Young brothers from old farm family
want to be malt suppliers for beer economy
MAPLETON, Maine — Among Aroostook County farmers trying to diversify and enter new markets, Joshua and Jacob Buck decided to focus on a crop they were already growing.
Joshua and Jacob, two of four brothers, have spent the past few years thinking about potential crops to grow beyond potatoes and grains, leading an effort to diversify the third-generation Buck Farms under the guidance of their father and two uncles. Initially, their interest in craft beer drew them to hops, the flowers used for bitterness in beer brewing.
The hops have grown well, but the brothers had another idea last year when they were trying to sell them to Sea Dog Brewing Company in Bangor.
“They had malted barley sitting by the door,” said Jacob, a recent University of Maine engineering graduate. “I thought, ‘Hey, we grow barley.’ By the time we left there we were looking at how to malt barley.”
In February, they founded the Maine Malt House, narrowly beating the Blue Ox Malthouse in Lisbon Falls in being the state’s first modern malt house, and entering the competitive malt market dominated by multinational corporations.
Many New England farms have long grown barley and other grains, but beer breweries large and small tend to rely on malted barley, the source of the sugars fermented into beer, sold by large companies like Cargill. Grain farmers have traditionally sold to big firms for malting, rather than try to make it themselves.
The Buck brothers in Mapleton, as well as startup malt houses in places like Massachusetts and North Carolina, are betting they can create a business in the “field to glass” movement, the marriage of the local food and craft beer economies. “We’re too far into it now. We’re a craft malt company,” said Joshua.
Not long after the epiphany at Sea Dog, Joshua attended a malt academy in Winnipeg, Ontario, to learn “the biochemistry of barley” and the whole malting process, where the grains are steeped in water, germinated and dried to preserve enzymes that help starches turn into sugars and eventually alcohol.
Then they sent an introduction letter and survey to every brewery in Maine (41 at the time) and heard back from about half. “We got a lot of feedback saying ‘Quality is where it’s at,’” Josh said.
After they made their first batch in February, and got it tested in Canada, they loaded up their truck with the malt and visited breweries across Maine to pitch their product.
The Liberal Cup in Hallowell was the first to brew with the Buck’s malt, in its Drummer’s Lane Brown Ale. This past summer, their malts were featured in beers at the Maine Brewer’s Fest, including Marshall Wharf Brewing’s 7 percent alcohol by volume “Little Toot Small Pale Ale.” Today at least a dozen breweries have used their malts, among them Gritty’s, Allagash and Geaghan’s, and Central Street Farmhouse sells their malts to homebrewers.
Their first major customer, Square Tail Brewing Company in Amherst, along Route 9 east of Bangor, now sources 100 percent of its base malts from the Maine Malt House, not including specialities like malted rye, and about 85 percent in total.
“When we made the swap we had to rework some of our recipes,” said Square Tail’s head brewer Wes Ellington. “We were using a British malt, Maris Otter, primarily as our base, which has a more distinct, bready and robust profile.” Ellington and the brewers had to “play around” with some of the Maine Malt House’s 2-row barley blends, “but we have gotten it nailed down pretty well,” he said.
“We have a philosophy to keep our ingredients as local as possible,” said Ellington, who still works full-time as a station specialist for Spectra Energy. “In the past this has been difficult, due to the fact that there weren’t that many options. But as the brewing industry grows, so goes the agri-industry in Maine.”
Plying a trade for a local economy
When the Bucks were growing up, their mother told them that they had to get some kind of higher education.
Joshua, who trained in construction at Northern Maine Community College, planned much of malt facility, a renovated former potato storage facility along Route 163. Jared, who studied computer-aided drafting at NMCC, designed the grain cleaning-system, managed the fabrication and also focuses on planting and harvesting the grains. He’s kind of “behind the scenes,” Jacob said.
Jacob and his twin Caleb both earned engineering degrees from the University of Maine, the latter in mechanical engineering and now working for Boeing in Washington State, after helping get the malt house off the ground by pitching in with the rest of the family. Jacob, an electrical engineer, is also working in advanced industrial technology, albeit on a small scale for a small business, using a programmable logic controller to control various parts of the seven-day malting process. “We’ve tried to automate as much as we can,” said Jacob.
Space that used to store potatoes 20 feet high is now an elaborate pipe system that cleans and screens the barley kernels into an exact size, 6/64th of an inch.
In a malt room, two tons of grain are steeped and dried three times over 48 hours, through a programmed system. Then the grain is spread on the floor four or five inches thick to germinate over four days — a step that does require someone to rake the grains every four-to-eight hours. (“We could automate that,” Jacob said.) The malts finish by drying inside large bins in a kiln, built by Josh.
So far, they’ve made 20 batches of malted barely, and they have a lot to sell and more barley in storage, waiting to be malted. Early next year, they hope to secure more sales by pitching to brewers well before they make large orders for their summer beers.
One key challenge for them, though, is that their malt is about twice as expensive as malt sold by large companies like Cargill. But they know how to grow good barley and can expand their production, Jacob argued. Plus, craft beer is bound to become more popular, he said. “There’s no bubble.”
Aroostook County is not home to the bustling craft breweries that have sprouted up across Maine, New England and other parts of the country. A brewery and pub that opened in Presque Isle in 2004, Slopes Northern Maine Restaurant and Brewing Company, closed for lack of business not long afterwards. But, 10 years later, the Buck brothers are not trying to sell beer locally; they want to produce and sell malts across the state through an integrated farm and malthouse business.
Their success may well depend on the sustainability of craft beer, which is still a niche, accounting for 11 percent of total U.S. beer sales in 2014, or almost $20 billion, according to the Brewers Association. Part of craft beer’s growth may depend on older beer drinkers changing their habits and buying locally-brewed ales, stouts and other brews, rather than the mass market mainstays.
“My generation were more of the Bud Lights and Miller Lites,” said Bruce Buck, Joshua and Jacob’s father. (“Or Milwaukee’s Best,” Joshua added in jest.) “I am now a fan of craft beer,” Bruce said.
The brothers are now working with craft brewery partners to pitch beers to the public that all locally-grown and hand-crafted, and worth paying a bit more for. “You can taste the local,” Jacob said.
“There is a shift in today’s culture,” argued Ellington, of Square Tail Brewing. “People want to once again know where their food and drink are coming from. People are buying up to the fact that you might have to pay slightly higher prices for a pint of local brew because they like knowing not only where it was made but they also the people who made it.”
Jacob said the Maine Malt House is hoping to evolve along with the industry, possibly expanding and automating more functions such as the raking. He and his brother are also brewing on a small scale with their own malts and hops, and always thinking of opportunities from the farmer’s perspective.
Spent grain, the high-protein remnants of malts, is great food for pigs and low-cost for the pork farmer, Jacob said. “Especially if they start using our malt, it’ll come right back to a farm. The breweries downstate are just giving their spent grains to farms and the farms are feeding it to their animals. It’s a whole full circle back to the farm.”
Editor’s note: Beers made with the Maine Malt House malt, Aroostook Hops and other local ingredients will be available at the Aroostook County Brew Fest on October 17th in Mars Hill.
