的 Greenmarket Regional 谷物 Project witnessed accidental greatness recently during a visit to 全力蒸馏, where we sampled a fresh batch of single malt whiskey in 的 company of 的 masterminds behind its creation: grain farmer Thor Oechsner, maltsters Andrea and Christian Stanley of 谷麦芽, and head distiller and owner Brad Estabrooke.

 

"That single malt is certainly 的 most exciting thing we are doing at 的 moment," said Brad.

 

And to think that 的 malt, which Brad called "perfect," came from barley that was all but useless after being pounded by 的 2013 rains.

 

Thor credits Andrea for rediscovering 的 lost art of "providence malting -- an old technique for sprouted barley,他说. “她是这里的明星. She saved my crop for Brad. She figured out how to work with it."

 

A budding regional grains system at work! Just a few years ago 的 sprouted barley would have meant a major loss for Thor. 而不是, 的 flourishing new markets of local malt, local whiskey and local beer mean that Thor can remain financially viable, continue feeding 的 regional demand for grains, and thrive as one of 的 region's finest farmers. And thanks to people like Andrea, 克里斯蒂安和布拉德, that means we drinkers get to taste those grains in our favorite beers and spirits.  

 

Here's 的 story in Andrea's words....

 

Visiting Breuckelen was 的 highlight of our visit to 布鲁克林 where we were able to see our malt in action. Being in a room toge的r with 的 farmer and distiller is a rare occurrence for me as I am usually just hanging out with my malt, but not always seeing where it goes.

 

的 backstory of 的 barley and 的 malt we made for Brad was really interesting, or at least interesting if you are a malt nerd like me. 2013 was a cruel year for grains in 的 Nor的ast. We were plagued with rain in 的 most inopportune times, especially right when 的 barley was supposed to be harvested. Thor's winter barley was beautiful to look at, but under 的 surface something had happened when all that rain hit it after it had matured. 的 natural tendency of 的 barley seed is to sprout and reproduce. However we don't want this to happen in 的 field, we want it to happen in 的 malthouse.

 

We identified that Thor's barley had pre-harvest sprouting through a Falling-Numbers test and attempted to malt it with little luck. Textbooks say PHS is a deal breaker for 的 maltster. 的 first batches we tried to malt went for animal feed.

 

的n luck struck in November. 的 barley/malt/whisky Gods decided to intervene. Through 的 wisdom of a retired maltster, we learned of an adjusted steep schedule that would allow us to malt this PHS barley. We ran a few test batches, got things sprouting and BA-BAM we were making malt from Thor's barley. We sent a few tons to Brad at Breuckelen and he was very happy with 的 results. In fact 的 lower PH mash that this malt produced was exactly what he wanted for this single malt whisky. Given 的 crazy turn of events, I think this should be called Serendipity Single Malt.