Story by: Anne McDarris
Audio by: Anna Grace Freebersyser
Graphic by: Will Hausen
Photos courtesy of Sean Wilson, Fullsteam Brewery and Sebastian Wolfrum, Epiphany Craft Malt
Fullsteam Brewery sits on the outskirts of downtown Durham in a low, beige-brick building with enormous red hangar doors.
Usually, on the weekends, the craft brewery is full of people. There are dogs and families and sometimes live music. Bartenders pour beer from the taps — stouts, lagers, IPAs — and bring sandwiches and baskets of fries out to customers. People would be talking about March Madness or work or a new girlfriend.
But things changed rapidly since the first coronavirus case in North Carolina was announced on March 3. Bars and restaurants have closed with some, like Fullsteam, opting to shift to curbside takeout. It feels like nothing’s the same.
“It’s been hard for sure,” Sean Wilson, the owner of Fullsteam, says. His brewery is still maintaining basic operations and brewing beer.
Although the shutdown of taprooms feels glaring as COVID-19 sweeps across the world, the breweries themselves are only one link in a chain of farmers and other businesses involved in the brewing process.
Fullsteam’s business model emphasizes what it refers to as the “Southern beer economy.” While many breweries use ingredients from across the country and the world, Fullsteam buys from 49 different businesses in the state. Its supply chain — from farmer to consumer — emphasizes North Carolina and southern agriculture.
Since launching in 2010, Fullsteam has purchased more than $500,000 in ingredients from Southern states, primarily North Carolina. In February alone, it spent $9,000, mainly on North Carolina grains. It buys figs foraged from the woods, honey from Bailey Bee Supply, and sweet potatoes (a key ingredient in its seasonal amber lager, Carver,) from Yamco in Greene County. Over the years, it has made more than 120 different beers — on average, the brews are made up of 39% locally-sourced ingredients.
“If it was just us, it would be like a ‘Southern beer business,’” Wilson says. “What drives me is making the greatest impact we possibly can on farmers, foragers and agricultural entrepreneurs.”
Fullsteam conducts regular business with Epiphany Craft Malt in Durham. It doesn’t have a storefront but shares a building with a food bank by the railroad tracks. Inside, brown bags full of grain are stacked floor to ceiling. Huge steep tanks — silver-colored vessels filled with water and barley — line the walls. It’s all very industrial. But it smells wholesome inside, like toasted grain.
Epiphany’s owner, Sebastian Wolfrum, walks down from his office to the malting floor. There’s beer to be made and beer requires malt, so he’s still at work.
“The core of everything that a brew needs — besides water — is the malt,” he says.
Epiphany supplies Fullsteam thousands of pounds of malt — barley seeds that have been soaked in water, allowed to germinate, and then dried. Without malt, beer would be more like a sweet soda. Fermenting the sugars in the germinated barley give the beer its alcoholic content.
Most barley is grown in the north, but Wolfrum wanted to bring the whole process to North Carolina — an epiphany that was commemorated in his company’s name. He realized that while some agricultural leaders were looking for new ways to capitalize on the brewing industry, there was no link in place to get the barley to the brewers.
Giving beer that local touch “wasn’t possible until we opened up our malt house,” Wolfrum says. He buys barley from three North Carolina and Virginia farmers and sells the malt to breweries in the Southeast.
“That money that people spend stays at the breweries and in the community,” he says.
High-quality barley is essential to high-quality beer. While setting up shop down the road from his customers may earn him some attention, Wolfrum needed to find a barley source that would put his operation on par with other maltsters.
“It’s a unique skill and requires a certain knowledge and attention to the crop,” he says. “Somebody just growing the grain? It’s not that simple.”
So Wolfrum turned to Perry Farms in Rolesville, N.C., and its head barley grower, Timothy Kuhls. The farm has belonged to his wife’s family for six generations.
Kuhls wanted to see if he could coax a bit more out of the land. He had experience brewing his own beer, so he tried hops — another key ingredient to beer — but the climate wasn’t right for it. So he turned to barley.
“We just decided to try,” he says. “It turns out we can grow it pretty well.”
A majority of the barley that he grows is bought by Epiphany Craft Malts. Kuhls and Wolfrum work closely together to make sure that the barley meets the malt house’s needs.
“He comes to the farm regularly. We scout fields together,” Kuhls says. “That experience is awesome as a grower, to see where your product’s going and getting to enjoy the end product a little bit too.”
Perry Farms’ barley production is relatively small — 50 acres compared to the couple hundred that it allots to tobacco, soybeans, and wheat. Those other crops make up the majority of the farm’s production and income. If he sees any effects from the pandemic, Kuhl says, it would most likely be further down the line since this year’s barley won’t be ready to harvest until late May or early June. The farm’s diversified crops may also lessen the blow.
“If it has a big impact on the brewers, then it will have a big impact on Sebastian,” Kuhls says. “If it has a big impact on Sebastian, it’s going to have a big impact on me. I’m a little bit more insulated from the immediate shock of it.”
While Kuhls manages one of the first steps of the brewing process, Richard Greene spends a good portion of his time working with the end product. Greene is the executive director of the North Carolina Craft Beer Guild, which lobbies on behalf of the state’s craft brewing industry and organizes events for consumers.
April was supposed to be a big month for N.C. breweries and beer lovers. In March 2019, Gov. Roy Cooper declared April “N.C. Beer Month” to celebrate the state’s breweries, which contribute more than $2.6 billion annually to the economy. Greene and the rest of the guild had been working hard to put together events and festivals to highlight the state’s brewing talent. Those plans are now, understandably, on hold.
Historically, breweries have been a gathering place, Greene says. Craft brewing isn’t a new industry — humans have been doing it for over 10,000 years — but the resurgence over the last few decades has allowed brewers to shape themselves in a new way.
“They want to create an amazingly good product, and they want to do it in a wholesome and holistic way,” Greene says. “I think that’s true for the vast majority of craft brewers not only in North Carolina, but around the country. It’s part of their DNA.”
At Fullsteam, on a hot Sunday afternoon in late March, three people stand outside their cars parked in front of Fullsteam’s open red doors, waiting for beer. One of the brewery’s employees walks out into the sunlight wearing cutoff jeans, a baseball hat, and disposable black gloves. She carries two six-packs of beer in a cardboard box — paid for and ready to be picked up — and sets them down on a picnic table by the doors.
“We’re doing all right,” she says. “Thanks for stopping by.”
Fullsteam is, first and foremost, a business. But it’s committed to making sure that the business gives back to its community. It gives its spent malt to farmers for animal feed and buys fruits and vegetables, like strawberries and persimmons, from nearby foragers and farmers for specialty beer.
“I know that our persimmon purchases have helped families get Christmas money,” Wilson says. “It’s a few hundred dollars, right? It’s not this big dollar sign. But the feel that I get from it is invaluable.”
At this point, it’s hard to say what the full effects of the pandemic will be on North Carolina’s breweries, much less on the hospitality industry in general. But breweries aren’t independent — the beer they make has made its way through a number of other businesses to get to the can, bottle, or pint glass that we in turn enjoy.
“It doesn’t have to be this huge, complicated commercial supply chain,” Kuhls says. It can be “just regular old folks trying to do something different that people care about.”
