We recently spoke with Christian DeBenedetti, founder of Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery in Newberg, Oregon about the vision and philosophy of his brewery, the intersections of agriculture and brewing, and what he hopes people will get out of participating in Cheers to the Land, OAT’s collaboration with brewers and farmers.
OAT: Can you share some background about Wolves & People?
CD: Wolves & People is a farmhouse brewery, which has the unusual distinction of being on an actual working farm out here in Newberg, Oregon in the northern part of the Willamette Valley. I grew up on this farm, which is called Springbrook farm. My folks moved here in 1967 and took over the hazelnut, aka filbert, operation.
I spent a year on a fellowship in Europe studying traditional methods of making beer. It was my dream to start a farmhouse brewery. At the time, back in ‘96 and ‘97, the concept was completely unheard of in America. Flash forward to the present, what we have here is a really cool small brewery inside a 1912 barn. We focus on beers made with ingredients grown on the farm and other operations in the immediate vicinity and in Oregon. In addition to filberts, which go in a couple of year-round beers, we have some plums, and all kinds of fruit trees, figs, honey beehives, and a lot of really cool things growing here that inform the way we make beer.
We have 15 different beers on draft right now and of those 15, 11 are oak aged beers. That's another thing we do, which is even more unique in the beer world, is focusing on oak fermentations. Meaning we use former wine barrels, gin barrels, and other vessels made of oak for our primary fermentations. That's something that would have been par for the course in any brewery 100 years ago. We have lots of modern equipment too, but we really love the oak aged stuff and what it can do with imparting a sense of place to the beer that we produce here.
OAT: Are there other producers in Oregon that you like to work with who provide some of the ingredients for your beers?
CD: Yes. Crosby hop farm. We often like to buy barley from Mecca Grade estate malt in Madras. It is a small family-run business that grows and malts beautiful brewing barley. The beer that we did for Cheers to the Land contains that grain and it has just an amazing, distinct character among malts. This is really the cutting edge in beer right now is craft maltsters around the country who are doing for beer what small wineries did for the wine industry in the 80s, or what little cool coffee roasters have done to bring interesting roasts of coffee that are unique to the American cup. By brewing with local grains we get a very unique character that is particular, in this case, to Eastern Oregon.
We get a lot of fruit from Baird farms: peaches of different varieties, apricots and white nectarines. Some of those things come and go in a flash like white nectarines, they're only here for a second. We have so many ingredients from other small farms in the area. There's one called B&P Hill Farm. We'll get Linden blossoms for a beer once a year from there, and they grow sichuan peppercorn.
OAT: How do you see ag land protection as important to the beer industry and people who love beer?
CD: People around the world have discovered the importance of local food and that food sources driven by a smaller approach can not only be a way to be healthier and more flavorful, but also economically viable, in terms of helping farmers keep their farmland, stay on farms and not have to sell to developers.
In our case, the idea of turning the farm into a brewery was all about keeping it in the family. We didn't see a way that hazelnut farming was going to be the best long-term plan. And the idea that we could put a brewery on a farm, which was so radical even as few as 10 years ago, has now become a real movement. There are hundreds and hundreds of them across the country. I'm not saying it's the best way to make beer. It's one way. We love all kinds of breweries. What we are doing is one way that we believe can keep farmland productive and diversified and vital for communities.
CL: What aspect of Cheers to the Land resonates with you?
CD: When we were approached for this project, it was an automatic yes because we like the mission of OAT and what it's doing in terms of helping people stay on farms and preserving farmland. Becoming a sensible counter push to overdevelopment makes so much sense. We automatically wanted to support any effort to help conserve and advocate for responsible and innovative use of farmland and keeping Oregon very much the beautiful and farm-dotted state that it is.
Also Cheers to the Land really dovetails with our mission to use local ingredients. The beer that we are making for Cheers to the Land has a nice, interesting kind of spread of things from across the state. Grains from Eastern Oregon, and rye, plus apricots from Baird Farms and hops from over near Hubbard. And there are some other hops in there too. There's a kiss of German ingredients, because we love those. But for the most part the vast majority of ingredients in this beer, and the wild yeast and the well water are all about Oregon. So it really was exciting to have a chance to find maybe a new audience too, for some folks that might not have seen our beer before.
OAT: What message do you hope folks will get out of Cheers to the Land?
CD: I hope people think it’s delicious! And I hope when people taste all these beers and these cool collaborations that they're proud to live in such an awesome region, full of farms, and quite literally raising a toast to the farmers who work so hard to put out an extremely high quality crop, despite the pressures of wildfires and heat domes and every other thing that has come along to make farming so difficult. It is truly hard work and truly rewarding when people can taste the fruits of those labors and enjoy it.
Visit the Cheers to the Land events page to learn how and when you can celebrate beer + agriculture with us!
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And visit Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery to taste their delicious beers year-round!