Conviviality – (noun) the quality of being friendly and lively; friendliness.

For good reason, face-to-face sales calls during the pandemic looked a lot different. Masks and social distancing made it tough to connect with customers sans curated tastings that had become the hallmark of our industry. Once we arrived on the other side of Omicron in early 2022, things began to ease up a bit– allowing a more comfortable vibe to return to our day to day routine. Three visits in particular stand out as prime examples of the convivial moments that I deeply missed during the pandemic. Thanks to these folks for hosting us, and sharing their craft. 

Green Bench Brewing with owner Khris Johnson

Khris was more than generous with his time, spending the better part of an afternoon walking us through his mixed culture program as well as the flagships and one-offs available. Our conversations bounced from process details to ingredient selections to industry trends. This conversation also kicked off the research and development of our new Czech-style Pilsner. Khris shared some details about a recent call he’d had with a malt house in the Czech Republic and their traditional approach to this style. It took us several attempts, but we were finally able to land a product that bends modern, aggressively germinating barley to an old world level of modification.

 

Tap Station with Dave Haydesch

Tap Station in Apex, NC is a super cool spot with loads of personality. Housed in an old gas station, the renovation includes a second story deck and outdoor beer garden in the heart of downtown. The interior is fitted with old car parts repurposed as lighting fixtures and draft stations. Dave plied us with tastings of several tasty beers, like their Peak City Pale Ale, which paired perfectly with the smash burgers and fancy tot platters in front of us. It definitely quenched my thirst for good conversation and genuine friendship!

 

Harding House Brewing Co. with Nate Underwood

I think Nate wins the award for the most thorough tasting of 2022! I mean damn… we tasted ALL the things! Granted I was long overdue for a visit as we’ve been working closely together since they opened several years back. Tons of mixture culture offerings were presented with the complete backstory on the local purveyors as well as his process tweaks in the brewhouse. There were beers made with tomatoes, foraged ingredients, and locally-grown fruits that all worked in harmony to create some really special liquid. 

 

Happy Holidays and cheers to the year ahead! 

– Brent Manning

Congratulations to our customers on taking home hardware at many industry competitions in 2022!

An array of Riverbend malt supporters won medals at the 2022 U.S. Open Beer Championship. Props to Cherry Street Brewing who earned five medals, including a gold for the the 12.12.12 made with our rye that won first place in the Barrel-Aged Barley Wine category and the Atomic Funk made with Chesapeake Pilsner that placed third in the Brett Beer category. Earlier this year, Cherry Street also earned gold at the World Beer Cup® for For-scythe Wheat made with Riverbend malted, Georgia-grown wheat.

The U.S. Open also awarded Mason Jar Lager Company with a silver for Moonlight Excursion for Baltic Porter, a silver for Alga Beer Company Dark Lager, and two medals to Oklawaha Brewing Company– a silver for Rural Brewing in the Barrel Aged Sour category, and a bronze for Bobby Bee Kellerbier.

Several of our customers in the Old Dominion State won at the Virginia Craft Beer Cup back in August. Those include Big Lick Brewing Company, Great Valley Farm Brewery and Winery, Chaos Mountain Brewing, Heliotrope Brewery, and Three Notch’d Brewing Company. See the complete winners list on VirginiaCraftBeer.com.

Many of our South Carolina brewery customers— including Birds Fly South Ale Project, Carolina Bauernhaus, Frothy Beard Brewing Company, Hobcaw Brewing Company, Holy City Brewing Co., Kite Hill Brewing, Liability Brewing Company, Peak Drift Brewing Co., Plankowner Brewing, Southern Barrel Brewing Co., and The Southern Growl Beer Company— were winners at the 2022 South Carolina Beer Cup.

In September, Riverbend customers from our home state scored big at the North Carolina Brewers Cup! Bhramari Brewing Co., Black Mountain Brewing, Cellarest Beer Project, Fullsteam Brewery, Haw River Farmhouse Ales, Liquid Roots, Lenny Boy Brewery, Oklawaha Brewing, and Riverside Rhapsody. The winning beers spanned styles and subsequently Riverbend malt varieties— from German-style lagers and English ales to field & spice beers and mixed culture sours, and beyond.

In October, craft breweries across the Southeast earned Great American Beer Festival® awards at this 40th annual festival that took place in Denver, Colorado over the weekend. Congratulations to our customers Blind Tiger Brewery Creature Comforts Brewing Company, Deadwords Brewing Co., Edmund’s Oast, Legion Brewing, Lenny Boy Brewing, Monday Night Brewing, New Realm Brewing, Olde Hickory Brewing Company, Orange Hat Brewing, and Pilot Brewing who won medals. The full 2022 winners list is posted on the GABF website.

This just in! Several of our customers earned recognition at the NC Beer Industry Awards Banquet during the North Carolina Craft Brewers Conference last week, including Bhramari Brewing Co., Cellarest Beer Project, Fullsteam Brewery, Green Man Brewery, Haw River Farmhouse Ales, Lenny Boy Brewery, Oklawaha Brewing, Riverside Rhapsody Beer Co., and Tap Station. Congratulations are in order for Sean Lilly Wilson, founder and Chief Executive Optimist of Fullsteam Brewery, who was honored with the prestigious Order of the Lupulin lifetime achievement award (pictured above).

Do you have an award-winning beer #madewithRiverbend, perhaps from your state brewers guild’s competition, a state fair, or otherwise? We’d love to hear all about it. Submit your beers here to be featured.

The Riverbend Malt House 11 Year Harvest is cut, and we’re pleased to report that we have a tremendous amount of high-quality, locally-sourced barley to offer our customers on a consistent basis.

Here’s Our 2022 Harvest Report.

 

Crop Conditions 

While the spring started off cooler than normal, temperatures rose quickly throughout May and into June. Some isolated areas reported mild drought conditions due to below average rainfall during the same period. Growing degree days, a measurement of the amount of growth and development that can take place at a given temperature, increased by 10% over 2021 levels.  

Thankfully, we didn’t have to endure a lengthy rain event in late May or early June. In years past, these events have lingered for three to four days and brought several inches of rain. This combination can be disastrous for grain quality, lowering test weight and triggering pre-harvest sprout damage. 

 

Avalon 2-Row Barley Is Here.

The major headline from 2022’s harvest is undoubtedly the success of the new Avalon variety from Virginia Tech. This variety has been painstakingly developed over the last ten years and this summer marks the very first commercial harvest. We’ll be pulling in a limited amount of this variety as we wait patiently for additional seed stock to be grown. This year’s crop was marked by strong test weights of over 50 pounds per bushel and plump, bright kernels. 

Initial trials in the malt house have yielded exciting results, with those plumps kernels contributing to a rich, milky sweet wort. Thus far we’ve experimented with Pilsner, Pale, and Vienna recipes. Brewing and distilling trials are happening now, and the first beers made with Avalon 2-row barley will hit the taps soon. 

Read more about the Avalon variety in the Craft Maltsters Guild Field To Bench series, and our Combining Efforts blog. 

Meet A Few Of Our Farmers.

The connections between Riverbend and our farm partners is stronger than ever. We were fortunate enough to visit several of them in 2022. 

The first of our 2022 barley yield was harvested at ASR Grain Co. in Shelby, North Carolina. We got to see it with our own eyes right before it came out of the ground back in May during our farm tour. Several fields of 2-row Calypso with low protein and high germination levels from ASR will become a key part of every batch of our Southern Select and Base Camp varieties. 

We also got to visit Bay’s Best Feed in Heathsville, Virginia (pictured above) to see Violeta and Avalon 2-row barley days before cutting this spring— and it looked incredible. It was an honor to stand on Avalon Lane on Billy Dawson’s farm. We’re beyond excited about the opportunities that this varietal will yield. 

Teeter Farm & Seed Co. in Clarksville, Tennessee successfully grew Calypso and Avalon 2-row varieties for us over the 2021-22 crop year. This farm is located in one of Tennessee’s grain growing hubs just north of Nashville, an area of the state that consistently produces high-quality wheat and barley. Above average test weights and kernel sizes were observed in both varieties. The Calypso barley will be utilized in our Cumberland Pilsners, part of our single origin Pilsner series. Stay tuned for more information on the Avalon. 

2022 marked our ninth successful harvest with Carter Farms in Eagle Springs, North Carolina. True to form, this year’s crop of Abruzzi rye crop looked beautiful. Strong test weight, low DON, and solid protein levels. We got a chance to see the crop right before harvest, standing tall in the spring sunshine.

Pro tip: keep an eye out for Carter Farms’ u-pick strawberries announcements on Facebook. This part of NC gets some of the earliest berries every year. 

Lastly, we visited Long Vue Farms in Allensville, Kentucky from which we received some beautiful soft red winter wheat, with strong test weights and plump kernels— perfect for the upcoming batches of Appalachian Wheat. 

We believe that building these types of relationships is essential to creating a local food system for craft beer and spirits. We’ll take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude for their commitment to sustainable practices that make for quality malt– and eventually value added beverages. 

Learn even more about the growers in Riverbend’s network here.

Largely influenced by petitioning from the American Single Malt Whiskey commission, the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is proposing to establish a standard of identity for American single malt whiskey. Like a lot of craft malt, beer, and spirits distillers we’ve been advocates of this style of whiskey for years now. 

It’s a game-changer for the craft malt community because for the first time there will be a minimum qualification for single malt produced in the United States, says Will Goldberg, the Founder and Head Distiller at Oak & Grist Distilling Co. in Black Mountain, North Carolina. 

Under this Single Malt Whiskey proposal, to designate this category the product must be distilled entirely at one United States distillery. It must be mashed, distilled, aged in the United States, and sourced from a fermented mash of 100% malted barley, at a distillation proof of 160° or less, and stored in oak barrels not exceeding 700 liters. 

“At this point it doesn’t look like there is going to be an age requirement,” Goldberg says. “It also doesn’t look like there will be a requirement for the beer for the whiskey brewed at the same facility that is distilling the whiskey; which are two things that the Scottish definition has in place.” 

Designated Scotch whiskey is aged for a minimum of three years. “That’s why our Single Malt Whiskey is aged a minimum of three years,” Goldberg adds. “We’ve taken that approach from the get go, whereas our Malt Whiskey doesn’t meet that age requirement.” 

Oak & Grist’s American Single Malt batches have all been expressions of single origin, custom pale malt varieties grown in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. We’ll get into the nuance that these barley varieties made in each Single Malt in a future post, but for now we’ll say that berry is a core note across batches, complemented by long maturation in used bourbon barrels. The resulting whiskey is smooth and balanced. American Craft Spirits Magazine put it well when this spirit first debuted in 2020: “Goldberg left this custom-abiding single malt alone for three years to draw complexities that only come with age. The drinker’s reward is a rich mouthfeel and delicate, grassy flavor brimming with chocolate, dried berries and a smoky seaside finish.” 

Spirits like Goldberg’s contribute to a diversity of flavors in the marketplace. Each region of North America supports the growth of different barley varieties which maltsters utilize to create distinctive, fresh flavors for their distillery partners. Accordingly, craft maltsters are uniquely positioned to make positive contributions to this new category. 

As the name suggests, this category is driven by malt, marking a notable departure from bourbon which is comprised of a majority of unmalted corn. This departure frees the maltster from the responsibility of delivering a high enzyme, low color malt to his or her customer. Warmer kilning temperatures that are responsible for the lush, sweet aromatics found in Munich-style products are created in an environment that often results in lower enzymatic levels than bourbon distilleries can accept. American Single Malt producers do not require these high enzyme levels because they don’t have to convert the large starch reserves present in raw corn. The end result is a much higher concentration and diversity of flavors ranging from fresh baked bread to ripe fruit that carry over from the malt to the finished distillate.

That’s our two cents. What’s yours? 

The TTB invites public comment on this proposal, due September 27, 2022, and on the specific questions listed in Notice No. 213. 

”Any single malt whiskey producers make sure to give support to this if you believe in it,” says Goldberg.

We couldn’t agree more.