With the first of the snow flurries arriving and our second growing season behind us, we are now able to take a few moments to reflect and share some of the accomplishments from one whirlwind of a summer.
This summer we were able to expand our gardens to grow more of the ingredients we love such as tangerine gem marigolds, lemon coriander, and early wonder beets and added many new plants to experiment with like tulsi, chamomile, a few new pumpkin varieties, and some ornamental lime queen zinnias for fun. Our fruit, vegetables, herbs, and hop harvests all increased greatly over our first season. We are very grateful to be able to provide so many crops for beer production from our own farm, and we were most ecstatic about our very first hop harvest. While all 5 hop varieties did well the cascades hops proved to be the workhorse of the group and we were able to harvest enough for our first wet hopped farm grown beer, ODD ALPHA.
Another milestone was our transition to 100% Maine grains base malts. This means that all of our beers are now at least 95% all Maine ingredients with many already reaching 100%. Our goal from the start has always been to grow as much as we can at the farm for beer production, and to look to other local Maine farmers and businesses to supply what we can’t grow. The challenge with this decision is that by choosing Maine grains, our costs increased by 40%. It is crazy that grain from Europe is 40% cheaper than the grain from our own state. Originally we planned to gradually transition Maine grains into our brews over a 5 year period and from the start we began using Maine grains in all of our small batches of beer. Then as we hit our 1-year mark, the realization came that there was never a going to be a good time to make the leap and so we decided to take the plunge. We think supporting local Maine farms and agriculture is the right thing to do and is at the heart of our own business. As one of the only farm breweries in the state we are proud to be brewing Maine beer with Maine ingredients and we hope that by taking action now it will help to open more doors and opportunities for other farmers and breweries down the road.
In the fall we widened our driveway and re-graded the parking lot to make it more accessible to our visitors. It’s not glamorous but we are working hard to make your visit here the best experience we can and sometimes it’s the small things that make all the difference.
Lastly, we are a few weeks away from completing our commercial kitchen and we have assembled an awesome pizza loving crew to work with us to make simple, delicious wood-fired pizza featuring high quality local ingredients. We are in the planning stages for another garden expansion so that we are able to provide some of the ingredients for pizza in addition to beer production. We are super spoiled to be living in such an agriculturally rich region and will be looking to our farmer friends to help us fill in the gaps and to provide more variety to our offerings.
As the colder weather creeps in we are excited to roll out some of our favorite winter beer offerings, perfectly enjoyed in our extra cozy tasting room, and soon to be paired with specialty wood fired pizzas. As always thank you for the support as we grow this little farm brewery.
