Chaska, MN brewery strives to connect back to the land as part of their heritage brewing
Schram Haus Brewery opened five years ago in Chaska, MN as a sister enterprise to the Schram Vineyards Winery & Brewery in nearby Waconia. Founders Aaron and Ashley Schram needed more space for brewing and found a perfect spot to highlight the area’s brewing heritage. What was once a county public works building celebrates German-style beer traditions with their spring GoatFest and fall Okotbierfest. Now, the brewery is beginning to explore regional grains.
Brewer Brian VanHout is also a home baker, and that’s where his introduction to the power of ingredients began. “I’m a big fan of local and artisan grains. When I'm not brewing beer, I'm at home baking or making pizza crusts or working in my garden,” he says. The food co-op down the street from him in Minneapolis has several flours from Minnesota farms and mills with flavors and colors that really excited him when he first discovered them. “I had never really thought about brewing in the same context. It hadn’t dawned on me that the same thing could apply to beer as well.”
This disconnect is common in craft brewing, which tends to focus on emulating English and European beers that rely on specific malt styles. Often, brewers lean on imported specialty malts for their tradition and reliable performance; they use larger quantities of base malt from large-scale American and Canadian malting facilities to perform the bulk of the fermentation work. One of the main providers of malt in America, Rahr Malting Company, is visible from Schram Haus, and this proximity, ironically, illustrates the difficulty of incorporating regional grains into local beers.
Malting is the process of sprouting grains, generally barley, with the goal of unlocking the enzymes of grain kernels to help make sugars available for fermentation. Malthouses, like mills, used to be common processing facilities in communities. Many American breweries had their own malthouses in the early 1900s, but prohibition closed their doors; by the time laws changed, this valuable intermediate infrastructure was concentrated into a few manufacturing facilities.
"I can drive a truck to Rahr and get what I need,” says Brian. For Schram Haus, an average batch of beer means 500 pounds of malt (picture about 8-10 55lb bags). Rahr has been malting since 1847, and is one of two major malthouses in America. Around the country, craft brewers have easy access to the products of concentrated grain systems; seeking grains through anything but these large-scale channels takes far more diligence, and costs can almost double. “There’s a readily available distribution system to get bulk commodity grains and the price point is something that's hard to overcome.”
While searching for malt that equaled the flours he was using at home, he discovered AGC. Through connections with members, including Maltwerks, a malthouse and specialty beverage ingredient company in the Midwest, Schram Haus has a path forward.“ The taproom in Chaska has 14 different beers I’ve got to keep flowing, so starting with one and trying to transition it makes sense,” says Brian. Schram Haus has a small pilot system that can produce 10 gallons of beer at a time, and Brian is excited to use it.
“I'm in the process of redeveloping our house lager, which uses corn. I'm working on transitioning that to using all Minnesota grains,” he says. The corn for this type of beer is an adjunct, or raw, unmalted grain that’s incorporated into the mash, the first step in brewing. Boiling the milled corn will gelatinize some of the starches, and then the enzymes in the malted grain he adds will use those starches for fermentation.
AGC member and corn breeder Keith Williams is helping Schram Haus find several types of landrace and heirloom corn grown in the Midwest to use for trial batches, and the initial results of their “Haus Lager” will be presented this fall at a small workshop at the brewery. Walking people through the agriculture involved in beer, and through a tasting and sensory analysis procedure will help demonstrate the merits of extra effort and investment in seeking out unique ingredients. If local and regional goods can’t meet customer expectations, the pursuit will not pay.
One of AGC’s friends in regional grain, the Craft Maltsters Guild, is helping address craft malt’s invisibility by connecting the small, emerging industry much as the AGC network does for the grain chain in the Midwest. Brian knows that their Haus Lager is a small step toward raising the profile of regional grains in beer, too. The more customers and brewers see beers that have a direct tie to farming, and to malthouses, the more viable these choices will become.
“I'm trying to tell more of a story with the grains. Historically, Chaska has been an agricultural community, and had a large German immigrant population. We’re trying to connect back to the land that's around us,” Brian says, a goal that’s in sync with the Schram’s vineyard, where they’re growing different varieties of Minnesota grapes. “We don't have a farmer growing barley right here, but it would be amazing if we do someday.”
