Asheville News

Riverbend Malt House, Asheville’s first malt house, prepares to get up and running

Jason Sandford June 7, 2011

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

Ran into Brian Simpson recently, who told me about the work he and his crew have been doing to get Asheville’s first malt house up and running over on Pond Road. It’s called Riverbend Malt House, and it stands to be the latest great addition to Asheville’s thriving craft beer scene and local food network.

Here’s a blurb that explains the approach:

Riverbend Malt House will provide malted grains for the craft brewing market. Riverbend Malt House is redefining what it means to produce truly local beer in the southeast by providing high-quality malt from locally grown sources. By working with local farmers and researchers we can develop a high quality, sustainable product while offering a premium price to the farmer for his effort. Artisan beer should begin with an artisan malt.

The development of a local food system for malted grain will support agricultural production in North Carolina while dramatically reducing the carbon footprint associated with the shipping of raw materials needed for beer production. At the present time, a vast majority of the malt used in breweries throughout the southeast is shipped from the western United States or Europe. These practices rely heavily on fossil fuels and generate thousands of pounds of carbon emissions. Riverbend Malt House plans to sell its products within a 300 mile radius of Asheville in an effort to reduce these costs to the consumer and the ultimately the planet. During the early stages of business operations, Riverbend Malt House will offer 2-3 types of malted 6-row barley, malted wheat, and malted rye.

This is exciting. More to come.

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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2 Comments

Ricky Party June 7, 2011

Correction – I had it backwards. 6-row malt is used to better convert the starches in adjuncts like corn and rice, not the other way around.

That's one for you beer nerds, out there 🙂

Also, I checked out the website, and it seems most of the malt they will be processing is coming from Salisbury, which isn't that far away. Nice, informative website. There's more barley being grown in NC than I realized.

Best of luck to these guys, it will be interesting to see how this new venture fairs. I could see it becoming primarily a specialty grain business and maybe being successful in the long term if they take that route, but it's going to be difficult to convince any of our local brewers to use anything but 2-row pale malt…it's all they've ever used and to completely change the base malt in their recipes is a lot to ask. Maybe a few one-off lagers using 6-row?

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Ricky Party June 7, 2011

This seems like a cool idea and all, but there are a few things that instantly throw up some red flags.

1. Who is growing barley malt "locally" and where are they doing it? There may be a few enterprising farmers in the surrounding areas attempting to do this on a very small scale, but it is certainly nowhere near enough to supply even one of our local breweries.

2. If they're shipping in unmatled barley from somewhere else to process in their facility, isn't that cancelling out the whole "reducing the carbon footprint" business philosophy?

3. I don't think there is a single brewery in town using 6-row barley, which is the type of malt this press release claims they will be offering. The only breweries using 6-row are generally large corporate breweries like Bud and Miller, as it is a less-modified malt that requires adjuncts like corn and rice for complete starch conversion. In other words, of lesser quality than 2-row pale malts every brewery in town (and I would venture the entire Southeast) uses.

Don't get me wrong, it's an awesome idea on the surface, but unless there's something I'm missing here, it seems like they should have researched the market a little before attempting something like this.

The local hop farmers ran into similar issues of disappointment in the past few years. They all got big grants from the state and thought they were suddenly going to be making tons of money from selling hops to local breweries. But when they learned just how many hops needed to be grown for a single batch of beer brewed on a commercial system, much less supply a single brewery for an entire season, they looked at their five acres of hops and realized how far they were in over their heads.

Local production of hops and barley, the whole idea of a sustainable beer culture in WNC, is an admirable goal, but one that needs to be tempered with expectations based in reality.

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