Brewery, farm powered by solar energy

FAIRBURY, Ill. — Solar panels have been installed at Emancipation Brewing Co. this past month to sustainably provide electricity to the brewery, house and other buildings on the farm.

“The brewery uses a lot of electricity. If you’re talking from an environmental perspective, breweries require tons of electricity. A lot of heat is being used all the time. It takes a lot of energy to heat stuff up and to run chillers,” said Lincoln Slagel, Emancipation Brewing Co. co-owner and head brewer.

“We have like five refrigerators and a freezer, one cold room that helps chill the tanks, a couple of water heaters. The electrical system here is taxed to the limit at the moment, the electrical bill is really high and it sounds like electricity prices are going to go way up.

“Over the course of the year it should run all of the electricity that the brewery, the house and the farm needs and a little extra that they build in. It will be a big savings on a monthly basis, but it will also be nice to have that more under our control as much as we can. It’s not going to be long to pay it back, especially with how much electricity we use here at the brewery.”

Local Hops

Slagel’s Fresh Farm beer made from hops grown adjacent to the brewery has made it to the tap. It’s about a three-week process from harvest to keg.

“The first brew day, which was the day we harvested, we brewed a double-batch that day, and basically the next two weeks was for the fermentation process,” Slagel explained.

“This beer has a little bit of malt sweetness, but it’s pretty dry, so it’s a very well-fermented beer in that we wanted to make sure it totally finished, and all the yeast was done doing its thing.

“We slightly chill it after that and at the point we added more of the same hops. So, you get a bit of like little citrus, earthy type, almost an herbal aroma to it. We then chill it down to freezing and it sort of helps condition the beer, get it ready and add any carbonation that needs to be added to get it to where we want. It’s ready to go after that.”

Fresh Farm tastes like the hops smell.

“It’s the most rewarding beer that we make. We get to go out there and smell it and then taste it and the flavor really carries through. It’s not quite that way necessarily with all styles. This one just really focuses in on that input. It’s neat to me for it to go from back here and into the glass,” Slagel added.

This year’s hop crop on the farm was one of the worst they had the last few years, but Slagel was still able to brew a normal double batch.

“We use a lot of the hops. Rather than spreading it out for months on beers that maybe aren’t quite so overly tasting, we like to just pack it full of that flavor to really showcase. So, we use a lot more hops than we would necessarily need to, but the goal is to make this one beer as good as it can be,” Slagel said.

“This year we had a few hops left over and we always end up drying some and we’ll use them throughout the year in little bits here and there.”

He had opted not to cut the hop vines at ground level at harvest to give the plants time to build some vigor in hopes of having healthier plants in the spring.

“We’ll cut them in the next couple of days because with the frost that we’ve had it’s probably not going to help them anymore to be above ground,” he said on Oct. 20.

Rye Cover

Slagel is teaming up with an uncle to use a cover crop for brewing a rye beer. His uncle, Jim Ifft, of Fairbury, has been using cover crops on his farm for about 10 years.

“One of the cover crops they grow is rye, and when they got a bunch of their seed this last year it was a specific variety that can be used for brewing and distilling. He got me a couple of sacks of the rye they harvested. We’re going to be brewing a couple of beers with that soon,” Slagel said.

“In future years if there’s a rye beer that people really like we’ll be able to buy more of it.”

Looking Ahead

Slagel was asked what he foresees for the brewery’s future over the next five years.

He said going forward with the business he’d like to try “different things like a cover crop, where we can kind of experiment with what’s available locally.”

“The idea of being able to brew with a cover crop, not even the main crop people are growing, is even more intriguing to me because anything you can do to incentivize stuff like that, that’s good for whether it be the soil, whether it’s good for the farmer themselves to have an extra source of income,” he said.

He’d also like to see more farmers growing malting grains.

“There are some facilities that can do the malting and I think it could be a nice source of income for farmers and a way to diversify. Plus, it’s getting harder and harder to get grains. I was just ordering grains a little bit ago and prices continue to go up. So, I think in the next few years we’ll need more farmers in creative places that aren’t necessarily traditional to do some of that,” Slagel said.

“As far as the brewery goes, just finding more ways to work in the local ingredients that really make an improvement on the beer flavor. We try not to use local stuff just for the sake of being local, but for example the Farm Fresh beer is really unique and I think that these hops positively impact the flavor. Our first thing is always what we can do to improve the flavor.”

Local Berries

Slagel was going to visit some long-time family friends in the afternoon where their young son grows black currants on their farm.

“We’ve been buying them the last three or four years and making a beer with black currants added. Black currant is a small black berry. I like to think of it as a cross between a cranberry and a grape. It’s kind of tart like a cranberry, but it’s got a little bit more juicy character like a grape or a blueberry,” he said.

“They harvest them, vacuum seal them and freeze them, and that kind of macerates them. We puree them and add them to the beer.

“He was just doing it a few years ago as a little thing to raise money. I think we’re buying his whole crop this year. It’s neat to work in stuff like that. It’s a flavor not everyone knows. I’ve tried black currants from a supplier, but theirs is really high-quality stuff.

“We like to try to work in stuff like that as much as we can in a way that makes sense and is helpful for them and helpful for us.

“It’s funny because you really don’t think of this area growing brewing ingredients, but between the black currants, potentially the rye, the corn, there’s a lot of opportunities, especially when people are trying to figure out alternative ways to add income or diversify what they’re doing.”

At the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild conference last year, there was a discussion featuring by panelists who do craft malting.

“They were all saying they wish more farmers would get involved in it. Maybe if people want to take the time to learn a little bit about it, I think a lot of the problem is nobody knows. I don’t know that much about the agricultural side of malting grains besides looking at their numbers. They’re providing what seems like very good value to the farmers who grow for them,” Slagel said.