In Freeport, Maine, Billy Stebbins crafts toothsome beers such as the inky Black Fly Stout and caramel-esque Best Brown Ale at microbrewery Gritty McDuff’s.
But lately the brewmaster’s focus has shifted from flavor profiles to crop pricing. As of January 1, the cost of barley malt, one of beer’s key ingredients, escalated from $.42 a pound to $.80 a pound, owing to poor harvests in England, where most of Gritty’s grain is grown. And considering the fact that Gritty McDuff’s Freeport operation—one of three in Maine, but which brews the majority of the company’s beer—uses about 156,000 pounds of barley annually, it’s no incidental increase. His solution?
“It was time to get a grain silo,” Stebbins says.
Massive brewers like Anheuser-Busch have long bought barely malt in cheaper, bulk form, storing it in farm-grade silos. Smaller microbrewers like Gritty’s, which produces 3,200 barrels of beer annually (compared to the millions of barrels of Bud, or the roughly 10,000 barrels of suds from midsize brewers like Seattle's Pyramid Brewing), typically buy barley malt in 55-pound sacks. To save money, Gritty’s would need to borrow a page from big brewers’ playbook.
So Stebbins bought a 24-foot-tall, 12-foot-wide silo with a 63,000-pound capacity, which will be delivered in several weeks. The silo cost $8,000, but its storage ability will allow Gritty’s to save up to $.16 on each pound of barley. This means “we’re going to make our money back within the first year,” Stebbins says. “And if the price goes back down, then we’ll just save even more.”