The farm-to-table journey of Ontario craft beer

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Ontario’s craft beer scene exploded a few years ago, with breweries popping up everywhere from North Bay to Waterloo. But while many brews themselves have become household names, the process behind the scenes is lesser-known. Here, three purveyors share what it’s like to be a pivotal part of the farm-to-table journey of craft beer.

The grower:

Battle House Hops

Like many people over the past 18 months, Ian Murchison started growing things. He just happened to do it on a slightly larger scale than your average veggie patch tender. Early last year, Murchison and his wife Emily bought a property in the Ottawa Valley, where they planted half an acre of hops, a plant whose acorn-like seeds contain lupulin, a substance that plays an important role in flavoring, “bittering,” and stabilizing beer.

Murchison, a UX designer by day, wanted an outlet from staring at a screen all day. “I grew up in the country, I have a lot of farming history in my background, and this is my opportunity to work with my hands, and produce real physical objects,” he explains of the decision to launch a “micro hops farm,” though with ambitions to be a “big player” someday soon.

Why hops, a plant most of us couldn’t pick out of a lineup? He and Emily are “big craft beer fans,” he says. “When we found this place, the land just seemed to fit hops really well, and we thought, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’”

Murchison entered into this venture with no formal training, just plenty of research. “The unique thing about hops is that you can learn as much as you want, but we all do things a little differently because everyone has unique challenges based on their location,” he says.

The Murchisons are just weeks away from tasting the first beers made out of their very first harvest, which they sold to local home brewers. “It’s very rewarding to see that,” he says, “because you’ve spent so much time and effort, and all you want is for that little hop to produce the best flavour for someone’s beer.”

The maltser:

Harvest Hop and Malt

In 2012, when Michael Driscoll first got into malting – the process of preparing a grain for brewing alcoholic drinks like beer or whisky – there was no equipment he could just order from a catalogue. Instead, he built his own system from scratch.

“First, I needed a way to get the grain wet so it would start to grow,” he recalls. “I found some equipment in the States that was used in the health industry to make grain sprouts like alfalfa.” That moisture ‘wakes up’ the grain, allowing an enzyme called amylase to begin to convert starch to sugar. Then, when it’s “fully modified,” Driscoll needed to dry it out. For that, he turned to Kijiji, where he found a farmer selling a field dryer, a big perforated metal box with the ability to put a heat source below, which he notes “was built around the year [he] was born, which is 1955.”

It took until February 2014, and a lot of trial and error, before he finally produced saleable malt. But Driscoll’s tinkering was fuelled by a belief that local ingredients were the next logical evolution of craft brewing – he’s been growing hops since 2007 on his farm outside Guelph – and a desire to return to the old days, when beer was locally made from ingredients grown nearby, something the globalisation of brewing obliterated. “It is about supporting the local economy, which starts with the farmers,” he explains. “I source my grains from within two hours of here, and I sell my malt within two hours of my operation.”

While barley malt is his bread-and-butter, Driscoll also does a rye malt for a distillery in Niagara, a wheat malt, and a spelt malt. If he has to pick a favourite, however, it’s his pale malt, which he calls “Beyond the Pale” because it “was [his] first instance of getting something right the first time.”

The brewer:

Outlaw Brew Co.

Welcome to Southampton, Ontario. “It’s a beautiful, California-esque beach town on the shores of Lake Huron,” says Andrew Woodley, who founded Outlaw Brew Co. with his business partner Deborah Leon in 2014. “It’s a hidden gem,” he adds, albeit one that’s been discovered by people priced out of Muskoka, and young families drawn to the area by employers like Bruce Power. “The town has shifted, there are more young entrepreneurs – like the bakery down the street, where the son has taken over – and it’s becoming a premier destination.”

Woodley was born and raised in Southampton, and when he returned home after some time away, he was determined to make his brewery a truly local operation. For example: Their brewery equipment was made 40 minutes away in Walkerton – “I figured I’d get maintenance for life,” he jokes – and their logo was designed in Kincardine. “We do everything on site, from grain to can,” he says of the brewing process, a multi-step alchemy of fermentation when hops, malt and other ingredients combine to make beer.

Outlaw’s Southampton pride is, of course, best reflected in the beer itself. One of their staple brews is “21 Lagered Ale,” named after the highway that runs through town, the camo can a nod to the area’s outdoorsy side. They do a maple-infused amber beer in the fall, made using maple syrup produced by Woodley’s high school science teacher. “He was beside himself when I called him,” says Woodley. “That was fun.”

“This town has done so much for me and my family, and I take any opportunity I can to give back, and share the love,” reflects Woodley. “I can’t reiterate enough what a friendly place this is. You walk down the street and you’re saying hi to Tom, Dick and Harry. People are so nice, and it’s got its own vibe. A beach vibe.”

Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.