REAL FARM REAL BREW
Why we brew
Our brewing started at our home out of the same curiosity that drove us to garden and cook: we think small batch, hands on products -- that focus enormously on quality of ingredients -- are more fulfilling.
Our brewing operation grew out of our farming business and is entirely an extension of that. We think that the brewing process provides a different way to appreciate the flavor and quality of the plants grown on our farm. We appreciate all of the classic styles of beer, each with their own history, and we enjoy weaving our own unique, farm-grown ingredients into those traditions.
We think the breath of our farming operation makes what we're able to produce fun and unique to our area, and that our lineup is diverse enough that a wide range of people can appreciate it.
What we brew
We plan each of our recipes to be centered on a farm ingredient — cones from our hop yard, herbs, flowers, fruit and even vegetables from the same field that powers our Produce CSA.
Being a small market-garden means we can't grow full estate beers, but that doesn't mean we can't stay committed to local and quality. Every batch of beer is fermented with custom-propagated yeast from local lab Jasper's Yeast, and 100% of our specialty malts are Virginia-grown and locally malted in Charlottesville by Murphy & Rude.
We've touched on just about every traditional style of beer depending on the agricultural product we're focused on. We brew a new recipe weekly and our lineup is constantly rotating, usually turning over completely every two months or so.
Beers are available in our taproom and at a select group of local owner/operator restaurants.
How we brew
All of our beers are made on our 2.5 barrel (BBL) brewing system, located in our taproom. Grains are milled the day of brewing, and mashed in by hand. We direct fire all of our wort and ferment on sight in U.S.-produced steel vessels, sometimes transferring into wine barrels obtained from local Virginia wineries for aging.
Every non-traditional ingredient we use is either grown on our farm, or picked up by us directly from a local producer/friend/farmer.
We never use mass-produced pasteurized puree or extracts, and we use no chemicals such as fining agents in our brewing process. Our beers are all fermented until fully mature, cold conditioned, and never filtered.
While most of our beers would be considered "clean," we do sometimes make what could be called "sour" beers, check out our FAQ for more on that.