Thanks to Steven and Wayne of the Upstate Beer Boys podcast for visiting the malthouse! In their episode, Brent talks shop about Riverbend’s history and day-to-day operations. As an added bonus, our sales representative and Plankowner Brewing owner Shawn joins the interview!
Listen in here.
The 2023 Craft Brewers Conference was a huge success! It was an honor to have our malt included in the recipe for the conference beer, Tri Star Blonde Ale, and it was so much fun to taste beers made with our malt all over town.
Thank you to the Brewers Association for having us at the expo, and also to moderate the Building an Educational Beer Festival panel featuring Sharon Cheek of the Tennessee Craft Brewers Guild, Matt Leff of Rhizome Productions and Nate Underwood from Harding House Brewing Company discussing the Farm To Tap initiative.
Chris Chamberlain of Nashville Scene was one of the attendees at this seminar, which he recapped in this Nashville Scene article about his conference experience. “Farm to Tap was offered as a model to engage drinkers in a more focused and environmentally topical festival,” he says. “Cheek, Leff and Underwood shared their lessons learned and offered helpful suggestions to the assembled crowd who seemed really receptive to their message. Overall, the events drew around 500 to 700 consumers each and featured 30-plus breweries, including some who joined the Guild specifically so that they could get involved. Cheek remarked how eager that the brewers were to be a part of the events and how much they helped out during the festivals.”
We’re thrilled to see the continuation of Farm To Tap! Follow along and check out the Farm To Tap survey results on the Tennessee Brewers Guild website.
Photos courtesy McNeely Brockman PR
Bloody Butcher Corn has a rich story that’s woven into the history of American distilling. Some recent Modern Farmer coverage of this heritage crop reveals its evolution from moonshine to near extinction to abundant use in craft distilleries.
We were thrilled to weigh in, and we’re excited to provide Bloody Butcher Corn malt to many craft distillers across the Southeast region.
Check out the article here, and contact us if you’d like to purchase Bloody Butcher for your next recipe.
Along the eastern seaboard, there’s a growing network of folks interested in reanimating the dead—or, at least, the nearly dead. “There’s definitely a robust network on the eastern seaboard of people in brewing, distilling, academics and malting that are building on a lot of these storylines and getting some of these varieties back into the public’s hands,” says Brent Manning, certified cicerone and co-founder of Asheville, NC-based Riverbend Malt House.
The March 2023 issue of Business North Carolina magazine features a Riverbend Malt House profile that we’re very proud of! Thanks to the author Desmond Keller who put in much time to interview our leadership team, and learn more about the craft malt industry at large.
Read the article here.
“Global Crises Spur More Local Beers.” That’s on Joshua Bernstein’s list of beer industry trends to look for this year that just posted on SevenFifty Daily.
It’s true— the global supply chain is making ingredient purchasers turn to their backyards to source malt that’s not just local and readily available, but higher in quality and better performing in brewhouses.
We’re proud to have Virginia Tech’s Eastern Virginia Agricultural Research and Extension Center in our backyard, where small grains researchers have developed barley varieties able to weather our distinct climate in the Southeast. Such efforts will “support a more diverse and durable crop of quality malting barley for the challenges ahead,” as our Co-Founder Brent Manning was quoted.
Now that’s malt with a mission. Read the article here.
The climate of the commodity grain supply chain in 2022 was bleak, to say the least. Our customers vented about shipping delays and inconsistencies, corporatization, and price upsurges— all served with a side of obtuse sales strategies and degraded product quality. As occasional issues turn endemic, we continue to scrutinize our malt quality, business model, and customer service standards. And we’re proud to report that our proactive mission has mitigated reactivity to the aggressively changing malt industry.
From day one we’ve been committed to high quality malt sourced from regional, family farms that we deliver on time. It’s that simple, and we plan to keep it up.
Kate Bernot of Good Beer Hunting recently covered the ramifications of increasing malt prices on the beer industry in an impressive piece that delves into the craft malt industry at large. We were honored to be among the voices of the craft maltsters she profiled, who include Valley Malt and Root Shoot Malting. Included in the dialogue was a quote from our CEO Scott Hickman who said, “There’s been this bizarre inversion, and we have found ourselves being less expensive than a couple of the big malt suppliers in certain situations.”
Bernot’s words are a poignant, timely read for anyone involved in the industry. In so many spaces like this one she hits the nail on the head when she describes why this topic matters.
With the price gap between craft malt and commodity malt narrowing, some brewers and craft maltsters believe now is the time for craft malt to finally compete economically against its larger counterparts. Given high shipping costs, a brewery may save additional money by sourcing its malts from its region rather than from across the country or overseas.
We’re thrilled to return to the Florida Beer Blog! This time David Butler hosted our Florida, Georgia, and Alabama Territory Manager Tyler Adams for an in-depth conversation about craft malt– including the malting process, SRM, smoked malt, custom malt projects, single-origin Pilsner varieties like Chesapeake Pilsner and Cumberland Pilsner, and Florida 401 Grain Rye (commonly known as Florida Black Rye), to name a few of the topics they covered.
Pictured: Tyler on Eight Foot Brewing + Grand Central Brewhouse collaboration brew day earlier this year.
As the number of breweries in North Carolina continues to increase, so too have the number of ancillary support businesses, says WNC Magazine in their latest article about the local beer scene. “Businesses such as White Labs, an international producer of yeast, and Riverbend Malt House, a craft grain maltster, offer easy access to quality ingredients, saving time and money as well as helping brewers produce better beer in a competitive marketplace.”
We’re proud to have grown up in the North Carolina beer scene, and thrilled to see its growth!
Read on to hear from many of our malt customers— including Bhramari Brewing, Burial Brewing, Asheville Brewing, Hi-Wire Brewing, Hillman Beer, Homeplace Beer Co., New Belgium Brewing, Outsider Brewing, Riverside Rhapsody, and Zillicoah Beer Co.
Tis’ the season for holiday gifting, and what better way to treat the sweet tooth in your life than a bar of locally made, craft malted chocolate in their stocking? The Bean To Barstool podcast interviewed our co-founder Brian alongside the French Broad Chocolates co-founder Jael Skeffington about this storied product. Also featured in this episode is Kyle Spears & Dan Lauro, the brewers at Carillon Brewing Company in Dayton, Ohio, who brew with Riverbend malts in their historical ales.
Listen in here, and get your French Broad Malted Milk Chocolate bars here.
West Virginia Beer Roads, a podcast all about beer from a West Virginia perspective, hosted us for an all-about-malt episode. On the show with us was Weathered Ground Brewing Co., who use Riverbend malt in many of their saisons
They tasted Weathered Ground’s Of The Sun and Moon and Stars, which uses Cumberland Pilsner as a base with the additions of Heritage Malt and Appalachian Wheat in the grist. “We want a low color, lightly kilned malt for this basic Saison grain bill to make a light beer that’s crisp and straw colored. Cumberland Pilsner has neutral fresh bread, biscuit, cracker flavors that let the yeast shine. As it gets warmer you can taste that malt coming through. It’s a great base malt for Saisons.”
They also dug into our history aligned with barley crop production in the Southeast, single origin Pilsner craft malt varieties, the Craft Maltsters Guild Certified Seal, and more.