Field Notes: When It's not all Whiskey and Rainbows

Here at Root Shoot and Olander Farms, we like to think we’re pretty photogenic.

We work some amazingly beautiful properties. We get to spend our days in sunny fields with the Rocky Mountains as our backdrop. We’ve got bright green rows of crops under bright blue skies. We use some sexy looking tractors and some handsome vintage trucks. We’re still living the farm life, something that less than 2% of America’s population gets to experience, and everything is downright idyllic and bucolic…right?

Photo by Brewtography Project

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

Photo by Erin Timm Photography

Photo by Brewtography Project

At moments, yes.

When the sun sets behind the mountains as you’re checking irrigation lines, when you drive through a golden field of barley in just the right light, when the big skies of Colorado open around you and fields lay out in front of you, this farming thing can feel pretty darn good.

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

Photo by Root Shoot Malting

But just as often, farming is unbelievably hard.

Imagine, if you will, that you’re working away at your job. Maybe you’re working from home, happy in your pajamas, a cup of coffee in hand, tapping away at the computer, prepping for your first Zoom meeting of the day when suddenly, a nasty thunderstorm rolls in: wind, rain, lightening, hail - the works. You watch it blow through, thank the lucky stars the roof didn’t fly off the house…then open an email from your boss to discover that, suddenly, you’re going to make 10% less income this year than you thought. Immediately, you start calculating what to cut, where to cut, and how you can possibly make life work with this unexpected financial development.

This is also farming.

Hailstorms take out full fields of crops right before harvest. Irrigation ditches get shut off in the middle of a drought. We have an early freeze, a late frost, or a herd of elk plows through a ready-to-harvest field flattening plants in their wake.

Photo by Root Shoot Malting

Right now, we’re in that in-between space of loving what we do and wondering how it can be so hard. Two-thirds of our harvest is in (winter wheat and barley) with corn (distiller and silage) still to go.

The winter wheat did okay - not terrible, not great, but decent enough considering the brutally dry fall and winter we had. 300 acres of dryland wheat grossed 5,000 bushels of grain that we’re storing away for malting.  The barley - ufff, the barley. We harvested 700 good acres, the equivalent of 56,000 bushels, or 2.6 million pounds. It sounds like a lot. It is a lot, but to fully supply our malthouse for one year, we need 3 million pounds or 900 acres, harvested. That’s what we planted, but we lost 200 acres of malting barley because it didn’t meet the specifications required to serve our brewers and distillers. Stress on the plants, largely in the form of drought, caused high protein content which makes the barley unusable for malting. Add to that hail damage from storms, and voila - we’re down almost 30% of our primary crop.

Photo by Root Shoot Malting

As for the corn harvest - it’s still up in the air. Things look good now, but corn requires lots of water and we just got word last week that the ditches are running low and our water will be shut off “soon.”

How soon, we don’t know. The irrigation guessing game is part of the gig in farming. We’ve had a good monsoon season, maybe the afternoon storms will help make up for an early shut off. Maybe they won’t.

We don’t know.

Nor do we know how many acres of our leased land we’ll lose to development this year. We don’t know if we’ll find acreage to make up for what’s lost (fingers crossed that we do, we really need to plant more than 900 acres of barley.) We don’t know if diesel prices are going to come down or if tractor parts are going to become easier to find. We don’t even know if all the work we’re doing to switch to regenerative farming is going to pay off. Sometimes, even that seems to be harder than we ever banked on.

But…

We’re not in farming for a get-rich-quick scheme.

Honestly, we’re not in it for a get-rich-at-all scheme.

We’re in it because we love it, because the country needs farmers, because it’s what we do. We need to earn a living too, to be sure, but we believe the best way to earn a living is to do what you do well, work through the setbacks, and then do it even better.

We’re not going to cut corners.

We’re not going to sell sub-par malt just to save a dime. This year, we’ll supplement. We’ll have to buy the other 400,000 lbs (!) of barley from other growers, but if that’s what it takes to provide quality malt for our brewers and distillers, it’s a price we’re happy to pay. Next year we’ll plant another 900 acres of barley, and next year we’ll try again. We’re experimenting with some test plots of new varieties and we’re always tweaking our processes.

It’s hard sometimes - oftentimes - but we’ll plug away, learn more each year, and in the meantime, we’ll try to enjoy the bucolic moments. Because we are photogenic, gosh darn it! I mean, just look at this good looking team in this good-looking field of alfalfa and corn. They’re the picture of grace and beauty! Of farm-built athleticism and strength! Of…

Okay…they’re a little weird, but still. They’re ours. And they’re what make this project happen.

For every day spent tearing our hair out when things go wrong there are other days spent cartwheeling (albeit badly) through alfalfa fields. In our lives, and hopefully, in yours.

It’s not all whiskey and rainbows, but there are rainbows enough and we promise - come drought or hail, storms or marauding elk - that they’ll be malt enough to ensure the whiskey never runs dry.

Cheers!

—Your Root Shoot/Olander Farms Team

Field Notes: Bring on the Barley! (And other crop updates)

If you reap what you sow…

We should have a whole lot of whiskey and beer coming our way, soon!

It’s barley season, and the barley is coming in strong, something for which we are always thankful since it is the heart and soul of our entire operation. At last check, it has reached its full height, the seed heads are looking solid, and soon we’ll be cutting off irrigation. At most, we’ll give it one last good dousing with the center pivots, and then we’ll let the Colorado weather do what it does best: dry things out. The barley will dry down in the fields, changing from this bright green color you see now to the renowned “amber waves of grain.” If we had to warrant a guess as to when we’ll begin harvest, it’s looking like mid-to-late July.

Speaking of July, what’s the old saying? Corn knee-high by the 4th of July?

If that’s the case, ours is either seriously overachieving or the owner of those particular knees is a heck of a lot taller than us.

The knee-high anecdote is a good rule of thumb, but any plant’s height in any given year is dependent on dozens of different variables: planting date, soil temps, soil composition, water availability, plant variety, and more. Our distiller and silage corns are looking good (corn mid-thigh by the 4th of July??) but it’s our heritage Abenaki that’s really showing off, precisely as we hoped.

The Abenaki is what’s called short-season corn. An old Native American variety that we have talked about before in this post, Abenaki was bred by indigenous populations to grow to maturity in areas with relatively short summers. Whereas a typical commodity corn variety will take around 130 days to mature. Abenaki takes around 90. If you’re a Native American living in the cold Northeast before modern technology, having corn that matures in 90 days rather than 130 can mean the difference between having enough food for winter or starving. For us, the situation is slightly less dire. But it does mean we get a 40-day head start on making the next batch of whiskey! That’s over a month more of bourbon in your glass!

Figuratively speaking, however, the corn is not yet out of the woods, yet. A bit of a water hog, corn requires significant irrigation. Up until just last week, we were able to irrigate with free water from overflow snowmelt off the Big Thompson River. When that was shut off (as it is every year) we switched to watering via our irrigation ditches. As one might guess from the consistently dry weather this year, those irrigation ditches are running low. We don’t know how long the water will last, but if it runs out too soon, it could still damage the corn. We’ve tried to plan for that by reducing the number of plants planted per square foot in order to allow for more soil moisture per plant, but like farmers all over the state, we’re crossing our fingers and praying for rain.

And finally: the wheat. Our poor winter wheat.

In a year where news of wheat shortages dominates the market, it’s tough to say that this year’s winter wheat harvest is looking less-than-stellar, but that’s the truth of it. We grow our wheat on our dryland fields - fields without irrigation capacity. In a normal year, the wheat goes in in the fall and the winter snow brings enough moisture to allow it to germinate, grow a little, then go dormant until spring.

Last fall was brutally dry, however, and winter snows weren’t great either. In a relatively rare occurrence, our wheat didn’t sprout at all until spring, putting it behind schedule right out of the gate. Since then, we’ve only received two inches of rain, and there is virtually no residual moisture in the soil so the wheat is hurting. We’re sending it all the good mojo we can, but mojo isn’t enough: we need rain.

The season’s far from over and there are many things that could still go wrong…but for that matter, there are many things that could go right, as well.

As farmers, our success is not always within our control: we are inextricably tied to Mother Nature and her whims, to unpredictable market fluctuations, and fickle supply chains. But mostly, we’re tied to our land and to our community: our friends, family, and the wonderful businesses that support us.

That’s more than enough for us to believe that this whole project will turn out just fine.

Cheers to the upcoming barley harvest! We look forward to growing the grain to supply many more toasts to come!

Cocktail Recipe of the Month: Sonoran State of Mind by Ballmer Peak Distillery

Ah, summer.

The pools are open, the mountains are prime for adventuring,, and patios all over this great state are beckoning with their promise of cold drinks, good company, and happy hours every day of the week.

The warm weather has us trading in the winter stouts and dark bourbon drinks we love in favor of lighter fare and tropical flavors that make us think of…vacation. Of beaches. Of time off from work to just enjoy the summer heat and chill with a good drink in hand.

We want drinks that make us feel like we’re sunning ourselves on a beach in Mexico without a care in the world.

We may not make it to Mexico this summer, but for this month’s cocktail recipe, we’re bringing you the next best thing: a Sonoran-inspired beverage that brings a little slice of vacation right into your home.

Brought to you by Ballmer Peak Distillery in Lakewood, Colorado, this Sonoran State of Mind cocktail is easy, approachable, and - above all - delicious. It’s a drink you can whip up in your kitchen, take out to the back patio, and sip with your swimsuit on and your feet in a kiddie pool.

It may not be Mexico, but it sure is enjoyable.

Cheers to Ballmer Peak for sending it our way, and be sure to send us some photos if you try it!

Sonoran State of Mind

by Ballmer Peak Distillery

Ingredients:

• 2oz Ballmer Peak Light Whiskey

• 1oz cactus fruit syrup

• 1oz orange juice

• 2 dashes angostura bitters

Instructions:

• Combine all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice and shake.

• Strain into a rocks glass with ice and garnish with an orange twist or dehydrated orange wedge.

  *Cactus fruit syrup can be difficult to source to make at home. We recommend purchasing a pre-made syrup available at many restaurant supply stores on Amazon.

Brewery of the Month: Joyride Brewing

We have to admit that here at Root Shoot, we…

We can sometimes be beer snobs.

We’re not stuck-up, we swear! It’s just hard to settle for less than the best when your job entails being around so much good beer from so many great breweries all the time. We get a little spoiled. We can be a little finicky. And when we’re feeling particularly hoity-toity, we’ll admit it…we’ve been known to demand the best beer in the world.

Luckily for us, that beer can be found just down the highway from the malthouse at Joyride Brewing, a stellar craft brewery overlooking Sloan Lake in Edgewater.

Joyride Brewing makes the best Kolsch in the world. We mean this quite literally: they took home the gold medal for their Ice Cutter Kölsch in the German-style Kolsch category of the World Beer Cup.

Think about that for a minute. The WORLD Beer Cup. Not the Colorado Beer Cup. Not the American Beer Cup. This wasn’t even the Great American Beer Festival. This was putting their Kolsch out there on the world stage and having it come home the winner.

Hot damn, Joyride! We’ll toast to that!

Winning a gold in the WBC is a heck of a way to celebrate eight years of beer, which is precisely what Joyride will be doing this month. July 15-17 marks their eighth anniversary bash, and they know how to throw an epic party. Every year for their anniversary, Joyride hosts a huge block party and this year is no exception. Streets will be closed, live music is lined up for the entire weekend. There will be food trucks, kids’ activities, and, of course, world-class beer.

All of this is quite impressive from a brewery that began as a Christmas gift re-gifted.

The Joyride seeds were planted when co-owner Dave Bergen bought his dad a Mr. Beer kit for Christmas. His dad didn’t really get into it, so he gave Dave the kit back. Dave started brewing with extract for a few years, got hooked, and dove deep into the all-grain world in 2009. He and his brewing buddies (now business partners) realized they were actually pretty good at it, and a business plan was born.

Today Joyride Brewing sits right across the street from Sloan Lake and the brewery itself is pretty spectacular. One of our favorite features? It has a rooftop patio. A rooftop patio serving the best beer in the world with a lakefront view.

Pinch us, please.

The Joyride people are just as great as their beer. They’re an enthusiastic bunch, always down for brewing collaboration beers, hosting events, or just serving you up a cold one. There is, however, one employee who stands out as being exceptionally stellar: Roger, the Joyride elephant. He’s by far the most dedicated Joyride employee and, since he takes payments in peanuts and beer, he’s also the most affordable.

In all seriousness, however, if you’re going to visit one brewery this month, make it Joyride. Check out their upcoming anniversary bash. Visit for a Friday post-work beer. Spend a Sunday staring at the lake from the rooftop patio. Order yourself a Kolsch. Or an IPA. Or anyone of the 16 beers currently on tap.

Then raise a toast to this killer Colorado craft beer scene that allows breweries like Joyride to thrive, and that lets us be the beer snobs that we are.

Here in Colorado, we only drink the best beer in the world.

Cocktail Recipe of the Month: Talnua Distillery - Hop to It!

With summer patios on our mind and so many great distilleries in our Root Shoot family, we’ve decided to collaborate with a few of our amazing partner businesses and post a Cocktail of the Month recipe for you spirit-sippers to try at home. This month, we have a Finglas Dubdair Barrel Aged Gin hoppy paloma from Talnua Distillery.

Sound fancy? That’s because it is! In fact, we’ve got two variations of this recipe: one for those of you who are aspiring mixologists at home, and a simplified version for those of you who like to sip, but don’t know much about mixing.

Not up for mixing your own at all, but think it sounds good? This cocktail is currently being served in Talnua’s cocktail lounge, so cozy up to the bar and give it (and all their other amazing cocktails) a try!

HOP TO IT: A Finglas Dubdair Barrel Aged Gin Hoppy Paloma

Photo courtesy of Talnua Distillery

Ingredients:

• 2 oz Finglas Dubdair Gin (you can purchase here)

• 3/4 oz fresh grapefruit juice

• 1/4 oz fresh lime juice

• 1/2 oz cinnamon simple syrup

• 1/8 oz grapefruit hop tincture (for aspiring mixologists) OR 1/8 oz of your favorite West Coast IPA

To Make Cinnamon Simple Syrup:

• 1 cup water

• 1 cup sugar

• 1/4 cup cinnamon sticks, broken into small pieces

• Bring the water to a boil

• When it has come to a boil add the sugar and cinnamon and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

• Turn the heat down to a low simmer and continue to stir occasionally for 20 minutes

• Transfer the contents into a heat resistant container and put in the fridge overnight

• Strain out the pieces of cinnamon

To Make Grapefruit Hop Tincture: (Not up for tackling the tincture? No worries! As noted in the recipe above, just replace the tincture with your favorite West Coast IPA and you’ll get a similar finished product!)

• 30 g Simcoe hops

• peel of one whole grapefruit cut into thin strips

Procedure:

• Place grapefruit peels and 15g of hops with 500mL of neutral grain spirit (something like vodka) into an ISI whipper (whip cream canister)

• Charge it once with NO2

• Shake it, shake it

• Place whipper into simmering hot water bath for 30 minutes (sous vide)

• After 30 minutes, take out of hot bath, place in ice bath to cool down for 5 minutes

• Release gas from whipper carefully

• Add remaining 15g of hops

• Charge whipper again with NO2, shake for 30 seconds

• Rest for 30 minutes

• Carefully vent gas

• Strain through coffee filter

• store in light-resistant container

Brewery of the Month: Iron Mule Brewing

It’s one thing to support craft malt.

It’s a whole different thing to own a craft-malt certified truck.

And when your craft-malt certified truck comes in a bright cherry red, adorned with sage, yet beer-y, advice (It’s easier to start the day when you know it will end with beer) and the picture of a friendly mule looking you in the face, well…you must be Bill Benson, owner of Iron Mule Brewery in Castle Rock and one of our favorite malthouse visitors on pick up days.

Just look at this truck. You can’t not be happy when you look at this truck. The fact that it’s filled to the brim with Root Shoot malt, well, that just adds to the good mojo this truck brings. If you ever see the Iron Mule Jeep on the highway, honk, wave, and smile because that’s a batch of good malt going to make a bunch of batches of good beer. And that driver, Bill, also happens to be a really good guy.

For starters, who else regularly drives up all the way from Castle Rock to pick up malt? Bill and (let’s be honest) Bill’s Jeep are kind of malthouse celebrities. While Bill grabs his grain, we always grab a few photos of the Jeep.

Bill Benson (left) and malthouse production manager Craig Miller.

We met Bill and his Iron Mule project in 2017 when Bill called looking for a bag of malt. Still officially a homebrewer at the time, but In the midst of opening Iron Mule, Bill had discovered Root Shoot malt through The Brew Hut and, impressed with our products, began using it to brew. On that fateful day, however, The Brew Hut was out of our malt, so Bill shot us off an email and we dropped a 50 lb bag of malt at Bill’s front door.

That was the first and last time that we ever made it to Bill’s house, because shortly after that, the Iron Mule opened its doors. Now, nearly five years later, Bill has returned the favor dozens of times over with the Iron Mule Jeep.

A side note,: that fortuitous 50 lb bag of malt was used in Bill’s Mule Skinner, a Baltic Porter that took a homebrew competition Gold Medal and is still brewed and served on Iron Mule’s taps today!

A reluctant homebrewer, Bill Benson never wanted to own a brewery. With over ten years in the foodservice industry, however, he did want to open a restaurant. “If food trucks had been a thing back then [early 2000s]” Bill told us, “ Iron Mule might never have happened.” Knowing his appreciation for cooking and craft beer, a neighbor of Bill’s continually pushed him to try homebrewing. Afraid it was a rabbit hole he would never dig out of, Bill continually refused. Then, in 2005, the neighbor asked him to meet at a local brewery that just so happened to be connected to a homebrew store. Bill left that day with everything he needed and promptly jumped with both feet down the rabbit hole. He brewed three batches of extract on the stove, then skipped straight to brewing 10 gallons of all grain. Less than a year later, he joined ProBrewer.com and developed the concept for Iron Mule. He built a 1 BBL brewing system in his garage and, when that wasn’t enough, opened a whole darn brewery.

Iron Mule is the embodiment of the phase, “Well, that escalated quickly.”

Truly, we’re glad that it did.

Iron Mule Brewery is (in our humble opinion) one of the coolest little breweries in Colorado. Built into the old ACME water tower building, the space reminds us a little of our grain bins (we mean that in a good way!) Originally small, taking up just half of the building’s first floor and seating just 30 people, Iron Mule has been steadily expanding since their opening. They’ve grown from a 2 BBL system to a 6 BBL system, acquired a patio, took over the entire first floor, began canning beer, and are now entering the final expansion of their brewhouse.

It’s a busy life.

Yet somehow, through the business of it all, Bill still finds time to be our biggest fan.

Seriously. This man is about as subtle in promoting Root Shoot’s malt as…well…as a bright red truck with a mule’s face on it driving down the highway packed to the gills with malt.

Bill is on a one-man (one-mule?) mission to promote Root Shoot. In his own words: “I have a big mouth. Really. If I like a product I will talk about it, to it and try to convince anyone that they should use it too. I’m not sure if I have converted anyone [to Root Shoot], but I know a couple of breweries that are using it based on my never shutting up about it.”

Solid. We appreciate that, Bill!

Visiting Iron Mule means preparing to have your ideas around beer stretched.

“We brew beer, not styles,” says Bill. “That may sound weird, but it comes from my cooking background. One of our IPAs started as an American Pale Ale. We listed it as such, and no one would drink it. We changed the name from Pale Ale to IPA and it sold like crazy. (It’s still an American Pale Ale.) I stopped taking stock in styles at that time. I love the creativity that beer offers. We won a local event with our Imperial Black Currant Saison last year. Three types of unique hops. Honey from Hawaii and two different yeasts. We have successfully brewed over 60 unique beers from heirloom/historical styles to full-on crazy.”

Full-on crazy beer? We’ll take it! In actuality, we’ll take everything about Iron Mule: its dedication to craft, its pride in local, its emphasis on quality, and commitment to local relationships.

And its really cool Jeep.

Have we mentioned it has a really cool Jeep?

So, today’s toast (we’re choosing the Cit'n On a Mule American IPA) is to Iron Mule and the entire team behind it. We’d be nowhere without our breweries, and we couldn’t ask for a brewery more dedicated to the craft cause.

Cheers, Iron Mule! You may say that your beer “Tastes Like Happy” but in reality…it’s just you. You make Colorado - and the craft beer world just a little more Happy.