Farmers want to grow grain because it helps their soil. For soil, grain is like…a trip to the spa? A planting of grain (barley, wheat, or whatever) heals soil, prevents erosion, captures nutrients. It gets soil hyped to grow the next crop, and makes THAT crop better. What does that have to do with the beer you’re going to drink tonight at Clover?
These kegs of Grisette just went in at our beer-serving locations (HSQ, HUB, HFI, KND, LMA). The beer is super refreshing, smells amazing, 4% ABV. It’s a collaboration between New England grain farmers, New England maltsters (see below for what it means to be a maltster) and New England brewers: Wormtown, Trillium, Exhibit “A,” Allagash, Bissell Brothers, Throwback, and Kent Falls.
Drink this beer and you’ll contribute 3.5 square feet of farmland full of grain. This means healthier soil for farmers, a living for malsters, and tastier beer for us all!
100 percent of the proceeds from this beer will be donated back to the Northeast Grainshed, a new organization of farmers, millers, maltsters, brewers and bakers that we’re thrilled to be a part of (we’re on the baking end).
I think we are the only place in town (aside from Row 34) that you can get it, but we’re hoping that changes soon (if you are a restaurant or a bar reading this and you want to serve Grisette reach out, we’ll connect you to the right folks.) Ok, now what’s malt?
Malt 101 (cribbed from an old post by Ayr): What’s malt? It’s like a sweet tea that is fermented to make beer. Fermentation for beer is all about making sugar in to alcohol. But before you can do that, you have to get some sugar. So you harvest barley, a grain (or in some cases wheat or other things), then you convert some of the starches in the barley to sugars by sprouting them. Then you toast the sprouted barley, and voila: malt. The malt is made into a tea by soaking it in hot water, and the sweet barley tea is then fermented to make beer.
