Malt of the Month: Munich 10

Sometimes, good things come out of hard times.

Munich 10 malt was our silver lining of the 2020 pandemic. Or, perhaps more adequately, our bronze lining. A malt that we had been developing and refining, trying to make just right, finally hit its stride, winning a bronze medal in that year’s Craft Malt Cup, and giving us a bit of a bright spot in what was otherwise a strange and difficult time.

Or perhaps it was the isolation and solitude of the pandemic that made us creative, working to perfect this malt and the malting process until we hit the nail on the head, a task that served to both keep our minds busy and feel like we were creating something positive out of an uncertain situation.

Whatever it was, that 2020 batch of Munich 10 came out of the drum swingin,’ ready to flex its thick bread crust flavors and honey and brown sugar aromas in a wide variety of beers. 

Produced via a slightly warmer germination phase to increase the modification level, Munich 10 also receives a touch higher moisture in the kiln which promotes the melanoidin reaction, resulting in excellent color and flavor development, Munich 10’s strongest traits. 

This malt excels as an added extra layer that ups a beer’s game. Our personal favorite uses include employing it as a flavor and color enhancer for West Coast IPAs, or adding it to increase complexity in “roasty-toasty” beers. The caramel, honey, and brown sugar aromas, along with the light orange color from the wort also make this an excellent choice of malt for Oktoberfest season.

This year’s gold medal win in the Craft Malt Cup shows us that Munich 10 has continued to mature. It’s consistent, it’s high-quality, it’s predictable in its ability to elevate the brews it’s blended into.

It is, most definitely, a malt that you should add to your next pallet.

No regrets.

Brewery of the Month: Salt Road Brewing, Fort Collins

Scott Ficarra is clear about his mission in the craft brewing world:

“I’m on a quest to brew world beer styles with all Colorado ingredients.”

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that a man dead-set on “making Northern Colorado become a world-renown location for beer and beer ingredients,” wasn’t always aboard the local train. 

Why the change in heart? 

The good influence of good friends.

Scott began homebrewing two decades ago while working for the steel industry in a job that took him all over the United States. “I have an engineer’s mind, but I’m also artistic,” he said. “Beer seemed like a good fit for a hobby as it has elements of both.”

When his job finally landed him in the craft beer mecca that is Colorado, Scott was sourcing most of his brewing supplies from online. One day, however, he noticed that a new homebrew supply shop, Elevated Fermentations, had opened. He went to check it out and…voila!…he was so impressed that he immediately converted to everything local.

Okay - perhaps we’re exaggerating a bit. But Elevated Fermentations, owned by John and Kristen Gawthrop, was, indeed, the beginning of Scott's (and Salt Road”s) local journey. The Gawthrops introduced him to Colorado Hop Company, Inland Island Yeast, Troubador Maltings and, of course, us!

Slowly, Scott began to reconsider his recipes and his position on local sourcing. “I don’t know how the hell they got me to change my mind,” he said. “I’m usually pretty set in my ways. But they did it…and now I’m on my quest to brew all-Colorado beers.”

As his homebrewing progressed, Scott and his wife Kelly, started talking about opening a brewery. In an objective and wisely pragmatic move, rather than jumping in blind, they figured that maybe Scott should enter some homebrewing competitions first. Why open a brewery if the greater public doesn’t love your beer?

More than 100 awards in 27 different categories later, they decided to go for it. But there was just one problem: they needed help, and the help they wanted - the Gawthrops, from Elevated Fermentations - had closed the brew store and moved out of state. 

Then they got a phone call. The Gawthrops were moving again. Scott invited them to Colorado to help open the brewery he had in mind. They thought it over and accepted.

Salt Road Brewing opened on April 22nd of this year, with Scott and Kelly as co-founders (and brewer and president, respectively) and John and Kristen as brewer and taproom manager. They’ve got a solid crew of taproom employees, and Scott is working hard at creating an “untypical work environment.” 

“We want to let people be themselves,” he said. “It’s a different world now, and people need flexibility. We want to give them that flexibility and let them work to their strengths.” 

Case in point? They don’t have a head brewer. Scott and John share the beer menu equally, each creating beers and styles that speak to them.

The taproom - Prost’s previous old town location, had been remodeled, re-worked, and boasts plenty of indoor seating, a large outdoor patio, and a small front patio right on the sidewalk. “It was so nerve-wracking opening a brewery just half a mile from New Belgium,” said Scott. “I mean, there I am, just a homebrewer, right in the middle of the big-leagues. I couldn’t mess this up.” So he didn’t. He and John worked around the clock to get a selection of really solid beers on tap. Kristen recruited a stellar taproom staff, and now, just a month and a half in, it’s really happening.

“I still haven’t even grasped that it’s actually open,” says Scott. “Maybe it’s just sheer exhaustion.”

But open they are, and they are cranking out all kinds of good beer!

Scott believes that a good American Pale Ale defines a brewery and how good the rest of its menu is going show. “When you do an American Pale very well people expect the rest of your beer to be done just as well.” Salt Road’s 555 Pale Ale is their take on this key style, and the rest of their menu lives up to the high expectation set by it: there are multiple IPAs (must try: Foggy Rather Groggy DIPA, but be warned - it’s a big 9%ABV.) The Melon Dream - fruited American wheat with honeydew melon is a summery beer meant for patio drinking. And Arrogant Sellout, an American Strong Ale that serves as a new brewery’s stab at Stone Brewing’s sellout last year after years of protesting (ad nauseam, in fact) that they would never do such a thing.

And along with all this good beer, Salt Road also takes some time to do some good. Each month, the brewery selects a charity to donate to, and patrons have the chance to round up their tab to contribute to those donations. The brewery also hosts rotating art by local artists.

They’ve got a lot going on for a business that’s only been open a month and a half…but they love it all.

“I’m trying to take time off,” Scott says. “I’m supposed to take off Monday and Tuesdays, but I often end up coming in anyway. Not because I don’t trust our staff. I just…love being here.”

And we love having them in the craft beer community.

So, if you’re looking for a new place to check out, if you’re big into supporting local, if you want to visit an up and coming brewery, or if you just want to have a craft pint on a comfortable old town patio…

..swing by Salt Road. And tell ‘em Root Shoot sent you. 

Brewery of the Month: Avant Garde Aleworks, Estes Park

Pop Quiz: 

What do you do when you finish a long, hard hike?

If the answer is, “find the nearest brewery and grab a craft beer,” then we should be friends. And as friends, we feel we should let you know that you can do both of these things (hike and craft-beer-it-up, that is,) in Estes Park. 

Long famous for the epic scenery in Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes is a fantastic destination for all things outdoorsy…but what do you do post-adventuring? When you’re all sweaty and have bug bites, and drank all your water, and just want to sit down and give those hiking boots a break?

Swing over to Avant Garde Aleworks, of course!

A sweet little brewery located just outside of downtown, Avant Garde was founded by the rarest of rare humans in that tiny tourist town: an Estes Park (and therefore Colorado) native! 

Owner Christian Newendorp founded Avant Garde with the goal of making all the beer he wanted to drink, but could never find in Estes. For the most part, this included Saisons, Belgian Abbey Styles, and older and less popular European beers. A longtime homebrewer, Christian worked with these styles of beer, gave them his own unique twist, and finally, on July 4th, 2019 he made the leap to commercial brewing, opening Avant Garde with the help of family members. Before doing so, however, he did his commercial brewing homework, shadowing and learning from well-established brewers including Jim McCann from Tommyknocker, Charlie Hoxmeier from Gilded Goat, and Shaun Salyards, who is now with Snowbank Brewing. 

The best part about it? The other brewers were welcoming and encouraging, something that only reinforced Christian’s belief that he had made the right decision in joining the craft brewing industry.

It’s this tight-knit craft community that we, here at Root Shoot, have to thank for sending Avant Garde our way! Industry friends, including another local Estes Park craft beverage producer, Elkins Distilling, recommended Root Shoot to Christian, he tried us out, and the rest is happy, beer-drinking history. We go hike, mountain bike, and explore RMNP, then we swing by Avant Garde to rest our weary legs and enjoy a Farmhouse Saison…made with local malt that we produced before bailing on all of our work duties to go hike, bike, and have fun.

Avant Garde is so invested in learning about their local ingredients that they brought the whole staff to the malthouse and it’s been a mutually beneficial and educational experience. We’re able to show them how we grow grain and turn it into malt, all just 45 minutes from their brewery, and they have helped us grow (as so many of our brewers and distillers do) by working with them to refine and re-think recipes with our malt. 

And the recipes are coming out killer! Their French Pilner ranks among Malthouse Manager Mike’s favorite beers of the year (a designation that Christian lists as one of his “proudest moments so far.” Maltster Mike knows beer!) That French Pilsner is also one of Christian’s favorite beers (we love it when brewers actually admit to having favorites!) along with the Altbier currently on tap. But they’ve got it all: light, dark, hoppy, saison-y - try a few of your standard types…then maybe branch out and try them all.

You just finished a hardcore hike.

You’ve earned a good beer in good company.

Cheers!

Field Notes: Starting Spring Right

We’ve had so much going on at the malthouse and the farm (a staff trip to Germany! Multiple malt medals!) that we haven’t kept up with Field Notes on our farmwork. Rest assured, however, that we have most definitely kept up with the fieldwork itself. Those beers you’re sipping aren’t going to grow themselves!

It’s May and we’re off to a great start to the farming season! All of our grain except for corn is in the ground, and with the moisture we got this past winter, everything is looking happy and healthy. Plus (as always!) we’re up some experimental shenanigans and busily taking notes on how it’s going. Here’s our spring roundup:

900 Acres of Future Beer is in the Ground!

900 acres is the minimum amount it takes annually to keep our malting drums busy. In an ideal world, we’d love to produce even more, so that we can hedge against weather events and stock up our silos for the tougher growing years. If you’ve got a line on available farmland in the area, by all means - give us a call!

And Don’t Forget the Rye Whiskey…

We’re not just all about the beer! We’re hoping some of that barley will become whiskey as well, and for those special batches of rye we planted 60 acres of Guardian Rye seed as well. It’s a new-to-us variety that we selected due to its spicy flavor, and based on a study from Michigan State University. Even if we’re rolling into summer, we know that winter will come, and we’ll need some warming tumblers of something tasty by the fire.

Lightning and Thunder Survived!

Last fall, we shared a post about planting Lightning and Thunder, two experimental barley varieties. Here’s the recap: in Colorado, most barley is planted in the spring. Typically, it can’t take our winter weather and would die if planted in the fall, unlike winter wheat, for example, which requires fall planting and cold weather to thrive in the spring. However, experimental varieties of fall-planted barley are in development with the hope that if we can find a barley that will withstand Colorado winters, it might be a way of providing more moisture to the plants: they could benefit from the winter snows to balance out our springs, which have become warmer and drier.

So we popped two varieties of this barley in the ground last fall and…they survived! Which is exceptionally good news, since this winter was much colder than those in recent years. If they made it through this past cold season, they stand a good chance of making it through future ones.

There’s still a lot of information to be gathered, however. All we can say for certain is that the plants survived and look happy. We still need to test for yield, quality, protein content and more. Stay tuned as we update you throughout the season!

Contemplating Kernza

If you follow our socials, you may have seen a post a couple weeks ago about Kernza. Part of our latest grain experiments, Kernza is a perennial grain developed by The Land Institute out of Kansas. The potential impact of a successful perennial grain is exciting: it could allow farms to have healthier soil biology, and it would reduce the need for tilling and replanting. It could promote carbon sequestration and reduce carbon released into the air from agriculture. There’s still a lot to learn - but no better time to start than now, so we’ve planted seven acres as a start, and we’ll see where it goes!

Corn is Coming and the Wheat is Wonderful!

The last crop that we plant every year, corn needs the weather to be a little warmer than all the others for planting, but we’ve had such a great spring that we managed to get it all in the ground this past week! And the winter wheat - oh, the wheat! With the moisture we had this past winter, the wheat is looking so much better than last spring.

We’re hoping it shapes up to be one heck of a year for harvests. Until that time, we’ll be here, growing your beer!

—Cheers!

Your Olander Farms Team

Malt of the Month: Vienna

Meet Root Shoot’s Vienna malt: gold medal winner in the 2023 Craft Malt Cup and Root Shoot malthouse rebel. Our Vienna is a malt that pushes the boundaries of flavor and color, a malt that turns up the heat where others might hesitate, a malt that is so spectacular at what it does, it fills brewhouses with aromatics that leave an impression for days. With flavors of warm, toasted bread and grains that burst with nuttiness, Vienna is anything but bland and boring. Even the hop steep from it stands out: its bright orange color and fresh pretzel aroma make brewers instantly long for Oktoberfest.

The secret to our Vienna’s success lies in high kiln temps that toast it to perfection. We finish it at 220 degrees - higher than our Munich 10, even - and the application of dry heat is where the magic takes place. 

But magic doesn’t come easily. One of the most labor-intensive malts we produce, Vienna always finishes in the late, dark hours of the night. More than once, we’ve stumbled out of bed at ungodly hours to drive to the malthouse and check on a batch. We’re rewarded by the warm-grain scents when we open the drum door, and the pleasure of watching raw grain turn into something exceptional. 

And Vienna truly is exceptional. Extremely functional as a base it can serve as a go-to malt, but when used in layers it creates amazing complexity in finished products. 

Want to taste what we’re talking about? We have suggestions. Stodgy’s Vienna Lager is a shining example, of what Vienna can do.  Best West Quest IPA at Tightknit Brewing in Greeley is another Vienna beer, and one on our personal list for one of the best beers of the year so far. Cellar West’s Wingra Pale Ale is both damn tasty and demonstrates the awesome color that Vienna produces.

Go on, give these beers (and Vienna malt) a try. After years of work and refinement in our production, we’re proud of where it has landed.

And we’re confident that you will be proud of what you and Vienna create.

Malt of the Month: Pilsner

531.

That’s how many times we’ve pulled this stunner of a malt out of our drums. Bright grain, perfect color and flavor, with an extract that always comes in exactly on point. 

Our pilsner kiln profile hasn't changed much over the years. Pilsner is consistent.  It’s the under-appreciated workhorse of the malthouse: not too flashy, just the right amount of hay and straw character to give it the perfect profile for delicate beers.  It lagers bright, the foam it leaves behind has it’s own je ne sais quoi with lacing for days.

The clean characteristics of our Pilsner are precisely those you expect of classic German malts. This is, after all, made from Genie barley, a European variety processed with European malting equipment.  It stays true to its classic tradition.

For the last couple of years, we have seen a shift to Pilsner malt for hazy IPA production, but now it seems the pendulum is starting to swing back: Root Shoot Pilsner lagers are popping up all over the place. Why might that be? Recently, at a sensory evaluation at one of our partner breweries, we put our Pilsner up against that of a large industry competitor. The unanimous results?

This majestic malt didn't win a gold medal and Best of Show for no reason. It lagers with the best of them!

If you’re looking to try some local beers made with our Pilsner before committing to a pallet yourself, we’ve got recommendations! Some of our favorite Pilsner-boasting beers currently on tap include:

Low Flow Pils at Gilded Goat. Photo courtesy of Gilded Goat.

Start’n’ Early from Woods Boss, an American Light Lager with beautiful color and a crisp profile.  Also, the Kellerman Pilsner from Green Mountain Beer Company which garnered lots of praise from the malthouse crew when they brought us a taste (or several.) Verboten's Pilsner is what dreams are made of, and we would be remiss if we didn't mention Barquentine’s Table Saison that won a silver at the World Beer Cup.  Oh! And what about Gilded Goat’s Low Flow Pils? Amazing. If you’ve had any Funkwerks beer lately...that's also our pilsner malt shining through.  

And shine it does. In fact, as of the Malt Cup just a few weeks ago, we can now say that our Pilsner malt is now a gold standard.  That's a hell of a statement. 

We are hell of proud of it.

We can’t wait to see what you dream up of this malt. Please let us know what you do. 

We’d love to come join you in toasting to lacing lagers, sexy saisons, and practically perfect pilsners.

Cheers, 

–Your Root Shoot team 

Crafting as a Community: Craft Malt Conference 2023

 It was so good to be together again. 

Photo: @activebeergeek

After three years of remote Craft Malt Conferences, we (and everyone else we met) were thrilled to be able to meet with our craft malt community in person again. Friends and colleagues, handshakes and hugs, beer and whiskey in glass-clinking toasts were a welcome change from the COVID shadows of the last few years. 

Fun and learning.

This is what the Craft Malt Conference has always been about for us, and not necessarily in that order. (Learning and fun?) The truth of the matter is that in this type of gathering, the two are inextricably combined. 

Like most of the businesses at the conference, we have spent the last three years growing and learning, working and improving, but it’s never the same to do that work in isolation. So when we landed in Portland, ME we got right to business making up for lost time (and catching up on lost beer tastings in the process!) Thanks to open door policy of local breweries and malthouses, as well as the excellent planning of the Craft Maltsters Guild, we learned a lot. A few of our highlights:

Blue Ox Malthouse and the Floor Malting Community:

We visited Blue Ox Malthouse in Lisbon Falls, ME (just outside of Portland).  Another multi-medal winner of the Malt Cup competition (they won a bronze in both the Pale Malt and the Light Munich categories,) they are a floor malting facility that is about to quadruple in capacity with a pending expansion. Owner and head maltster Joel Alex showed us around and explained how they use Maine-grown grain in their malthouse, sourced from farms in the northern part of the state. We’re always fascinated by visiting floor-malting facilities as they are so different from ours and we discovered that there are even more places doing floor malting than we realized. There’s more than one way to produce quality malt, and these folks are killing it.

Allagash Brewing Company and all the Maine Beer:

In addition to checking out Blue Ox, we also had the opportunity to tour Allagash Brewing Company in Portland guided by head brewer and Craft Maltsters Guild board director Branch Rothschild. We downed some Allagash White, their flagship Belgian-style wheat beer, and learned about the cutting-edge work they’re doing. They have an in-house coolship that they designed and built. (No idea what that is? They’ve got a great explanation of it here.) They’re also doing a mixed-culture fermentation program. It’s a pretty amazing place! We also managed to hit Harpoon Brewery, Portsmouth Brewery, Maine Beer Company, and Trillium Brewing Company. We could have continued the beer tours for the entire weekend (you know us!) but we also had some learning to do, which brings us to our biggest highlight…

The Conference and Learning:

The Craft Maltsters Guild did excellent work planning interesting talks on a wide range of topics. Of particular interest to us: the panel discussion about American Single Malt Whiskey. (Because, you know…we’ve got a Root Shoot American Single Malt Whiskey coming out, soon…) American Single Malt is going to be a huge part of the whiskey market in the US and beyond, and we’re so excited to be a part of that. We also got tips and tricks from Emily Hutto of Radcraft on “Using Craft Malt as a Megaphone” - a topic we’ve been highly invested in for years as we try to tell the story not just of the malt itself, but the entire farming and family process behind it.

The Craft Malt Conference consistently allows us to strengthen relationships with like-minded businesses, share knowledge, and keep up on industry trends. 

It also allows us to meet with our people. And it’s the people - always the people - that make this conference so great.

We are always honored to be a part of this community, and we hope always to serve the craft malt community in any way that we can. We’re here, we’re engaged, and we’re excited to show up and spread the craft malt word.

One American Single Malt Whiskey (and locally-brewed beer!) at a time.

Distillery of the Month: Distillery 291

Hardmade the Colorado Way

Our grain here at Olander Farms…it’s…well…it’s a little pampered. 

Photo courtesy of Distillery 291.

Just think about the luck these little seeds landed when Todd selected them for planting. They get to spend their days in the bright Colorado sunshine, stretching up toward crystal blue skies, while enjoying unobstructed Front Range views from their neatly formed field rows. And while some Colorado seeds may land in stressful situations, (Colorado soil isn’t the richest and conditions are almost always dry and hot, after all) the Olander Farm seeds enjoy regeneratively amended fields, carefully managed nutrients, and snowmelt irrigation. 

Even after harvest, they’re treated like royalty. No long trips in semis. No undignified treatment at the local grain elevator being unceremoniously tossed about, weighed, and packed. No traveling hundreds of miles to be shoved on a barge or piled into a hot silo far from home. No, sir. Our grains aren’t just some run-of-the-mill commodity. They’re the heart of what we do. They’re the result of all our hard work and years-long collaboration with Mother Nature. They’re a little piece of Colorado terroir wrapped up in a tiny seed that will join forces with all its seed buddies to make boldly delicious beverages. 

Photo courtesy of Distillery 291

This is why we love working with partners who appreciate the art, science, beauty, and the total Colorado-ness of our grain. 

Distillery 291 ranks high among these locally-focused, artisanal producers. Nestled in the stunning foothills of Colorado Springs, Distillery 291 is a globally-acclaimed, yet locally-focused small-batch distillery. 

Founded by Michael Myers a former New York City fashion and beauty photographer, Distillery 291 aims to capture the essence of the Old West: their whiskey is Rugged, Refined, Rebellious® just like the frontier days of lore, but it’s also high-quality. Every batch is made from scratch and moves from grain to barrel to bottle by hand, and has since day one. 

Distillery 291’s original still (right) connected to their new still. Photo courtesy of Distillery 291.

And their work is positively…a work of art. One that, in fact, started from literal works of art: Distillery 291’s first still was handcrafted by Michael himself from his own copper photogravure plates. (For those of you not up on photography terms, photogravure plates are copper plates upon which photographs are etched. Prior to film, photogravure plates were the primary photographic technology.)  

It isn’t surprising then, that a distillery so committed to quality and beauty as to create liquid art from actual, physical artworks, has won copious awards. An unbelievable amount of awards, really. This is just the “short” list:

• American Craft Producer of the Year - 2022

• World's Best Wheat- 2021

• World’s Best Rye-2018

• Best American New Make-2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 

• Best American Wheat- 2021 & Best American Rye-2018 by World Whiskies Awards 

• 6 Masters & Luxury Masters from the Spirits Business Journal

• Multiple Double-Gold in San Francisco World Spirits Competition

• 16x Liquid Gold in the Whisky Bible and 2-time US Micro-Whiskey of the Year (Runner-up 2020, 2018)

And so, when we think of places for our pampered Olander grains to finish out their life cycle in glorious fashion, we couldn’t select a better one than in Distillery 291’s bottles. From that original photogravure still, Distillery 291 has grown to a 26,000-square-foot production facility making some of the most highly respected whiskeys in the world.  

Photo courtesy of Distillery 291.

The most recent release among these whiskies? The All Rye Colorado Whiskey crafted with (you guessed it) 100% Rye Malt from Root Shoot Malting and finished with toasted aspen wood staves. This whiskey’s Batch #1 offers a unique flavor profile with notes of cinnamon, raisin, french toast, Irish breakfast tea, sawdust, plum pudding, black pepper, and salted caramel.

Made with Colorado-grown, Colorado-malted, pampered grains raised in the shadows of Longs Peak. 

Interested in snagging a bottle? You can order online at 291’s website. Better yet, join one of their tour and tasting events or simply head to their tasting lounge where you can try sips of special releases rarely found in the wild as well as all of their standard, award-winning bottles.

Big, bold, beautiful bourbon. Unapologetic rye whiskey. 

Local Colorado malt.

With partners like Distillery 291, even when we have rough days at the farm, we know that every little thing is gonna be…

All Rye.

Brewery of the Month: Green Mountain Beer Co

Old World Brews with Colorado Soul.

What could be more Colorado than craft beer and rock climbing?

Well, sharing craft beer and climbing adventures with friends, perhaps. Or maybe craft beer + a running club + friends. Or what about a dog-friendly brewery, founded by friends and built on the side of a small mountain in the foothills that hosts a regular running club (plus a myriad of other events including trivia, bingo, and an open mic night)?

This is Green Mountain Beer Company. A small brewery in the western suburbs of Denver, Green Mountain Beer Co emanates Colorado soul. Founded by those rock climbing buddies (and longtime friends) that we mentioned Cassidy Hill and Brian Milhaupt, have worked hard to create a space that serves up craft brews inspired by traditional methods but that cater specifically to the tastes and desires of the Colorado community.

What does this look like?

It looks like a killer beer menu with a wide range of offerings including everything from a must-have IPA (Kama Citra, a single hop citrate IPA) to a Ryefecta Imperial Stout ( 2-rye, high-alcohol, high-hopped ale) to a chill, seasonal Watermelon Sour, brewed exclusively for those dog days of summer.

In fact, Green Mountains beer offerings read like a bucket list for the craft beer aficionado. Imperial Saison Ale? Yes, please! A Crushable Pale Ale? Always. Port Wine Barrel Imperial Brown? Have I died and gone to heaven?

All of this beery goodness was the brainchild of many a dream-big conversation between Brian and Cassidy on their climbing trips throughout the western US. Unlike so many dreamers, however, these two actually had the know-how, skills, and - most importantly - the gumption to make their dream a reality. With Brian’s background in professional brewing and an education in chemistry, and Cassidy’s background in food and beverage service with an education in business management, they were able to join forces (along with a crew of good people) and make Green Mountain a reality.

A beer with Colorado soul must have Colorado ingredients, right?

Right.

Using local ingredients is written into the mission statement of the business, and Green Mountain was actually one of our very first Root Shoot customers. Opening in 2016 (the same year as us!) Green Mountain first tried Root Shoot grain in a few brews. Impressed by the flavor and efficiency, they moved away from the other companies they were sourcing from and started using Root Shoot exclusively for almost all of their base malts.

Seven years later, we’re thrilled to still count them among our community. In fact, just last month, the whole Green Mountain crew came to visit the farm and share a few beers with us. Just look at this awesome bunch!

And afterwards, Cassidy provided what might be the best description of Colorado Soul in the craft brewing world, as he reflected on attending the very first Field Day we ever held.

It was stormy that day when we visited the fields and watched the combine harvest the grain that we use to brew our beer.  You could smell the wheat and barley on the wind.  High gusts blew over the canopies of the beer vendors in the field.  We retreated to the farmhouse to share locally brewed beer, brewers eating from the same table as the farmers that grow our grain, and watched the late fall Colorado storm blow over leaving us with a rainbow and a smile. 

Farmers, friends, and fields. Grain, brews, and beers.

Thank you, Green Mountain for sticking with us since the beginning…

…and for all the soul you bring to this amazing industry.

Cheers!

— RSM

Malt of the Month: English Pale Ale

Malting is both a science and an art, and striking the perfect balance of both of these disciplines is our English Pale Ale.

Root Shoot’s alternative to the traditional Maris Otter malt, English Pale Ale may not have the long and storied history of Maris Otter, but it is a malt through which we have begun to tell our own story…and the story of so many spectacular local beers.

Designed to be the gold standard for our brewers, English Pale Ale was created with the goal of building a malt with a little more color than traditional Marris Otter. Color and flavor often follow each other in the kilning process and with our English Pale, we shoot for a color of 4-6 SRM as we find the most flavorful beer happens here. We hit the sweet spot, literally: a little color but also still holding onto all the potential extract inside the kernels. The chew on this malt is full of flavor, and the hot steep….beautiful.

When incorporated into brew days, the English Pale hits the figurative sweet spot every time and it especially shines in dark beers, giving them a depth of character and a magical toasty breadiness. Case in point? Upslope’s Oatmeal Stout, a Craft Malt Certified beer that hinges on English Pale’s goodness. Liquid Mechanics has an oatmeal stout out as well: one featuring Root Shoot’s English Pale and Honey malts, as well as some of our Malted Oats.

But English Pale isn’t just for dark beer. Zwei Brewing has Pale in Comparison: a clean and crisp ale with a malty body and notes of tangerine and tropical fruit..and even our distillers get in on the action. Bendt Distilling Company in Texas is such a fan that they’re making whiskey with full drum batches of English Pale.

However much we may wax poetic about our English Pale Ale malt (which, we know, is a lot) it’s really the numbers that speak most clearly. English Pale is our fastest-growing malt, hitting 100% growth in year-over-year data.

As the prices of Maris Otter continue to rise, we see an even greater opportunity to spread the English Pale gospel. It’s locally grown, lovingly crafted, rooted in family farms, and designed specifically for small businesses who know that brewing the perfect beer - and distilling the perfect spirit - happen at the intersection where art and science meet.

English Pale curious? Reach out, give us a shout, come to the malthouse for a taste or to try a hot steep.

We would love to introduce you.

Sandstone Cellars, Smoked Beers, and our new Schlenkerla Dance Moves

Kickin’ it with Kaspar Schulz

We’ve learned so much over the years that we’ve been making malt.

Remember, if you will, that we started out as farmers. Growing barley? No problem. 75+ years and five generations of experience. Making malt, however? That’s a new skill. Very new. 6 years and 6 months new to be exact. In fact…want to know a small insider Root Shoot secret? Todd didn’t even attend his first class on how to make malt until 3 months before the malthouse opened.

That’s right. We built an entire malthouse before we even knew how to make malt.

That’s kind of shocking, even to us. It gives us serious anxiety in retrospect if we think about it too long. Luckily, despite our rather non-traditional timeline of doing things, it all seems to have worked out in the end. We do have a few malt medals under our belt, after all.

Still, when it comes to the world of malt and beer, we’re very aware that we’re still newcomers. For every one thing we learn, there are twenty more new things to dig into. We put priority on staying curious, remaining humble, and trying - every day - to learn more.

For years, it has been a pipe dream to take our malthouse team to Germany. If we are the youngsters dabbling in our newly found malting prowess, Germany with its centuries of experience and its exacting and unwavering emphasis on excellence, is the grandfather we look up to.

This year, after much planning, plotting, and with a generous sponsorship from Kaspar Schulz, the company that made all of our malting drums, we were finally able to make that dream a reality. The malthouse team spent a week in Munich and Bamberg, touring every possible beer and malt-related establishment and asking so many questions that most folks finally just gave us beer to get us to quit talking.

Among the many highlights of the week:

—> Touring Weihenstephaner, the oldest continuously operating brewing in the wold. Kicking out amazing beer since 1040. 1040! We can’t even wrap our heads around dates like that in the US!

—> Visting Germany’s hop region of Hallertau. We check out the German Hops Museum and then visited GenussHof Pingold, a hop and fruit farm (they make fruit-based spirits, too!) that cooked us up an amazing dinner.

—> Malting day and facility tour with Weyermann Specialty Malts! Holy cow…this place. They’ve been at it years, so it’s inspiration for what we could be…a few generations down the line!

—> Visiting small, family breweries like Weiherer Bier and Schederndorfer Landbier. They even clued us in on the tradition of Frühschoppen… the custom of meeting up (usually on Sundays) for a late-morning beer. That’s a tradition we can get behind!

—> Touring the Kaspar Schulz facility where we got to see (really, live and in-person!) how they manufacture and assemble their gorgeous, stainless-steel brewing and malting equipment!

—> And finally, visiting thousand-year-old sandstone mines that have been used since medieval times for brewing facilities: from floor malting, to natural fermentation, all completed 10 - 30 meters underground. One brewery we toured - Schlenkerla - still uses these mine caves for their beer production! We’ll be talking more this month about Schlenkerla and some of the amazing work they do, but as part of our very important cultural lessons there, we learned that the verb schlenkern in the local dialect means “to sway, or swing, sort of while hunched over.” (Translation ours, the best attempt we could manage after several German/English/Germisch explanations and more than a few sample beers.)

When one learns the verb schlenkern, one must immediately put it to use, so us being us, an underground brewery tour somehow turned into parking lot beers, a dance party, and well…this.

Really, it couldn’t have been a better week.

We had fun, yes, but we learned so much. We’re excited to keep digging into some of the ideas we gathered on our trip, and maybe work on some new malts and beer collaborations with our partners.

With a Weihenstephaner Vitus in hand, of course. When it comes to inspiration, there’s nothing quite like a thousand years of experience…and one amazing trip to Germany.

Prost!

— The Malthouse Team

Malt of the Month: Munich Wheat

Brewers and distillers don’t get to have all the fun.

The craft beverage world is full of creative thinkers: artisans pushing the boundaries of their craft, professionals adding just the right touches to make their work shine, free-wheeling adventurers willing to buck trends and try something new.

With brewers experimenting away in their brewhouses, and distillers exploring all the possibilities of their stills, we too wonder what the world of possibility is with our malting drums. 

Over the last year, our team has spent a lot of time thinking about what we can do to be the best version of Root Shoot possible, and how we can keep our customers and our craft drinkers excited about craft malt. We’ve got a lot of awesome things planned…and Munich Wheat is the first of these. We wanted to bring forward a limited run of something cool.  Maybe we’ll do these experimental runs a couple times a year...maybe just once. Who knows? Only time and our drum schedule will tell.

What we do know is that we want to put something awesome in your mash tuns on the regular. 

And this Munich Wheat…well…

It is kind of awesome.

How’d we get here?

We wanted to explore the world of flavor beyond our traditional Malted White Wheat.  So, we took our malted white wheat, germinated it as usual, and sent it to the kiln with an entirely different kilning profile. We made sure the grain was full of moisture, then blasted it with high heat, applying the same kilning process that creates all the rich, complex flavors in our Munich 10 malted barley. We locked in that flavor thanks to the Maillard reaction - the reaction of sugar and proteins to heat that causes the distinctive flavor of browned food....think of how toast darkens as it warms.

What came out of the kiln was a beautifully browned, toasty, super complex malted wheat.  For all of you brewer nerds who love these things, we’ll tell you that the flavor contributions coming from the hot steeps are deeply malty and slightly sweet with nice body.  Lab results have put its color at 6 SRM. 

For those of you who don’t know hot steeps or Standard Reference Method (SRM) we’ll just tell you that this wheat came out…awesome. Amazing.

Really dang good.

It’s a limited run, however, with only about 10,000 lbs available. That may sound like a lot, but - hypothetically speaking - if someone were to make a Belgian Blonde with some Root Shoot Pilsner and the new Munich Wheat, our own Maltster Mike just might come and drink all of it, in which case 10,000 lbs will go very quickly.

We’re intrigued to see what our brewers and distillers come up with. So, we promise to keep you posted as those Munich Wheat beers (and spirits?) roll out.

In the meantime, if you need us, you can find us in the malthouse, snacking on handfuls of the stuff and plotting our next special release…

Cheers!

- Your Root Shoot Malting Team

Brewery of the Month: Public Offering

We’ve got to start this brewery feature backwards.

Whenever we highlight breweries or distilleries here on the Root Shoot blog, we do our research: we look at every business’s website, we read local articles written about them. We surf their social media and check out their posts.

But we also send them a short list of questions to get their personal input. We want to hear the first-hand stories about opening a brewery, what it’s like to run one, and anecdotes from this crazy craft world we all work in. And the last question we always ask is a loaded one: What are your beer recommendations for a first-time visitor?

Asking a brewer or a brewery owner for their favorite beer is like asking a parent to pick their favorite child. But we do it anyway. We want to know! So, let’s cut to the chase:

There’s a new brewery in Denver! Public Offering Brewing Company, on South Broadway.

And their beer recommendation for folks checking them out for the first time?

Open Spaces Kölsch.

Okay, yes, we’ll admit it’s a Root Shoot beer (it uses Root Shoot Pilsner, Vienna, and Malted Wheat) but that’s not why we love it. Or at least not entirely why.

It’s Open Spaces. You all…if you don’t know that you’re following a farm and malthouse obsessed with both land conservation (open spaces) and community (open spaces!) you need to regroup and go spend some more time on our socials.

So our hearts kind of melted when we found out there was a Root Shoot beer at a new, Root Shoot-supporting brewery called Open Spaces. We tuned into a pile of happy, kölsch-drinking mush. Public Offering is our kind of brewery. And the owner, Cody Higgenbottom is our kind of people.

A hobby home brewer with a background in finance (Public Offering is partially a play on that previous profession) Cody decided to take his hobby pro…but he did his research first. He earned a brewing certificate from Regis University and interned at Station 26, another Root Shoot-supporting brewery. (Fun fact: our Genie Pale malt was developed specifically for Station 26’s Juicy Banger.)

It was, in fact, at Station 26 that Cody first become familiar with Root Shoot’s malt, and he continued using it in his home brews while developing recipes. When he made the leap to opening Public Offering, he stuck with us. “I wanted to focus on using as many local ingredients as possible,” he said. “I have always had great success with Root Shoot grains so it was a no-brainer to continue to partner with Root Shoot when we finally opened.”

Well, that just warms the corners of our little kölsch-loving hearts.

Cody and his crew began looking for a space to open their future brewery in the fall of 2019 but then - you know - COVID…and things were delayed. Eventually, however, they found their spot: an old Cadillac dealership turned auto body shop turned antique store and now, brewery. Remodeling a building with that many different past lives took some serious work, but you have it admit…it looks stunning.

In addition to a play of words from his finance career, Cody chose the name Public Offering as a representation of what he wants the brewery to be. “The entire concept of the brewery is trying to create a place where everyone not only feels a connection to the brewery but a part of it,” he told us. “Our goal is to make our guests and our community feel like our brewery is their brewery and create one big neighborhood of beer-loving friends. Public Offering is meant to reflect the concept that we're offering our beers and brewery to everyone.”

Open spaces.

See why we’re so excited about this place?

It’s early in the game - Public Offering just opened in mid-November, but already they’re feeling embraced by their neighborhood. “We've received a ton of positive feedback from guests about how comfortable, welcoming, and warm our taproom feels, and how friendly and inviting our staff is,” says Cody.

From our visits there to deliver malt (okayyyy, and to maybe have a few beers, too) we have to agree.

It’s inviting. It’s cozy. The beer is delicious, the company excellent and the business - from grain to glass - is local.

So, next time you’re cruising through South Broadway, go check them out. Order an Open Spaces that was grown just up the road on some (recently protected!) open spaces, and marvel at what community can do, when they choose to Save Farms (and open breweries) One Beer At a Time.

AMBA-itious

We know this may come as a real shock to some of you, but beer doesn’t grow on trees.

It’s a darn shame. Can you imagine what it would be like to have an IPA tree growing in your backyard? Or a stout shrub? A perennial pilsner plant, just out the back door in the garden?

But, alas, it’s not that easy. Beer comes from barley and barley grows in fields ( a cereal plant from the grass family, not a tree.) It’s tended to by farmers like our own Olanders and it takes acres upon acres of these tiny little grains to power the craft beer businesses that you all know and love.

Growing any living thing - from crops to cows, from house plants to your own miniature humans - has its tricks and requires its own unique skill set. Barley is no exception.

A cool-weather plant, barley has been grown extensively in Colorado for generations. Traditionally, it likes the dry, often chilly Colorado weather, and it doesn’t mind altitude or short growing seasons. But it can also be a little finicky when it produces grain. Stressed barley plants can have protein content so elevated our brewers can’t use them, and numerous things can stress barley out: drought, high temps, dry windy days, hail…or just looking at it funny when it’s having “a day.”

We all have those days.

These stressors, however - all of them largely related to changing weather patterns - mean that growing barley here in Colorado is getting trickier. We’re having to stay on top of our game and even, at times, think outside the box. In a previous blog, we talked about how we’re trying two experimental barley varieties for our region, Thunder and Lightning. We’re working hard to up the soil health of our fields, with the belief that healthier soil will produce more resilient crops. We’re also trying to stay on the cutting edge of all thing well...barley! Which is why, this year, we kicked off 2023 by joining the American Malting Barley Association.

The American Malting Barley Association (AMBA) works to foster research to develop rock-solid barley varieties. They advocate for farmers in the industry, and they evaluate and recommend barley varieties to growers each season based on those evaluations.

In other words, in a world lacking beer trees, they do their darnedest to help us get good barley so you can get good beer, even if it is at your local craft brewery and not off of your own backyard pilsner plant

We’re excited to see what we learn. We’re excited to try new things. We’re happy to grow our community. We’re working - always - to try and stay on top of every good practice we can, to keep bringing you the killer craft malt (and nerdy Field Notes) that you’ve come to expect from us.

It’s an AMBA-itious goal, but we’re confident we can live up to it.

Sow, Grow, Malt, Deliver

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

Traditionally, January is a time for resolutions

After the excess and the indulgence of the holidays, the country collectively pulls itself together, takes a deep breath, and commits to doing better. We sign up for gym memberships. We reduce our screen time. We swear we’ll figure out work/life balance, and we promise to stop eating so much junk food. A few dedicated souls even give up alcohol in the name of Dry January.

We tried that once.

It was a terrible idea.

For us, anyway. But you do you! We’ll still support you!

Whatever your take on resolutions (or Dry January, for that matter), it does seem natural to use the change of the year to re-evaluate: to check in with oneself (or, in our case, with one’s business) set some goals, make some commitments, and start the year off right, gosh darn it.

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

We’ve been working on getting 2023 right for a few months, already.

As Root Shoot has grown past the “Argh, holy crap, what are we doing!” stage of starting a new business (all you brand-new business owners out there, we feel your pain!) to an established business at full capacity, we’ve actually had a chance to breathe. A chance to step back and ask ourselves what we’re really doing, and whether what we’re doing is precisely what we want to be doing, and how we want to be doing it. Sure, we’re making malt. But we also hope we’re supporting local businesses, being good stewards of our land, and growing community.

So, how do we wrap that all up in a neat package to keep us on track?

By nailing down our Mission and Vision, of course. Maybe a few Core Values as well.

And while the terms Mission and Vision can sometimes smack of corporate America and stuffy board rooms, at Root Shoot Stuff isn’t really how we roll.

In true craft malt spirit, our Mission and Vision were developed over a weekend retreat in Winter Park in between games of frisbee, visits to local breweries, and a few highly competitive card games.

Because if you don’t want your company to be stuffy, why have a stuffy process?

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

Help save us from stuffiness.

We’re sharing our work here with you - our Mission, Vision, and Core Values - not because we think people really get their kicks from reading others’ internal documents, but because we want you to hold us to them. We want you to know the standards we expect of ourselves and to call us out if we fail to live up to them.

Better yet, if you catch one of our employees living up to them, well heck - send us that info, too, so we can give ‘em some love.

The Root Shoot Malting Mission:

We sow, we grow, we malt, we deliver

And the Vision:

To inspire exceptional beverages by connecting brewers and distillers to the land.

And the process to get there, our Core Values:

We are a team: 

We collaborate with our customers as partners and we partner with our colleagues as teammates. We work as one cohesive group to provide exceptional service and to continually move the malthouse forward. We are honest and straightforward in our interactions both with our customers and with our colleagues. We address issues clearly and directly when they arise and we work together to find solutions. We are, in all interactions, solution-oriented.

We are leaders: 

We innovate, and we pave our own path both as a farm and as a malthouse. We take leadership as an inherent responsibility and we play an active role in advocating for and educating about our industry. As an industry-leading organization, our staff is comprised of leaders: each of us, in every role, actively strives to find ways to innovate, to do better, to work better, and to serve as a role model in the greater craft malting and agricultural worlds.

We are consistent: 

We deliver consistency: with people, products, partners, and expectations. We provide the same quality of service to our smallest customers as we do to our largest, and our consistency of service for both never wavers. We provide a consistent product: the Root Shoot name is synonymous with quality. We maintain high expectations for all we do, and we work until those expectations are met.

We are professionals: 

We are capable, respectful, and professional at all times in all interactions whether they be with team members, customer partners, or other members of the industry. We comport ourselves in a manner that reflects Root Shoot’s good name in all scenarios. We exercise moderation in an alcohol-oriented industry. We are advocates for our customers, our industry, and all players in it, regardless of whether they are direct customers. We “go the extra acre” for everyone we work with and speak positively about businesses we do not serve. 

And you? Are you making New Year’s resolutions? Stepping up your 2023 game?

We’d love to hear about it. We’ll even cheer you on!

Because teamwork makes the dream work, and we consider all of you - our breweries and distilleries, our homebrewers, and all you craft drinkers - part of our team.

Wishing you good beer for the New Year,

— Your Root Shoot Malting Team

That's a Wrap! 2022 Field Notes from the Farm

‘Twas the night after harvest

And all through the farm, not a creature was stirring (except in the barn.)

The tractors were parked in the shop with great care

In hopes that their maintenance would this year be spare…

Alight. We’ll admit it. We’re better farmers than poets. But with the growing season over and the holiday cheer really kicking in, we wanted to take a stab at kicking off our Final Field Notes of 2022 with a little holiday inspiration. Though perhaps we’d do a little better sticking to some bourbon-spiked eggnog rather than rhyming verse. 

Duly noted.

Still, as 2022 rolls to a close, and as we take a rare, but welcome moment to sit back, kick up our boots, and sip on that eggnog, we can’t help but wax a little poetic.  Farming will do that to you. All the hard work, long hours, and crazy pace suddenly draw to a close and we look back and think, “Holy sh*t! We did it!” Another year in the books. 

And while this year wasn’t our all-time best year, it certainly wasn’t our worst year either. 2022 marks a solid year of agriculture. It wasn’t without its ups and downs, and things never, ever go 100% as planned in agriculture, but we had a decent harvest, we made some big changes to our farm plan, and - as the goal is every year - we got a little bit better at what we do. 

Of Note at Olander Farms

Our 2022 Year-in-Review

(It rhymes! Maybe we are poets!)

Harvest: 

This year’s farming by the numbers!

• Total acreage farmed: 1,797 acres

• Barley: 37,000 bushels of malt-quality barley

• Bourbon: (Okay…we don’t actually harvest bourbon…just future bourbon!) 30,000 bushels of non-GMO distillers’ corn.

• Silage Corn (food for cows!) 2,200 tons

• Alfalfa: (also food for cows and other critters!) 3,300 tons  (4,400 3'x4'x8' Bales)

• Barley straw: 500 Bales 

• Corn stalks: 600 Bales

• Grass hay: 300 Bales

• Heritage Abenaki Corn: 200 bushels
  

Heritage:

If you haven’t heard us rambling on yet about our experiments with Abenaki Corn and Oland Wheat (both heritage grains) well…then…you probably need to follow our socials a little more! This year in the “How-the-Heck-do-we-do-Heritage” we’ve made some gains, placed a few bets, and, of course, ran into a few hiccups.

We’ve upped our acreage of Abenaki corn from one acre to ten. While it’s a beautiful corn with a unique flavor, it’s not without its challenges. So far, we’ve had pretty poor yield results and a significant problem with corn smut, but we’re aiming to take measures to improve those issues. In the meantime, we’re taking a little break to turn what we’ve harvested into bourbon!

With the wheat shortage this year, we made the decision to lower our pricing on our heritage Oland wheat to make it more accessible to our brewers and distillers. If you’re looking to support patent-free, open-source seed, consider using Oland in your next batch of beverage goodness!

Cows:

The bovine ladies are an integral part of our soil plan…and our weekly menus!

Regenerative farming is about networks that support healthy food, and as we have our hands a bit full with the malthouse and the farm (and a small herd of cows ourselves) we’ve been working with other farmers and ranchers to bring some cows to the cover crops. This helps us reduce our workload while still improving our fields, and it provides fresh forage for other farmers to feed their cattle. Win for us, win for the farmers, win for some hungry cattle!

• Webb Cattle have 186 cows that will graze about 200 acres at our Bacon Lake farm 

• Battle Creek Ranch has 122 Yearlings that will graze 80 acres at the Mazza farm

• 150 pairs of Mom and Calf graze 180 acres at the Larson East farm. 

• Olander Farms has 18 Cow Pairs (and Billy the Bull) that graze 40 Acres on our home property.

Whew. By our count, that’s 477 rather large animals chewing (and pooping!) on our fields. With that much going on, We’ve also ended up with more beef than we have sold in previous years. We have halves and quarters available and, for the first time, smaller beef packages for folks who don’t have the freezer space for more. Interested? Check out this order form for December orders or email team@rootshootmalting.com for details.

Collaboration:

Regeneration takes collaboration! This year, we’ve been thrilled to work with old and new partners alike, all in an effort to improve our last, reduce our carbon footprint, and grow healthy, local food (and beverages) for our community.

• We’re partnering with Zero Foodprint - a program that works with chefs, restaurants, farmers, and even the Department of Agriculture to reduce the carbon footprint in ag and increase soil health, both of which are causes close to our hearts!

• Locus Agricultural Solutions is helping us implement microbial soil solutions and improve our farming practices to (yet again) reduce our carbon footprint and grow healthier food.

• The Natural Resources Conservation Service is providing assistance with our cover crop seed, planting, and rotation!

• The Colorado Department of Agriculture gave us a grant to help fund work with Turn It Up Media so we can revamp all our sales materials and website and make some sexy marketing material to spread about all the good things going on!

Conservation:

When talking land conservation in the Front Range, it’s always a mixed bag of news. 

We lost acreage to development this year: 195 acres of land (and in 2021 we lost another 160.) While that always gets us down, there’s good news on the conservation front as well.

First of all, we’re keeping our fingers crossed but we’re hoping to finalize the conservation easement on our own 112 acres at Olander farms by early 2023. (Please send us all the good farm mojo you have!)

Additionally, one of our favorite leased farms, Waggener Farm - a high-yield, strategically located series of fields - is nearly completely conserved! 160 Acres went under conservation in 2021, another 160 was conserved this year, and the last 160 will be conserved in 2023.

These glimmers of progress make us feel like all the work we’ve done one day might just pay off…

And Then, of course, there’s…

Barley!

In combination with the annual 900 acres of barley we plant annually to keep those malt drums running, we’ve also planted 34 acres of two experimental fall-planted barley varieties, Thunder and Lightning. Read more about that project here!

Now, as we roll into winter things on the farm front will slow down a bit. We’ll do our annual equipment maintenance and care for the cattle. We’ll plan out spring plantings and keep an eye on the malthouse silos.

But we’ll also relax, at least a little bit. Visit the breweries and distilleries we supply. Spend time with friends and family. Take a day (heck, maybe several days!) off and go skiing.

Life - and farming - is made of seasons, and winter is the season of rest. Of recuperation. Of taking the time to sleep in - or to stay up late having drinks with friends. It’s the season for reading books in front of a fire and having snowball fights with kids. It’s for sipping on a bourbon and dreaming about the future. We have lots of dreams for the future, and in January we’ll resume the hard work of making those happen. But for now, this holiday season, we wish you rest and relaxation. Time for yourself, and recuperation. The space you need to regenerate. Because regeneration isn’t just for agriculture.

It’s for us all.

Wishing you the Happiest of Holiday Seasons,

—Olander Farms

Stellar Staff: Highlights, Happenin's (and a few Insider Tips!)

A Shout Out to Our Employees

We couldn’t do what we do without the hard work of our dedicated team. And so, as we wrap up this calendar year, we asked them to reflect a bit on 2022 at Root Shoot Malting. Read their reflections (posted in no particular order!) to see what stood out to everyone - and pick up a few favorite beer and spirit tips in the process!

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

Team Member: Mike Myers

Position: Malthouse Manager aka The Barley Sherpa

Malthouse Tagline: “I came here to dominate!” “There’s Genie up in that, yo!”

What are you proud of in your position at Root Shoot this year? Establishing transparent sales sheets with published parameters. Also, our high success rate of malting batches this year. We continue to be a leader in the marketplace. Everything. I am proud of everything: where we came from to where we are now.

What was your personal Root Shoot Highlight of the Year? There are so many this year! Winning 4th craft malt cup award, certainly. We filled our first silo at Funkwerks which was awesome. Upslope’s Oatmeal Stout also counts as a highlight. It’s got that English Pale malt in it! One of the GABF pro-am award-winners used our malt. I got to visit Riverbend Malthouse in North Carolina and Grouse Malt House here in Colorado. And, of course, the Root Shoot whiskey project. 

If you were a Root Shoot malt, which would you be and why? Light Munich. It’s genie pale dialed up to 11. Flavor, depth, and complexity without the color. It is the most overlooked malt we offer. Pilsners, pales, ipa, dark beers. Is there anything this would not be good in? No. It would rock them all. 

What is the beer or spirit you just can’t get enough of this year? Family Jones Earl Grey Gin. Jessup Farms’ Train Delay Tequila Barrel. Stodgy English Porter.  Avant Garde French Pilsner.  

What would you like to say to Root Shoot’s breweries, distilleries, and the community at the end of this 2022 year? Keep making the products that inspire the team and me.

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

team Member: Alex Moss

Position: Packaging Specialist

Malthouse Tagline: I’m not sure what I say, but I’m definitely the only one in the malthouse with giant headphones with an antenna that makes me look like an alien communicating with my mothership

What are you proud of in your position at Root Shoot this year? Being able to keep up with 3 drums of malt each week and still find places to store it all.

What was your personal Root Shoot Highlight of the Year? Taking Mondays off and coming in on Saturdays to check malt

If you were a Root Shoot malt, which would you be and why? English Pale because it has a hint of darkness and sweetness.

What is the beer or spirit you just can’t get enough of this year? Leopold gin and lemonade

What would you like to say to Root Shoot’s breweries, distilleries, and the community at the end of this 2022 year? Keep the beer flowing!

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

team Member: Heyward Gualandi

Position: Accounts manager

Malthouse Tagline: “Cheers!” Also, I’m the one in the malthouse always loving on the malthouse cats.

What are you proud of in your position at Root Shoot this year? I’m proud of Root Shoot for continuing to push on regenerative ag and closing our consumption loops. For example, using solar power to offset energy use, sending our steeping water back to the farm fields, and feeding malting by-products to the cows.

What was your personal Root Shoot Highlight of the Year? I moved into a full-time role!

If you were a Root Shoot malt, which would you be and why? White wheat malt; plays well with others, comfortable in a lot of situations, rarely the star of the show but helps others shine.

What is the beer or spirit you just can’t get enough of this year? Oh, that’s a hard one! But probably Hello Brew’s Side Pour Pils

What would you like to say to Root Shoot’s breweries, distilleries, and the community at the end of this 2022 year? I am so humbled and honored to be working with such great producers. The science, art, and creativity that our partners consistently bring to the market is inspiring. To be able to engage professionally with such a talented group and have an inside look at their creative process is awesome!

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

team Member: Todd Olander

Position: Farmer, Founder, Occasional Maltster, Frequent Farm Mechanic, Bluetick Coonhound Dad

Malthouse Tagline: We’re not sure, because we can never hear him over Thompson’s bellowing

What are you proud of in your position at Root Shoot this year? I’m really proud of everyone involved in growing our company and what we've accomplished. It's pretty amazing to see how far we've come with such a small team. 

What was your personal Root Shoot Highlight of the Year? Definitely the installation of our 3rd (and final!) drum! After so many years of building, it’s amazing to actually have run our 3rd drum at its full capacity for 8 months straight. Huge accomplishment! 

If you were a Root Shoot malt, which would you be and why? Light Munich. It's underrated and flies under the radar. Or English Pale Malt - because it blows away Maris Otter. 

What is the beer or spirit you just can’t get enough of this year? Leopold Three Chamber Rye Whiskey. And maybeeee I’ve been sneaking bottles of Root Shoot’s Single Malt Whiskey. Which is fantastic, by the way. (Or so I’ve heard.)

What would you like to say to Root Shoot’s breweries, distilleries, and community at the end of this 2022 year? It's pretty simple, but we can't thank our customers enough for choosing to partner with Root Shoot.

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

team Member: LeeAnne Sanders

Position: Communications

Malthouse Tagline: “Are you sure you don’t want to turn that into a TikTok?”

What are you proud of in your position at Root Shoot this year? The consistent work we’ve done to tell Root Shoot’s story in an accessible and engaging way. It always makes my day/month/year when folks come up and tell me what they’ve learned from Field Notes for Farm Nerds, or comment on our blog!

What was your personal Root Shoot Highlight of the Year? Attending the Root Shoot Rendezvous! Since I work remotely and only get to see the crew about once a month at the malthouse, getting to spend a whole weekend with them drinking beer and plotting Root Shoot’s future was a real blast. Also, filming the Michael Myers Halloween videos was one of the better days at work in my career. Seriously. Who pays me to do this?

If you were a Root Shoot malt, which would you be and why? Double Honey. It’s good at what it does, but isn’t the most well-known of our malts.

What is the beer or spirit you just can’t get enough of this year? NSFW from Jessup Farm Barrel House (Rye whiskey barrel-aged red ale with Ethiopian coffee) and pretty much any whiskey cocktail from Abbott and Wallace.

What would you like to say to Root Shoot’s breweries, distilleries, and the community at the end of this 2022 year? We love sharing the love, so please reach out anytime with ways we can help promote you!

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

team Member: Emily Olander

Position: Co-founder, Unofficial Operations Director, Chief Communicator, Cheerleader, Todd-Wrangler

Malthouse Tagline: “Heyo!” and “Awww, you guys!”

What are you proud of in your position at Root Shoot this year? I’m most proud of our entire team! There has been a ton of change at both the malthouse and the farm this year: tolerating construction projects, implementing regenerative agriculture, and adapting new farm practices. Everyone is open-minded, eager to learn, and works pretty independently as a whole.

What was your personal Root Shoot Highlight of the Year? Creating that amazingly adaptable team! We have lots of new roles and new team members at both Olander Farms and Root Shoot. It’s all really coming together and making for a high-functioning (and fun!) staff. 

If you were a Root Shoot malt, which would you be and why? Honey malt! It just tastes good. Pro Tip: Throw it into cookies and yogurt :)

What is the beer or spirit you just can’t get enough of this year? Funkwerks Kriek (Barrel-Aged Belgian-Style Sour with Cherries)

What would you like to say to Root Shoot’s breweries, distilleries, and the community at the end of this 2022 year? I always like this saying: We believe the ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. The people behind the malt, farm, beer, and spirits, are pretty incredible. We’re thankful to be working with like-minded business folks who believe in and are proud of what we’re doing.

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

team Member: Craig Miller

Position: Production/Account Manager

Malthouse Tagline: Oh gosh. I don’t know if I have one. Mikey’s full of them. I just do puns. 

What are you proud of in your position at Root Shoot this year? I’m proud that I’ve taken on some of the sales responsibilities this year. I’ve enjoyed helping bring the malt house up to full production capacity this year. I’m also hoping to be elected to the Craft Malt Guild BOD. I am helping the Brewing Science program at Auburn University (my alma mater) as a content contributor/subject matter expert for the brewing supply chain.  Super excited that I can share Root Shoot’s story with the future brewing professionals coming from Auburn as we write this new class. 

What was your personal Root Shoot Highlight of the Year? Root Shoot Retreat was fun! 

If you were a Root Shoot malt, which would you be and why? Pilsner malt! Ha. Not only because it’s my current favorite beer style, but it’s very versatile. Good on its own but also works well when combined with others! 

What is the beer or spirit you just can’t get enough of this year? All the Pilsners. Specifically, I’d say Verboten’s, Over Yonder’s, Ursula’s. 

What would you like to say to Root Shoot’s breweries, distilleries, and the community at the end of this 2022 year? Please keep supporting your local breweries and distilleries! It’s so important to the fabric of our communities. It goes beyond a place to grab a good beer or cocktail. And be nice to your bartenders.

Malt to the Max

For the love of all things barley, it’s been a year.

We’re always busy at the malthouse - crafting some of the best dang malt in the country is a full-time job, after all - but this year, we achieved some major milestones. Maltstones, you might call them. Goals that have been long in the dreaming and years in the making. And the honest truth of it? 

We’ve had a blast in the process. Turns out this whole craft malt community is pretty amazing. We’re honored to be a part of it. We’re also dedicated to promoting it - to growing this craft community that has helped us arrive at where we are today, and which, through so many amazing malthouses, farms, breweries, and distilleries, continually promotes healthy land and amazing artisanal beverages.

Cheers to craft…and cheers to our amazing team for reaching so many milestones with such an amazing heart. 

The Root Shoot Crew 2022 Year-in-Review

Photo by Emily Sierra Photography

Cranking out malt at full capacity!

Root Shoot Malting is finally at capacity! Building a malthouse is no small feat, and after six years of continual growth, 2022 marks the first time we will max out our infrastructure to make the most malt we can. 

How much malt is that, you ask?

• We’ll produce about 130 batches this year. The input for that? Roughly 2.5 million pounds of grain.

• We will make around 53 batches of Genie Pale malt, our biggest seller and most decorated malt with two malt cup wins. 53 batches =  over a million pounds of that genial Genie goodness.

• Our largest growth in malt this year has come from English Pale. We have moved almost 100% more than last year! English Pale is another one of our award-winning malts, so if you don’t have it in your mash tun, yet, give us a ring, and we’ll hook you up!

• Outside of Genie and English Pale, we’re also showing growth in the majority of the rest of our malt and grains! As of November…

  • Light Munich malt is up 17%

  • Munich 10 is up 25%

  • Pilsner is up 22%

  • Sales of raw corn and barley are up 43% and 68%

• Speaking of corn…a total of 1.5 million lbs of corn will have left the building. By our calculations, that’s equivalent to…a lot.. of bourbon whiskey!

Next year, we anticipate upping our numbers even more, as we’ll be running at full capacity from January 1. It’s so exciting to see so many years of work paying off!

Award-winning malt, four years in a row:

In January, we won our 4th consecutive Malt Cup award with a Bronze Medal for our English Pale malt. This means we’ve medaled in every Malt Cup to date. Our 2022 English Pale Bronze medalist joins Genie Pale, the 2019 Gold and 2021 Bronze medalist, and our 2021 Bronze Medal for Light Munich!

We hope to continue our medaling trend next year! Malt samples have been shipped off for the 2023 competition coming next March. 

Hittin’ those Homebrewers

This year, we’ve made excellent progress in making our malt more accessible to homebrewers!

We are thrilled to have worked out a partnership with Northern Brewer to make our malt available to homebrewers nationwide! Our partnership with Northern Brewer, also means we’re available in their sister companies,  Adventures in Homebrewing, Austin Homebrew Supply, and Midwest Supplies.

Locally, we also added our malt to Black and Blues Music and Brews, and Quirky Homebrew Supply who joined the amazing crew of homebrew shops that have carried our malt for years: The Brew Hut,  Altitude Homebrew Supply, Boulder Fermentation Supply, and The Bald Brewer!

Growing Our Community

In addition to expanding our homebrewing options, we’re pleased to have added more members to our Craft Malt Certified community! A warm welcome to Green Mountain Beer Company, Sunroom Brewing, Public Offering Brewing Company, and, of course, the Boulder favorite Upslope Brewing! These companies (along with all of our Craft Malt Certified businesses) have signed up and committed to making a difference in their local economies with grain-to-glass support!

Root Shoot Rendezvous-ing

As we settle into our groove at full capacity, we’re backed by a talented team of folks who truly have Root Shoot’s best interest at heart. We believe that good employees are a company’s most valuable asset and we’re working hard to invest in our employees as much as they are invested in us. This year, we hosted our first “Root Shoot Rendezvous,” spending a weekend in Winter Park as a team. Our main goal: craft a formal Mission and Vision for our company and back it with a short list of our most core values. 

We’re pleased to share that after much thoughtful discussion, and several working drafts, we have finally developed a Mission, Vision, and a guiding set of Core Values that will drive all decisions our company makes moving forward. We’ll be kicking off the new year next month by sharing these with you!

Next year, we’re upping the Root Shoot Rendezvous game.

In February, we’ll be taking our entire staff to Germany for a week of continuing education. We’ll be touring Kaspar Schulz, the manufacturer of our world-class malting drums, we’ll visit the legendary Weyermann Specialty Malts and get to do a brew day with them. We’ll venture out to hop farms, explore biergartens and breweries, and dive headfirst into the amazing history and culture that is the German beer scene.

Feeling the Love

Every month, we have business partners and community members who come to tour the malthouse. We have folks inquiring as to how our push to conserve farmland is progressing. Breweries leave us boxes of beer at the malthouse door, and distilleries send us bottles of spirits from as far away as Texas (thanks, Bendt!) 

We’ve said it many times before, and we’ll say it many times again: you, our Root Shoot community is the reason that we do what we do. You keep us learning, keep us improving, you’re our best cheerleaders, and our biggest supporters. So as we wrap up 2022 we are, and always will be…

…grateful for you.

Wishing you the happiest of holiday seasons,

-–Root Shoot Malting

Flint, Dent, Flour, and Pop

November is typically when we finish up harvest here at Olander Farms.

By this time of year, we’ve spent nine months planting, cultivating, watering, and growing. From barley planting in March to corn harvest in November, we’ve been busily working away, growing your future beer and soon-to-be spirits.

Now, as we fire up the combines for one last harvest before winter, we’ve got corn on our minds…and in our bellies, our bourbon barrels, and on the menu for all the upcoming holiday feasts! Corn is a key element of what we do here on the farm, so this fall season, as we settle in with a bourbon in hand (it’s whiskey made from corn!) and a taco or two (corn tortillas!) we want to give a little crash course in this great grain: what we grow, what others grow, and why your popcorn at the movies isn’t the same as the sweet corn at your summer barbecues.

Corn!

We owe the existence of corn as well as its role as a flexible staple crop to the Native Americans who have been growing it for thousands of years. Developed from the seeds of a variety of grass called teosinte, corn was created by selective breeding over many, (many!) generations. The oldest signs of corn in Mexico showed over 10,000 years ago.

Think about that for a minute.

Imagine, if you will, the size of grass seed. Then, imagine the work and patience it would take to turn grass seeds into corn-size kernels without modern technology.

Generations of work. Lifetimes of patience. Incredible foresight on the part of those first humans who decided to try it. Growing, selecting, and planting, again and again over the centuries.

As corn has evolved, so have its kernels, its characteristics, and its uses, until arriving at its current state: Five primary types, three of which we grow here at Olander Farms.

Kickin’ it with some (tasty!) kernels

Flint Corn:

For us here on the farm, the flint corn we grow is our Abenaki heritage variety. Colloquially known as ornamental corn or Indian corn (we prefer to refer to it as a native variety) flint corn is multi-colored, with long, narrow cobs, and extremely hard kernels. “Hard as flint.” While most modern Americans use it only for decoration, and some mistakenly believe it isn’t edible or palatable, flint corn is actually the old-school variety of edible corn. It can be used as hominy, ground for flour, or - as in the case of our Abenaki - turned into a mighty fine polenta.

We’re also betting that it’s going to make a damn fine bourbon, as well.

We’ll just have to wait about four years (it’s gotta age in those barrels!) to find out.

Dent Corn:

Dent corn is the bulk of the corn that we grow and the bulk of corn grown in the US. Both our silage corn and our distillers’ corn are dent. Dent corn has a softer outer layer than flint as well as a higher water content, which means that when the kernels dry, they form a distinctive dent in the middle. Dent is starchy rather than sweet - you wouldn’t want to throw these ears on your grill in the summer. It’s typically grown for grain and fodder.

And bourbon, of course! Are you seeing a common theme in our corn-growing here? Bourbon, by law, must be 51% corn, so we are more than happy to oblige in providing it! And when providing corn in large quantities, dent is a no-nonsense workhorse. It’s a get ‘ er-done variety. It grows true, grows well, and serves as a worldwide food staple, especially for livestock.

Sweet Corn:

The golden child. The one that everyone loves. The corn that summer was made for and farmers market customers pine for. When you talk about corn on the cob for dinner, you’re talking about sweet corn. These varieties of corn are, not surprisingly, high in sugar, the result of a fantastically tasty recessive mutation that affects the conversion of sugar to starch in the kernel. We’ve been growing small plots of sweet corn for our family, friends, and malthouse visitors for years. Unfortunately, this means that we’ve also been growing sweet corn for marauding elk, thieving raccoons, and the occasional passing bear as well. But these critters come by because they know the #1 user tip for sweet corn: it stores terribly. As soon as you pick it, that delicious sugar in the kernels begins turning to starch. Leave it in the refrigerator too long, and it loses its flavor. For maximum taste, sweet corn should be eaten within 24 hours of harvest.

If you’re an elk snapping an ear in half straight off the stalk…well…

…at least you’ve got your timing right.

Popcorn:

Yes, it’s its own category. You can’t just pop the kernels of any old corn (at least not well, anyway.) Popcorn has a unique hull (hard and waterproof,) a unique starch content (mostly hard starch,) and a specific moisture content (14-20%) that give it its ability to essentially…blow itself up. It turns itself inside out to make that fluffy deliciousness we all love.

Fun fact: It takes a pressure of 135 psi and a temp of almost 400 degrees Fahrenheit to pop a kernel of popcorn. As a reference point, the average pressure in a car tire is 32-35 psi.

Yowza.

While we love to eat it, we don’t grow it because…well, you can’t turn it into spirits very well. (We’re a little bourbon-focused, if you have noticed!) Plus, we have friends who do the job much better! Looking for locally-grown popcorn? Check out Larson Family Farms, our friends on the eastern plains who grow hundreds of acres of the stuff!

Flour corn:

Most frequently a type of flint corn, flour corn consists of super soft starches (unlike popcorn’s hard starches) that can easily be ground into a soft, fine flour - much softer and finer than other corn varieties could produce. Flour corn is the stuff of cornbread and tortillas, the belly-filling, taste-bud pleasing, ingredient that makes Taco Tuesdays possible. Without flour corn, we’d be living in a world without tacos. And a world without tacos…

That’s a nightmare we can’t fathom.

And finally, but most importantly…Dad Jokes:

Really, now…did you think we could actually get through a post on corn without a reference to corn-y jokes? Especially ones related to agriculture?

No way. No how. No ma’am.

Q: What did the corn say when he received a compliment? A: Aw, shucks.

Did you know that if you want to buy pirate corn, it’s going to cost you a buccaneer?

Q. What happens if you swallow a whole corn cob? A: You get corn-stipated!

Did you hear about the mama corn who wasn’t worried about her chubby son. “He’s not fat,” she said, “he’s just a little husky.”

Should we keep going? No? Yes? We’ll let you decide! A plethora of really bad (by which we mean GREAT) corn jokes can be found here.

Use ‘em at the Thanksgiving table to make your family groan and your kids blush with embarrassment.

Because what else are family meals about? Good food, good drink, bad jokes.

And hopefully, some locally sourced grain.

From ours to yours,

A happy month of gratitude and Thanksgiving.

—Olander Farms

Brewery of the Month: Bruz

When you land on Bruz Beers website, you know immediately what you’ve gotten yourself into.

Right there, in gold-colored text set against a black background, front-and-center on the homepage, Bruz lays it all on the line.

Badass Belgian Beers.

Bruz doesn’t mince words about what they do, and when it comes to what they do, Bruz goes all-out. No cutting corners, no ambiguity, no wishy-washy styles.

Bruz does beer. Belgian beer, specifically. And they do it with total and utter badassery.

At Root Shoot, we serve quite a number of breweries and distilleries, but few of these specialize quite so thoroughly, and perhaps none as deeply as Bruz does with its Belgian focus. But we’ll get to that in a minute. First…

Let’s meet the team! Just look at these guys! Who wouldn’t want to sit down and sip a Badass Belgian with this crew?? (Or, as the case may be - leap off a beer tour bus with these guys and then sit down and sip a badass Belgian.)

The Bruz Crew is among our favorite group of humans in the beer scene and it all began with…school.

Beer school, to be precise.

The Root Shoot family is chock full of stories of married partners who decide to open a brewery together. We also know a lot of buddies, friend groups, and brewing club partners who made the same leap. We even have single brewer/owner businesses (though that sounds overwhelming!) but Bruz might be the only brewery in our community that began with an instructor/student pairing.

Bruz co-founders Ryan Evans and Charlie Gottenkieny met at a class on Belgian beers that Charlie was teaching at Colorado Free University. Lessons were instructed, beers were sipped, and next thing you know a business plan was developed, and a partnership was born.

By all appearances, these two business partners seem to complement each other wonderfully. Charlie has a long and storied career in the Belgian beer world. He’s been brewing Belgian beers for over 27 years, won over 100 medals, including two AHA Homebrewer of the year awards. He’s brewed commercially, he’s brewed at home, he’s taught classes on brewing, he’s spoken at conferences on brewing, he’s a nationally recognized beer judge….

You get the idea.

Ryan, with a passion for both beer and business (and, quite conveniently, an MBA and extensive business experience) knows the ins and outs of what it takes to run a successful company, from business plan development to execution and growth.

The result?

Two gorgeous tasting rooms in two of Denver’s most happenin’ neighborhoods, killer beers, and really good people.

With the addition of Dave Olson to the team (he previously brewed for Ursula Brewing) the Bruz Crew has really hit their groove, and they are kicking out some amazing beer. But good beer doesn’t happen by accident, and Bruz has one of the most dedicated teams to producing high-quality, authentic Belgian beers. So dedicated, in fact, that every year the Bruz team travels to Belgium to do some “continuing education” there.

Doesn’t everyone wish that all continuing ed classes involved beer trips to Europe?

Bruz teaches about Belgian beer, too. Ever the instructor, Charlie maintains a blog on the Bruz website that will school even the most well-informed beer nerd on all things Belgian. (It also serves as a great planning resource if you happen to be planning a trip to Belgium anytime soon!)

They also host pairings and classes on Belgians at the brewery, including regular beer courses on the first Saturday of most months. Keep an eye on their event calendar to join one! Or head over to one of their two locations and let the beer speak for itself. Try a flight! There are usually 18 beers on tap and more in bottles, so it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll find something you love.

Including, most definitely, the company.