6 minute read
SEED TO SIP
SEED Sipto
IT STARTS WITH A SEED
BY ANDY VANCE PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF OHIO LIQOUR
Taste the flavor of the grains in your cocktails.
A UNIQUE SERIES ON THE ROOTS OF YOUR FAVORITE SPIRITS
You know your favorite distilled spirit — the nose, the flavor, perhaps an iconic bottle shape. But have you ever stopped to think about the farmers who make it all possible?
It all started on a farm somewhere, when the right combination of seed, soil, warmth, and water sprouted a plant that would grow for a season, and then be mashed, fermented, distilled, aged, and bottled.
This growing season, join OHLQ as we introduce you to the individuals who help craft your favorite spirits. With agriculture as the number one industry in Ohio and 60 percent of the state’s landmass engaged in farming, we hope you’ll agree that Ohio’s farmers and agricultural science professionals deserve a toast.
So come along as we trace the sip back to the seed and raise a glass to Ohio’s farmers!
MEET YOUR LOCAL GRAIN FARMER: MATT CUNNINGHAM OF RUSTIC BREW FARM
Matt Cunningham is a farmer near Marysville, Ohio who has been tending the land all his life, like his father and grandfather before him. In 2014, he added malting barley and hops to his crop rotation in an effort to preserve the legacy of his family’s farm for years to come.
“I’m fourth generation, so it’s hard to explain. The people that get it, get it,” Cunningham said when asked what it means to him to be a farmer. “There’s a sense of pride in the family operation that I want to continue.”
The Cunningham family has raised corn and soybeans for decades, but as development pressure from a growing Marysville continued to drive up land prices and rental costs, Matt studied ways to make the farm more profitable and more sustainable. Raising crops is not only weather-dependent, but the cost of fuel, fertilizer, and seed can vary dramatically from one year to the next, as does the sale price of the finished product at harvest time.
Cunningham got a firsthand lesson in the inherent volatility of farming very early in his career.
“Those were some good years when I started and my dad kept telling me, don’t get used to this,” Cunningham remembered. “Don’t get used to this, this isn’t normal. And he was right — it was not normal. The markets came crashing down in 2013 … [and] at the same time we were coming off of two years of surplus, so we had a giant crop with no demand and prices went crashing down.”
But while the price of the finished product was roughly half of what he had budgeted, the cost of inputs largely stayed the same.
“So if you cut your revenue in half with your expenses staying the same, it’s tough,” he said with a laugh. “In that time we had our first kid, so my wife quit her job, which was a good job with health insurance. And all that happened at the same time; it was eye-opening. So that’s when I decided to look at different avenues, something a little more profitable; a little more stable.”
Cunningham considered opportunities like growing crops for the ethanol industry or becoming a local grain elevator. In the end, Ohio’s burgeoning craft brewing industry gave him the idea that barley could fit nicely into the farm’s capabilities. He decided it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the family’s finances to build a malting room to handle small batches of grain.
“I got to thinking: this comes from agriculture and I think we can do it here,” he recounted.
“Barley was grown here before prohibition. [Ohio] was one of the leading states … I built a malt house on the farm because there were no malt houses to sell to in the area at the time.”
Doing his homework and applying a lot of farmer engineering, he designed and constructed a small malting vessel, “to see if I could do it. And then it’s just grown from there. Literally and figuratively, because we’re growing more acres now and branching out into other grains as well.”
As with growing corn and soybeans for commercial agriculture markets, growing barley and starting the malting process wasn’t easy.
“I think the first two or three crops basically failed,” Cunningham said with a laugh. “Bad yield, bad quality. But then in year three or four, we sort of got our feet under us a little bit. I got a new agronomist who specialized in cereal grains — mostly wheat, but also rye and barley.”
Leveraging that expertise helped Cunningham iron out several problems. He learned how deep in the soil to plant the seed, when to plant, and which varieties are suited to Ohio’s specific climate.
“And the last two years have been the
best crop we’ve ever had,” he said with a smile. “Last year, in particular, was really good, both quality and yield.”
Over the past eight years the malting house has grown larger, as have the malting vessels. In addition to raw grains of corn, barley, wheat, and rye, Rustic Brew Farm now sells 10 different malts, all cleaned and milled specifically for distilling.
The distilleries that purchase grain from Cunningham see it as a win-win. “It’s really meaningful to us that we can source grains from local farmers,” said Joe Bidinger of Echo Spirits in Columbus. “At the end of the day, the kind of direct relationship we have with Matt at Rustic Brew is better for the whiskey and better for Ohio.”
Kyle Hall, owner and operator of Hall Brothers Distillery in Dayton, is another happy customer. “Everyone who compliments my whiskey, I have to give some credit to him,” he said. “He’s the one that created the flavor in his field.”
It’s a connection that goes beyond business. “He’s a small local guy, just like me,” Hall explained. “One day, he let me and my kids hop up in the cab of the tractor and showed us how he planted the corn. My kids got a day out of it.”
Rustic Brew is roughly 10 percent of the Cunningham family’s total farming operation today, but Matt has a vision. With the growth in the number and scale of Ohio’s local distilleries, the demand for local grains from a local farmer is strong and growing.
When this year’s crop is finally in the ground and he puts the tractor back in the barn, Cunningham will pour a glass of his favorite whiskey and know that he had a critical role to play in its making.
“You reflect on that a lot,” he said of the farmer’s role in the crafting of spirits. “From seed all the way to the bottle, it could be 10 years, you know what I mean? The whole process … there’s a lot that goes into it. A lot of people involved too, between your seed dealers and the farmers and the distillers and everyone down the line. There’s a lot that goes into it and that all comes kind of flooding back when you take a drink.”
To learn more and to see videos about “Seed to Sip,” visit OHLQ.com.
