With all the talk of farm to table food, it’s not surprising that there’s also been discussion about brewing straight from the farm. It certainly harkens back to our agrarian history when many farms included a brewery. As larger communities teem over with breweries, growth will continue in the smaller towns and hamlets. And far from the maddening crowd, they seem to be popping up on farms, active or refurbished, and sometimes just out in the middle of nowhere! In doing my research, I came across brewing farms in nationwide, and definitely feel this is a phenomenon I want to cover!
I first got to visit the Sprague Farm in the early 2000s when Brian and Minnie were just getting started. They did growler service through an old pipe organ, and I usually would get their Scotch Ale which I found to be phenomenal. Minnie was usually there with her cats, and I enjoyed visiting the barn for the beer as much as the ambience! My travels to Northwestern PA were frequent for a time, and I got quite a few growler fills. I met Brian a few times as he was dashing off to work, and I was quick to complement his beer because I knew back then that they had something.
I didn’t make it back to the Brew Works until 2014. They had got their bar completed, and the whole facility looked beautiful. They were still producing amazing beer, some of it wholly sourced from their land. I will always be partial to the Scotch Ale, and when I get a chance to travel through Pennsylvania later this year, I am looking forward to stopping at Spragues. I watched them brewing on a farm when it wasn’t being done everywhere, and now that it’s a popular trend, they definitely needed mentioned in this article!
Several hours south, outside of Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, Screech Owl Brewing is on a beautiful rustic farm guarded by a turkey! I got to visit on a cold February night, and it was near closing. They sat me down at the bar, and let me try what they had on tap. They had a nice selection that was full of variety, and I went with the blonde ale to fill up the growler I brought. I got a tour of the small facility which they told me fills up regularly. They smoke a lot of meat, and the place felt like a small beer hall high up in the mountains of West Virginia.
I have only been thinking about their hospitality since I came home. They make bread from their spent grains, and the bun that they sent me home with was phenomenal! I definitely want to go back at some point and eat their food. They are temporarily shut down for Covid, but should you be in Northern West Virginia when things are back to normal, As long as you don’t get lost, you will be thankful you stopped in at Screech Owl. It’s a different kind of farm, and the beer is amazing!
Last weekend I made the trek down deep into the countryside east of Martinsville to the Cedar Creek Brewing Company. It is a unique place on a parcel of farmland that features a brewery, distillery, and a winery. It covers a large area complete with a nice parade field in the middle for live music. We tried some of the excellent wine, but it was the beer that I thought was most impressive. I tried some of the lighter fare first. They have an excellent Hefeweizen, and the cream ales were pretty good too. Other stand outs included the Irish red, and hazy IPA. It’s nearby and I will definitely stop by on December 21 when they will release a lot of barrel aged beers!
As I write this article, i’m sitting in the Fenwick Farms brewing company in Rensselaer Indiana. The brewery was named for the farm of one of the owners, and they hope eventually to relocate it possibly to his property. In the meantime they use local grains whenever possible, and their spent grains are donated to the Cupp Farm which provides beef and pork products to the brewery. I find this all to be in the spirit of what I’m going for this article and since I’ve visited them today I’m happy to include them in the article. Their beer was solid, and I especially liked the Speirbhean, an Irish Red.
In addition to the breweries that I’ve included in this article, there are a number of other ones nearby that I want to visit. Harry Stuff in Wawaka, Indiana is a farming brewery that I’ve mentioned before and definitely hope to visit this year. Big Thorn and Rolling Meadows are two brewing farms in Illinois, and there are several in Tennessee and one in Ohio I would like to visit as well. Tyra Sutak wrote article two years ago for craftbeer.com in which she lists eight farm breweries you have to visit. She includes another one from Illinois as well(Scratch), and I’m happy to say that no matter where you live, there is a farm brewery near you!
So I have only been able to visit a few farm breweries so far, but it is a subject to interest me very much. I will try to visit as many farm breweries as I can this year, and perhaps knock a few out next summer. I spent much of my youth on my grandfathers farm in northwestern Pennsylvania, and maybe visiting a farm brewery for me invokes these fine memories. And if you just like adventure, getting out into the country, and drinking good beer sounds like a winner to me. I now have even more breweries to visit, and should we meet out there in the countryside, I promise will have a beer together!
So Much Beer So Little Time 