Beer News: Malt, mead, and minutia

There’s going to be Big Trouble in Little China (if Little China equals Petersburg), blood beer, mead, and something from a brewery called…Stone?

March 6, 2015; 8:00 AM • by Ross Catrow

This week, Governor McAuliffe approved a $50,000 grant to Big Trouble Malting and Spirits for a new malting facility in downtown Petersburg. Matt Leonard from the Capital News service has kindly provided us with more details:

Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Petersburg Mayor W. Howard Myers joined the owners of Big Trouble Malting and Spirits at an event in Petersburg to make the announcement.

“The demand for malted barley is huge, and the market is vastly underdeveloped,” said Tony Kvasnicka, co-owner of Big Trouble. “Our goal is to support Virginia craft brewers and create an operation where growers can confidently raise barley and other alternative crops for the craft beer industry.”

McAuliffe approved a $50,000 grant from the Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund to assist the City of Petersburg with the project. Big Trouble has agreed to buy more than 40,000 bushels of barley, wheat, rye and fruit from local producers.

Elaine Lidholm, the director of communications for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said the barley used in alcohol production is different from barley used for feed or other uses. She said grain purchases by Big Trouble would benefit the state’s farmers.

“We’re interested in helping farmers diversify, and that’s what a project like this does,” Lidholm said.

When the craft brewery scene emerged a few years ago, Lidholm said, many brewers had to import most of their grain from out of state. Now, more of those resources are being grown in Virginia, she said.

Big Trouble plans to invest about $1 million and create nine jobs as part of its operation in downtown Petersburg.

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I’m sure you’re as tired of hearing about it as I am of writing about it, but City Council approved the final piece of the Stone Brewing Co. deal. Construction begins in a hot second, and they hope to have the beer flowing later this year.

Scott’s Addition may be the booziest of Richmond’s neighborhoods–at least in terms of alcohol produced per square mile. Newest to the Addition’s boozapalooza is Black Heath Meadery, which opened on March 1st. Trevor Dickerson stopped by this week and got us all of the honey-soaked details.

Robey Martin has just the info I was looking for about Strangeways’s GWARBlood: it’s a pale ale brewed with Red X malt to give it a wild red hue. No blood or anything used in the brewing process; color me disappointed.

If you’re trying to get yourself to a brewery today, please be careful and make sure you check Facebook to see if they’re serving. I’d hate for you to make a theoretically treacherous trip for naught.

From Elsewhere…

Have you ever been too lazy to throw out your beer bottles, so you instead built an entire Buddhist temple out of them?

Stone Brewing Co. (don’t know if you’ve heard of them?), has released the recipe for their Pale Ale. The ale was the brewery’s very first beer and will, sadly, be decommissioned.

Takeovers and releases

I’m a sucker for Black Lagers, and the Cask Cafe has their own collaboration with Charlottesville’s Champion Brewing on tap called Black Spring.
Ardent stashed away some of their Honey Ginger and will break it out this Saturday…so we can remember a time before this endless winter.

Photo by: Another Pint Please