We’ve seen lager styles gaining popularity across the Southeast over the last few years. During that time, we developed several different products, like Czech-style Pilsner, to help our customers build recipes that were “true to style”, but still with a touch of Southern terroir.

We’re thrilled to see more and more producers with mindfulness around expressing a sense of place in their beers, especially in malt-forward lager recipes. As 2023 comes to a close, we’re pleased about the momentum that the Southern Lager movement gained this year and excited for what’s to come in the New Year. Here are some of our 2023 highlights—

The Inaugural Southern Lager Invitational

We got an early start on the year when our friends from Bootleg Biology invited us to co-sponsor the inaugural Southern Lager Invitational late in 2022. The idea of pouring locally-sourced lagers for a large audience at the Craft Brewers Conference seemed like a perfect fit.

In the ramp up to CBC, we helped pull together close to two dozen beers from around the South. The folks at Harding House Brewing Company were incredible hosts, taking great care of everyone in attendance. The event was incredibly successful, and we’re grateful to everyone who attended.

Exciting news! We’re bringing the Southern Lager Invitational to Asheville in 2024. Stay tuned.

State-Level Lager Collaborations

Tampa Beer Week generated another opportunity to showcase our expanding catalog of Pilsner malts. I found myself chatting with Jason from Gulfport Brewing Company about the recently released Avalon variety from Virginia Tech. Specifically, the Pilsner batches Riverbend had released that featured a rich mouthfeel (think coconut water!) while keeping color low. The conversation turned to the Florida Brewers Conference beer collaboration that was currently underway. They were kicking around the idea of a Vienna Lager and I jumped at the chance to get involved in the project. Our Vienna Malt is one of my favorite products that doesn’t often get a chance to shine. In short, I couldn’t wait to see how this beer would turn out. 

We packed our bags and headed back to Florida for their conference in July. Randy Mosher gave a great keynote address on his latest book that dives deep into the world of beer sensory. We also got a chance to sit in on a presentation about thiolized yeast strains that helped me understand how to balance that ingredient in a recipe… very cool stuff! We also got a chance to share the Avalon story with several brewers in attendance while enjoying the Vienna Lager. It’s always helpful to have an example of a finished beer that features the ingredient you are talking about!

Next up, was another collaboration with our friends from Bootleg Biology. This time we partnered with Atrium Brewing to create a Southern Lager recipe for the Beer CANvention that was happening in Louisville. Turns out there is a fervent group of beer can collectors from around the world that get together every year to talk shop and trade memorabilia. Old school pull tab cans, coolers, t-shirts, basically anything you can think of from breweries large and small was on display at this event. 

This Southern Lager recipe featured our Cumberland Pilsner, Cumberland Corn Malt, and Great Chit. Zuper Saazer hops from Hop Head Farms that deliver a nice herbal punch and the ARL strain from Bootleg that was propagated from a site in Virginia, round out this beautiful beer. It was poured as part of the pre-conference beer festival that kicked off the festivities. A majority of the breweries in Louisville were also in attendance, so it was a great opportunity to check out their beer scene.

For our final collaboration of the year, we joined the NC Brewers Guild and Southern Pines Brewing Company to create a beer that would honor our veterans and serve as the official beer of the 10th annual NC Craft Brewers Conference. We decided on an Italian Pilsner that would feature Chesapeake Pilsner, Southern Select, Vienna, and Great Chit. Idaho Gem and Triumph hops were provided by Mill 95. Southern Pines hosted a brew day for all veteran-owned breweries in NC. The beer made its debut at the NC State Fair in October and took center stage at the awards ceremony during the conference.

Each of these projects took great strides towards establishing a place for local malt in recipes that were previously walled off for European ingredients. Our sincere hope is that fresher malt grown just a few hundred miles from the brewery will support continued innovation, elevating the idea of Southern Lager as a unique style in the years ahead.

Many thanks to everyone for supporting us this year— it means the world to us!

– Brent Manning, Co-Founder

For Southern proud LaGrange, Georgia-based Beacon Brewing Company, the choice to switch to Southern malt to brew Southern beer was essential to their brand. The decision fell perfectly in line with their desire to provide patrons with a fusion of local flavors accompanied by local lore.

Why the Switch?

According to Dave Hash, Head Brewer at Craft Malt Certified™ Beacon Brewing, “For us, it was a combination of the efficiency and flavor we get from the malt as well as the mission of supporting our local southeastern beer economy. That, coupled with the bulk grain pricing we were able to get, made the switch very enticing.”  

Beyond flavor and price, Beacon strives to “be a part of the community, not apart from the community.” Hash went further to say, “Applying this philosophy on a macro scale makes perfect sense for us and gives us a chance to support our local southeastern farmers and maltsters. Switching to Riverbend is the perfect way for us to do that.” 

Malt Selection

Of Riverbend’s available standard malts, Beacon Brewing uses a whopping eleven. Their base malts are created exclusively with Chesapeake Pilsner and Southern Select.  For their specialty malts, Beacon incorporates Light and Dark Munich, Vienna, Great Chit, Appalachian Wheat, Munich Rye, Carolina Rye, and Cumberland Corn. Their Sweetland Light uses exclusively Chesapeake Pilsner and Great Chit and the Vienna, and according to Dave, “The Vienna Malt and Cumberland Corn really shine in our Mexican Lager.”

But Hash says he does have a favorite. The head brewer goes on to say that by far, his favorite usage of Riverbend malts is “the Munich Rye and Carolina Rye malts in our Red Rye DIPA. The spicy rye characteristics pair really well with English crystal malt and citrusy hop bitterness, and you can really get that tingling, slightly cooling mouthfeel that you’d get from a rye whiskey.” 

A Sense of Place

Beacon Brewing Company lives by a local first motto. “In an industry that relies so much on homogeneity in its raw ingredients, it’s refreshing to be able to use an ingredient that allows us to maintain and exceed operational integrity while supporting our local farmers,” Hash adds. “I’m just proud to be using Southern malt to brew Southern beer.” 

Learn more about Beacon Brewing Company’s Southern pride at beaconbeer.com.

At Riverbend, we dedicate a significant amount of time to sensory training. In these panels, we deep dive into the grain selection, recipe development, and in-house procedures that define our products. As with any great craft beer or spirit, there is a ‘true-to-brand profile that we are looking for in each one. The recent release of our Crystal Malt offered an opportunity to compare this product to other examples currently available on the market.

New Crystal Malt, 50 SRM

Over the years, we have learned that each producer of Crystal malt or Caramel malt developed a “house” character that brewers could recognize as either a positive or negative attribute. Given that preference and history, we were interested to see how our version stacked up. For our comparison test, we selected examples with a similar SRM from the United Kingdom and a domestic product too. 

The colors of all three were very similar. Good to know if you are targeting a very specific style or color range for your beer. We noted distinct differences in each, which supports the “house” character thesis. The two commercial examples presented a bit more toast and coffee character compared to Riverbend’s new Crystal 50 malt. Here are a few tasting notes from that panel:

Riverbend Crystal 50 malt – bright cherry, toffee, with a light syrupy finish

British Crystal malt – dark fruit, bakers chocolate, woody tannins

Domestic Crystal malt – dark fruit, toast, woody tannins

Double Kilned Munich

We also included our Double Kilned Munich in this test, as the SRM is very similar. The goal of this was to explore and define the differences in these two products to avoid any confusion in the market. The most noteable takeaway from this exercise was the difference in mouthfeel. Double Kilned Munich displayed a richer, breadier mouthfeel when compared to Crystal 50, like a mixture of chocolate cake batter and toast. This makes sense when you consider that a higher level of starch conversion has taken place in the Crystal malt, leaving a sweeter, thinner liquid. Some similarities did exist, with both presenting notes of dark fruit and molasses.

Pilsner Malts

Next up was an examination of Pilsner malts. Since the release of our single origin Pilsners, our customers have become more comfortable with the idea of selecting a specific malt from our portfolio for their lager projects. We’ve even fielded a few jabs about the number we offer, which gives me the perfect opportunity to talk about what differentiates them.

The expansion of our offerings of Pilsner malt styles mirrors market trends from the larger producers, with several releasing premium variants or domestic houses advertising the use of barley from Europe. All of which speaks to market demand and the continued rise of craft lager production in the United States market. 

Customers have consistently reported that our Chesapeake Pilsner, made with Violetta barley, is closest to the “Continental” profile from across the pond. Hot take: this comparison did not support that assessment! 

Our comparison of Chesapeake Pilsner to a premium domestic Pilsner malt and a continental Pilsner malt using the traditional hot steep method yielded some interesting results. The continental example delivered a more pronounced bready character than Chesapeake, but with less floral and fruit aromas. In fact, our tasting notes were very similar to our Cumberland Pilsner, made with Calypso barley. The premium domestic sample displayed the least amount of character between the three. Aromas tended to be muted compared to the other two and remained the bread crumb, crust arena with little additional characteristics noted. No flaws or off flavors were detected in any of the three. Always fun when data surprises you, right?!

All of this begs the question, do you have a comparison you’d like to try? Our team can bring our hot steep kits to your facility and compare what you currently use with a comparable Riverbend product. This collaboration is a great way to try before you buy!

Give us a shout to learn more. 

Oktoberfest Is In Full Effect. 

Since we launched the malt house, Oktoberfest season sales calls were met with a similar refrain…. “I only use German malt for those recipes”. 

Of course this makes sense; these events are wrapped in hundreds of years of history and tradition. Add to this, the relative lack of experience of an upstart malt house and new barley varieties, and you have a recipe for hesitation.

Over the years, we have honed the recipes of our Munich “family”, coaxing a nice mix of bread, sweet aromatics, and floral character from our locally-sourced grain. These aromas combined with consistent color and extract levels have given us a bit more confidence to hit the streets and ask for that coveted Märzen or Festbier spot.

The increase in quality and consistency combined with a global supply chain meltdown helped us gain traction in 2022, and we have built on that momentum this year. Breweries across the Southeast have taken the leap and reimagined these classic lagers with freshly kilned malt from Riverbend Malt House— as opposed to the Atlantic Ocean.

This harvest season, we saw plenty of Chesapeake Pilsner, Vienna, Light Munich, and Dark Munich go in recipes across the region. Heavier on the Munich malts if a richer, maltier Oktoberfest was the target; More Vienna and Pilsner if a Festbier was on the schedule. 

Over the past few weeks we’ve received positive feedback from our customers as these beers have gone into packaging, and gotten tapped for Oktoberfest celebrations. Hearing that makes it feels like we’ve torn down one of the last barriers for craft malt. 

As these releases make their way to the taprooms and storefronts, our hearts are filled with pride. We know there is a tremendous amount of time and effort tied up in this liquid and we are proud to be a part of each of these expressions of the season. If your Festbier (or any other style you might want to tell us about) was #madewithRiverbend, we’d love to hear about it. 

A sincere thank you goes out to everyone that chose to make their Oktoberfest Lager with Riverbend this season. We look forward to raising a frothy stein with you in the coming weeks!

Prost y’all!

— Brent

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy

Photo courtesy HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology

When the temperature begins to warm and the days get longer, we start to watch the weather a bit more closely around the Southeast. Calls go out to our small grains growers in late April and early May to get an early read on the crop. Have we had enough rain? Enough warm weather? Any disease pressure? It’s a laundry list of questions designed to gauge what we’ll be working with by the end of the summer.

In the early days, we held our collective breaths as the combines headed out into the fields of family farms. There were many variables to consider; best practices were still in development and the whole idea of harvest felt like a roll of the dice. Late afternoon rains and large storm fronts would inevitably take their toll. These events would lower test weights and increase vomitoxin levels rendering the harvest unusable. 

With each passing year, we (along with our network of growers) learned something about growing barley in our region. Observations around microclimates, planting windows, and post harvest storage all helped build institutional knowledge. Updated guidelines and advice from our extension partners helped improve our odds of success. Mother Nature still threw us plenty of curveballs, but we were much better prepared to weather her storms.

As we sat down to review the data from this year’s harvest, it was clear that we had turned a corner. The samples looked bright and plump with solid test weights to match. Nearly 100 percent of the grain samples we received from ASR Grain Company, Bay’s Best Feed, and Teeter Farm and Seed met the necessary standards for malting. This includes newcomers to the malting barley game, Alabama and Georgia!

New Malt On The Block

Towerhouse Farm Brewery

We have partnered with the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama to improve and expand malting barley production in their area. This year’s variety trials included a 6-row variety called Secretariat as well as the 2-row Avalon variety. Both met our quality standards and malting is currently underway. These malts will go out to brewers and distillers throughout the state as part of an “Alabama grown” campaign.

Our friends at Towerhouse Farm Brewery in Georgia are continuing their quest to provide a grain to glass experience for their patrons. This year marks the second successful harvest of 2-row Calypso at their farm and we are looking forward to producing some exceptional malt for them! 

Expanding our grower network into these states has been especially gratifying as we look towards the future of Riverbend. Since our start we’ve heard the question “what do you have that is grown in my state?” The answer is often quite complicated, involving several stakeholders and a potentially steep learning curve. It often takes several years to bring these projects to fruition, but the result is often a big leap for local agriculture and innovation within the neighboring brewhouses.

More Avalon, Please 

Speaking of big leaps forward, our stock of Avalon barley bred by the Eastern Virginia Agricultural Research and Extension Center has increased exponentially with this year’s harvest. Adoption of this variety has happened quickly throughout the Southeast and we are excited to have lots from North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee to work with this year. The first batch is currently in production and will be available soon.

Last Kernels

Photo courtesy ASR Grain Co.

Calypso and Violetta also performed well this season and will continue to play leading roles in Riverbend Base Camp and Southern Select malt styles. 

Finally, we are also welcoming back an old favorite, Seashore Black Rye grown at Tidewater Grain Company in Oriental, North Carolina. This heirloom variety can be traced back to the 1830’s. Stay tuned for details on product release dates.