel, yes. Oh, that's right. Yeah, we were like tertiary friends. I knew Joel well, but I but I did improv actually with his like roommate. So we each other.

Jason Perkins:

Oh, I thought you were gonna say Joel did improv. That's it. I that I'd like to say, yeah, no, yeah, I don't think he did.

Brett Willis:

He maybe he maybe they did serial practice improv. But yeah.

Branch Rothschild:

I've noticed he's but a lot of yes ending.

Brett Willis:

Oh, yeah? You think so? That it it has it has come in handy. Uh all right. So this actually applies to you, Brand. We mentioned kind of like high-level we had to integrate this grain into existing beer recipes, like a beer like Alagash White tastes a certain way, has won awards on how it tastes. Like, we need to make sure it act this ingredient fits. So, like, what did that process kind of look like on our end?

Branch Rothschild:

I think probably the first place to start is just like knowing our beer really well, yeah, like getting our sensory program dialed in. Um, which Carl is like killed. Yep. Um and then once we do that, we can really start evaluating like what changes like is this perceptible for our trained staff? Like um, but mostly we started off with small changes, like did a little bit at a time, and then uh if it isn't perceptible, if we're meeting all our specs, we can start playing around with doing more. That's kind of where we're at now. But in the past we did also have some peers that like very specifically were more focused entirely on like 16 counties basically, where it was all local. Um when we're not making that anymore. But I think that was kind of an approach early on. But once the volume got big enough, you know, a million pounds, you're not gonna make it with these beers that are not brewed every day. Right. So it had to be in white.

Brett Willis:

Yeah. So when did we start adding it to white? Do you remember the year?

Jason Perkins:

I think right from the beginning, but in very small amounts.

Brett Willis:

Right, right. Just kind of a little trickle in there versus then being a significant.

Jason Perkins:

Maybe it might not have been very decent in 2016 or not. We were making a lot of 16 counties in 2016, so we were using a lot there. Right. Yeah. But it was like literally a bag at a time. Yeah. Wow. That's yeah. Which a bag might sound like a lot, but in in our system it's not a lot.

Brett Willis:

Well, it's like we have Super SACs is like the larger, and then we're getting like a silo that has our base malton and stuff like that. So yeah, different scales. So at this point, do all of our beers use mangrown grain? Trying to think of an exception. That's a good that's a good way to put it, trying to think of an exception.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, it would have to be like something that can't like everything comes to the pilot program, but something that came to the pilot program that was very specific to use. I'm guessing it would probably be a case where it's like all Belgian pilsner or something like that. We haven't done that in a while. No, we haven't. Interlude. Is it interlude today?

Branch Rothschild:

We are interlude today. That's we switched that over to uh Bluach Yankee Pills. Nice in Interlude.

Brett Willis:

The hallowed interlude. That's awesome. Um there's gotta be something, but I don't know what it is.

Jason Perkins:

I'll take that to be the fact that it is very hard to find the exception in hop water. Oh or cider.

Brett Willis:

Okay, all right. Well, there are main apples in cider apples. That's true. Yeah, that's true. That's okay. Um, and that actually, so I think it is worth touching upon because I feel like that the natural next question is like, okay, why can't you get like every ingredient from Maine? So we kind of touched on hops. It's just hard to grow hops in Maine. Like there are some people doing it, right? Are there still people doing it? It's there's not many. Right?

Jason Perkins:

Like it's in very, very small amounts. It's still think they still are. We haven't connected them with a while, but I think hopyard is maybe done. Hop yard.

Branch Rothschild:

I think hopyard is done.

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, it's it it's you know, that could be its own podcast, but growing hops is growing hops is very challenging uh in this climate. Yeah. Like it's just not a climate that's set up for it. Where it's just too much moisture is the short short, like humidity and whatnot is probably the biggest problem. I thought it would be the cold. Mildew and whatnot. Um I mean, the cold doesn't help either, but actually, hops don't like extreme heat either, but it is it's really the the mildew risk is probably the biggest challenge. Okay. But there's also on top of that, pro harvesting, picking, yeah, uh, and processing hops is very like mechanically intensive or incredibly labor intensive. And so there's just not a lot of infrastructure for it. And so some of these small growers have tried to make it work, but it's just it's tough. And so, you know, the predominant most of the hops in the US are grown in the Pacific Northwest, where there's just lots of infrastructure and shared equipment and so on, and you know, and centuries, you know, not centuries, but generations of growers out there. Yeah.

Brett Willis:

So yeah, and a a frequent guest on this podcast as well, Patrick Chauvinel, uh, is on the hop quality group of the Bruce Association. Is that what it's like?

Jason Perkins:

No, the hop quality group's it's its own, it's an independent nonprofit. I mean, it certainly interacts with the Bruce Association a bunch, but yeah, it is its own in uh nonprofit. Yeah, so we definitely on the board.

Brett Willis:

Love those hops. And I've been uh I mean, you guys do you guys go out there like every year, or at least someone from almost every year, yeah.

Jason Perkins:

Almost every year we go to out there for hop selection, yeah. That's cool.

Brett Willis:

Um, and then we mentioned fruit. Like, I guess where are we? We've we've gotten some really interesting fruits over the years, but I guess what are the kind of majority fruits that we get from Maine?

Jason Perkins:

Uh cherries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries. Okay. There are peaches in there too? Apples, honey berries, and of course apples. I I kind of think about apples differently because that's strictly for cider, but yeah. Um the other fruits I mentioned were all for our, you know, what some of our wilder, sour, funky beers. Right.

Brett Willis:

Are the apples coming from like larger orchards, or is it like because I feel like a lot of the ones we've gotten are like heritage apples, and I just don't know where those are coming from.

Jason Perkins:

Are they they're small, all small orchards. I mean, there aren't really any big or quote unquote big orchards in Maine. Right. Um the on the scale of Maine big ones, we still get some from them, but the the small, like old school apples are coming from small places typically.

Brett Willis:

I'm just thinking there's like if you look at these apples, it's like wine sap or like northern spy or like Ashmead's kernel. Ashmead's kernel. Oh, such good names. Honey eye, that's spelled all crazy, like E-O-I-Y-E or something. Sophis Spitzenberg.

Branch Rothschild:

That's a good one. Is that an apple? Tom Jefferson's favorite apple. Really? Is that shaped like a star? You might want to double check by your pronunciation, my pronunciation and my accuracy. I'll just AI it.

Brett Willis:

Um that's yeah, so okay, so there's there's still a lot coming from Maine. And so I think as a kind of wrapper to a certain extent of all this, is like Branch, you even kind of mentioned it, like of some of the benefits, but I guess like this program has been so cool because of the number of different benefits it has provided, both us and other breweries. So I think like, you know, I put it to you. What do you feel like beyond us just being able to use more local grain? And um, like what do you see as some of the benefits of that program? I have some other ones here, but I don't want to think.

Branch Rothschild:

Well, this is kind of uh selfish of me, but I got to hang out with them. Or I got to hang out with Joe and the box and Sarah and Marcus, and like that's great. Yeah, that's good. Um but on a more practical level, like the fact that we can reach out to the people growing our grain directly and like find out what's going on and communicate back and forth. We know what's what to expect, what challenges they're facing, how we can help, and it just feels a lot more collaborative than it does with which isn't to say like our other suppliers aren't good, but right we have a lot more of a personal connection to them. Totally. And I feel like they're invested in us doing well, and vice versa.

Brett Willis:

Yeah. What do you think, Jason?

Jason Perkins:

Yeah, I mean, I agree with both of those, and like just having the, you know, again, selfishly, like having the opportunity to spend time with them and and and see over the the last you know 10 plus years we've been doing this to see the growth at the farm, to see these in some cases families growing, like little kids coming along, and them even to some degree getting involved to some degree is like just so rewarding to to to watch them grow over time.

Brett Willis:

The lights just went out. You can't hear that. Literally just going totally dark. What is it? Is that is that the end of our podcast? It's not the end. I've got one more question. I just need to be able to read it. Light it by candlelight. I'll go by these uh bright lights here. Oh, I can read that. Is it motion light?

Jason Perkins:

Do we need to like get up and dance around?

Brett Willis:

It is normally motion light, but I think it might be on a timer at a certain time. It just like shuts off. It's like whistleblowing at the factory, time to go home. I think this is your fault, branch. I think you have mentioned that sometimes you've walked by our office and the light will still be on after everyone's gone. So we might have like hardwired it to turn off.

Branch Rothschild:

I guess you know, I'm not a father, but I have a little bit of that in me. Turn the light off when you leave a room.

Brett Willis:

I have that in me too. That's okay. I actually I I'm gonna read this by Gonnet. Um, so the other thing that I guess I was thinking of is like other brewers are using this grain. This isn't just us, like there are other breweries, and they're using a lot of this grain. For sure, yeah, like millions of pounds at single other breweries. So that has been really, really cool. Um, for my like, I I love a good sustainability point. So it's like you know, shipping. Lower carbon footprint, it's just great that we can ship these things from such a shorter distance uh to us. So that's always awesome. Uh the cost one, wasn't there a time, or maybe is there a time right now where the cost is now actually getting competitive for some of these?

Jason Perkins:

For some of the grains, yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Once you get especially when you're dealing with the unmalted grains, um, you know, they're you know, they're farming at not certainly not the scale that the the big commercialized farmer, but they're farming a decent scale. They've got similar combine type equipment. Um, so they it's a little bit more economies of scale for them there. Uh it's the malting that's small batch that gets a little bit more challenging. So yeah, with some of the raw grains, the the prices have gotten competitive. There's also I mean, you think about like some of the global pressures that are on supply chain. Yeah. Ukraine war, for example, like that was a big thing. It's still a big thing. I specifically mean a big thing in grain when it first started because it's a huge producer of grain. Um I may be overgeneralizing here, but the main grain economy was kind of sheltered from that. So some of the global pressures on global supply chain that can happen for every other supplier didn't affect there. So that kind of helped um close the gap, I think, a little bit over on the the gap between the uh barley, local barley prices versus um non-local. That's awesome. So yes, yeah.

Brett Willis:

Um, and then I think like these grains are going outside of Maine too. Like there's New England Brewers, distillers, Vermont, like there's definitely some people in Massachusetts using these grains. So it's like it's cool because it's uh it's like a local economy thing. It's not just a Maine thing, it's actually spreading out. So that is really cool.

Jason Perkins:

And I'd even expand that to say, like, I think uh not necessarily uh directly because of us, but like because of the success of Maine Malthouse and Blue Ox in the state of Maine, I think it has shot directly or indirectly created other systems like that in other parts of the US. Like, you know, I think when when Maine Malthouse and Blue Ox opened, you might know this better than me, Branch, but there were a handful of craft malters in the US. Um, there's certainly more now than there was 10 years ago. And you know, I think they feed off each other, and it's like, oh, wait a minute, that works up there, and um, it can work. Similar markets can work elsewhere. I was we just did a collaboration brew with the seed, which is a small brewery in New Jersey, Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Brett Willis:

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Perkins:

Um, and it was really fun, fun for a lot of reasons to brew them, but um, all the grain came from uh New Jersey-based um, very similar. It's Rabbit Hill, right? Yeah, Rabbit Hill. Rabbit Hill, very very similar, like second generation uh brother sister who run who were farmers who put in a malt house, like very similar story as the main malthouse and and the seed exclusively used their grain. So it's just that's just an example. I think there's examples all all across the country of of that. And I think the more successes you can see in one area, it's just gonna be like, oh, I maybe I can pull that off in my area too.

Branch Rothschild:

Yeah. That's awesome. And I went to some of these meetings early on. New York had a farmer brewer bill where they were trying to seed it by New York State by saying if you used a certain amount from within the state, then there are tax benefits. There are a lot of uh malt houses going up around that time.

Brett Willis:

Do we have anything like that here in Maine? Any tax benefits?

Jason Perkins:

We don't, but I think it would be a good thing to have.

Brett Willis:

That'd be nice to have.

Jason Perkins:

Call your congressperson.

Brett Willis:

Call your representative. And last, uh what's next? Are we just continuing what we're doing? Do we have any thoughts or plan? Like, is it I think it seems like what we're doing is great and it's been working so far, but do we have any thoughts on what's next?

Jason Perkins:

I mean, keep doing what we're doing, honestly. Like it that is kind of the funny thing in a way of like we had a plan for one million pounds. Yeah. A very clear plan. And you know, branches a lot of credit for like planning out how we were gonna each year grow a certain amount. We had a basic idea of our growth every year when we started it. 2016, we need we had a roughly plus or minus certain amount in eight seventeen, we do this, 18 we do this, 19, we do this. We got to one million, we were like, now what do we do? And we came up with no plan, no formal plan whatsoever. And somehow we did it again. Yeah. Um, I mean it's not somehow, it's these relationships with these farmers, they're getting better with their with their growing, they're getting better, their systems. We we just found opportunities. So I think probably the plan for the next five years is the same. Yeah. Of just continuing to find a way to incorporate more and more of the these local grains in our beer. It's awesome.

Branch Rothschild:

I think another way forward that hopefully we do more of is like looking at some of these specialty products that they're making. Uh and hopefully like inspiring new and innovative pilot beers like that really express like these interesting flavors that uh they're creating.

Jason Perkins:

That's a good one, agreed. Uh all of the producers, but I guess I would say especially Blue Ox is really doing a lot of really fun stuff with different roasts and different different um kilning levels and so on, and coming out with some very kind of unique to them grain types. Um, and I think there's some really nice flavors to play around with there.

Branch Rothschild:

I think that's one of their advantages of having that small like they are relatively small and floor malted, so like the stakes of trying something like that. You don't have to do it with 16,000 pounds at a time or whatever it is. That is a benefit, yeah. A little more nimble.

Brett Willis:

Awesome. Well, we're still in the dark. Uh thank you, Jason. Thank you, Branch, for being here. This is awesome. This is I I feel like this is exact everything I was hoping for. So thanks for uh coming to making the time.

Branch Rothschild:

Thank you.

Brett Willis:

I wish I'd come up with a surprise question for you. Oh, I don't need that. Yeah, Liz wasn't able to join us here today. It's just, you know, didn't schedules didn't align. We had to make it. So who knows to listen to it?

Jason Perkins:

I'm glad you made it the whole time this time.

Branch Rothschild:

Well, we haven't listened to the recording yet. Uh my mic might have been off the whole time.

Brett Willis:

Yeah, I I turned I muted pretty much really early on, so to cut them off.