“The decision to start the malt house came out of a passion for the craft in our state, but also as an obvious next step from a farmer's perspective.” — Heyward Gualandi
do because it’s just another aspect of the production process they can control. Likewise, a few grain farmers have looked at malting as a way to add value to their product within the whiskey community. “Our journey starts with agriculture,” said Root Shoot Malting account manager Heyward Gualandi. “As fifth-generation family farmers and contract barley growers for Coors and A-B [Anheuser-Inbev] over the years, we understand what it takes to grow malting-quality barley here in Colorado. The decision to start the malt house came out of a passion for the craft in our state, but also as an obvious next step from a farmer's perspective. This move to vertically integrate the added value of malting on top of raw grain supply allowed us to approach our robust network of stellar spirit (and beer) producers here locally in Colorado. Now, probably 95-98 percent of our grain stays right here in Colorado to be used by local producers.” In addition to supplying malted barley to brewers and distillers, Root Shoot has also been contract distilling some of their grains at nearby Vapor Distilling and now has a whiskey on the market. “We knew that we were making some great malt and had a sense that great malt would make great single malt whiskey, although none of our customers were yet using our malt to lay down single malt back in 2018,” Gualandi said. “So we were hesitant to undertake the whiskey project of our own accord, but we really wanted to begin to understand what our malt did when distilled, and how we could apply that to our ongoing malt production. We decided at that time to set aside a small amount of our production to create a unique Root Shoot Single Malt Whiskey. We worked with Vapor to lay down 10 barrels that year! Of course this is small for a whiskey producer. We've now packaged that first run from 2018 into a four-year bonded single malt, and used subsequent production to maintain that four-year label as our core expression.” 74
Matt Cunningham, a fourth generation farmer and founder of Rustic Farm Distillery, said they’ve been malting for about 10 years, selling the grain to brewers and distillers. Cunningham decided to attend classes in Canada and Montana before working with a local fabricator to build his own malting apparatus. “That's what I like about the craft malt industry; everybody's doing [it] a slightly different way, but everybody's getting good results,” Cunningham said. “The first big problem was growing the barley because it was a new crop to our farm. We've never grown it here in Ohio. And turns out, not many people have. It can grow here, but it's not well-suited for this area. The Pacific Northwest is where it grows the best. I had to do some trial and error between finding the right type of variety that would work here. I found a European winter barley. We plant it in the fall, and it emerges, and then it goes dormant for the winter, and then starts growing again in the spring, and then we harvest it in summer. Once I finally settled on a good variety that would work here, then I learned the agronomy side to it to get a good, healthy barley crop so I could malt it. Then it was kind of a double-edged sword going into it. I was trying to learn how to grow it and malt it at the same time. But it was very educational because you could see how one side affects the other.” Malting is part of an agricultural craft community that was common before Prohibition. Many whiskey makers see bringing back this lost art form of the pre-Prohibition days as a way to bring back historical whiskey flavors. “My whole journey into the whiskey distilling world started back in 2010 when we were looking at what kind of world-class products we could make on our farm here in the Hudson Valley,” said Hillrock Estate Distillery founder Jeff Baker. “It became clear to me after doing a bunch of research that this region was a big whiskey producer and also produced something like half of the barley
Account manager, ROOT SHOOT MALTING
and rye for the whole country back in the early 1800s. That’s been lost. So that whole concept of regional differences in whiskey was basically lost with Prohibition. We've probably tried 10 or 12 different barleys since we started back in 2010. We do different variations in the malting process like a level of smoke. “There's still a lot of experimentation going on here in New York State to find the correct varieties for this location, which would be, in many cases, more heritage grain varieties. But the reality is it takes a long, long time to get amounts that are adequate to actually do commercial planting. We've worked with Cornell on a number of test trials. We've dialed into three or four different varieties, some of which are more traditional European varieties, and some of which are more modern varieties that have been developed by Cornell or others. Ultimately, it's fully our intent that if we can all figure out which varieties were grown here in 1810, and we can get enough of it to do batches, we certainly would. But we haven't quite gotten to that point yet.” In-house malting gives distillers greater control and more options for creativity. “The days of walking down a whiskey aisle and seeing 40 whiskeys all made by the same manufacturer with different labels, those days are going to wind down,” Baker said. “We're going to see people striving for products that are more unique.” Just don’t forget to rake the malt. Maggie Kimberl is the Content Editor of American Whiskey Magazine and the co-chair of the World Whiskies Awards. She is a freelance spirits journalist focusing on whiskey culture in the United States, though she considers herself to be “geographically blessed” to live in the epicenter of the bourbon world, Louisville, Kentucky. When she's not covering the bourbon beat, you can find her browsing through vintage vinyl with her kids or tending to her homegrown tomatoes. Follow her on Instagram @LouGirl502 and Facebook @LouGirl502, and check out her blog at LouGirl502.com. W W W . ARTISANSPIRITMAG . C O M