When I started this blog we already knew what we did as a business, family farm, farm market, winery, pumpkin patch, corn maze etc. etc. was different. Wine gave so much talk about it took center stage for the title, the more was about the other things. It was about the parts when added up we hoped made us greater than their sum.
We are not greedy, if we were we would have left agriculture a long time ago. It is just when we see an opportunity that fits into our area of possibilities we take it. The state of Ohio recently created a new permit that allows us to manufacture and sell beer! Yea pretty cool. It will fill a gap we have in our product offerings. We hear from our lady guests often how they would come out more often or come at all but do not because their significant other like beer.
Today my wife Michelle and her brother Todd are working in our kitchen experimenting with a recipe for an American Pale Ale. A great deal of the the beer making process relates to making wine. That is not saying they are the same at all but rather it is sort of like getting familiar with a set of ideas and tools. When you learn to solve one set of problems a lot of that information transfers, or at least the process does.
So we are starting off very small and humble. In the next month or two we will install a one half barrel unit to get us started brewing beer for sale. We will see how to run it well and make what we plan on being “craft beers”.
But after all we started selling sweet corn out of the back of a two wheel trailer I originally built to feed heifers with when we used to milk cows. So who knows how far this may take us?