Valley Malt: A Grain Changer

Roll out the barrels and pop open those NA brews, because The DC Beer Show hosts are back with an episode that's all malt, hops, and sober sips! Let's dive into episode "Valley Malt: A Grain Changer" with Michael Stein, Brandy Holder, Jacob Berg, and Jordan Harvey at the helm, sharing their love for barley and bubbles.

Our hosts kick things off with lively banter over their current faves, including Dynasty's malty marvel, Bluejacket's Essex ESB, and a hoppy hug from Other Half. They're buzzing about the local scene, too, with a beer share Sunday at Third Hill Brewing, a toast to women in brew at Lost Generation, and trivia night at Other Half on the horizon.

Making waves in the world of wort, the conversation turns to the rise of non-alcoholic (NA) beers. Brandy happily raises her glass to the sophisticated flavors, while Michael laments the hit-or-miss quality of these sober suds. Loaded with potential, NA beers like DC Brau's canned cutie and Hoplark's hoppy hydration have our hosts eager for each innovative pour.

Then enter the grain guru herself, Andrea Stanley from Valley Malt, crafting malt that's grounded in sustainability and local love. She's mashing it up with an all-local mantra and paving the path for a greener glass with each malty handshake to brewers, big and small. Andrea's story spans from local wheat wonders in 2009 to Czech malt pilgrimages—all for the perfect pint!

Valley Malt's sister company, Ground Up, also debuted, spinning tales of stone-milled flours and pasta that hug your soul and the soil. It's a grain revolution, with every starchy strand supporting the locavore lifestyle and nutrient-dense deliciousness.

As we wrap up, the team at Bluejacket earns a shout-out for championing sustainable agriculture by featuring Valley Malt's craft. Each pallet supports an acre of green dreams, making each sip an echo of earth love.

Michael and the crew bid adieu with craft beer events to mark on your calendar, reminding us all to sip sustainably and support the malty masterminds like Andrea. So settle in, listeners, for a hoppy ride through the NA beer buzz and malt's mighty role in our favorite frothy friends. 

This is The DC Beer Show, keeping your spirits high and your beers (NA or not) at the ready! Cheers to "Valley Malt: A Grain Changer," – where every grain tells a tale, and every sip is a step towards sustainability.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Brandy Holder

This southern girl got a late start in the beer world, but with such a bold and intoxicating personality behind the name, booze was destined to be a part of her endeavors.

Host

Jacob Berg

Jake’s beer education began when his dad brought home a 6-pack of Brooklyn Lager in the mid-90s. It was love at first sip.

Host

Jordan Harvey

As a born and raised Georgian, lover of music, and HBCU advocate, Jordan’s affinity for craft beer kicked off after being exposed to the craft beer scene in Pennsylvania and the legendary beer scene in Europe.

Host

Mike Stein

Michael Stein is President of Lost Lagers, Washington, DC’s premier beverage research firm. His historic beers have been served at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the Polish Ambassador’s residence.

Producer

Richard Fawal

President of DC Beer Media LLC and Publisher of DCBeer.com and The DC Beer Show

What is The DC Beer Show?

The official podcast of DCBeer.com! This is a show about breweries: the business, the beer, the craftspeople who run them and the drinkers who love them. Join us as we speak with brewers, brewery owners, and all kinds of folks involved in the craft beer scene.

Jacob Berg [00:00:06]:
Welcome everyone to The DC Beer Show. We are @DCBeer across social media. Brandy, what are you drinking this lovely evening?

Brandy Holder [00:00:15]:
Hi, Jake. And everybody. I am drinking Dynasty. I know it's not March anymore, so don't hate on me. I'm drinking Dynasty's Martzen-style amber lager, 6.3, clocking it in. I love the argyle pattern on the thing. Mike Stein, it looks like, visually, you're in a disco right now, but I'm assuming you're not. Unless you are, and if you are, I'm gonna be upset about it.

Michael Stein [00:00:43]:
No, Brandy. I left the discotheque, so don't worry. You're not missing anything. I am having an Essex, an extra special bitter ale from our friends at Bluejacket. This beer is brewed exclusively with Valley Malt out of Hadley, Massachusetts. We are gonna be talking to them a little bit later on the pod. And it's just a wonderful humdinger of a humdinger. You know, jammy, malty, little bitterness, little sweetness, just an absolute Goldilocks of a beer.

Michael Stein [00:01:17]:
Balance, not too bitter, not too sweet, but all of the above. Jordan, mister Harvey of the Harvey Wilder Foundation, what are you having?

Jordan Harvey [00:01:27]:
Well, you know, I feel like people have missed, having a hazy on the pod, right? So, you know, I thought why not shout out my local haze factory that I'm there every Wednesday, especially shout out to GM. He's one of those hand truck heroes, and I'm currently having one of those bad boys, so I'm not sure if you guys got your hands on that, but that was a nice little imperial double IPA Mosaic Mosaic Incognito, even though it's very present, Citra Motueka, and Mosaic Cryo, so just some of my favorites. And, yeah. Jake, what's, what's in the glass?

Jacob Berg [00:02:03]:
You know, in honor of our guests at Valley Malt, I looked long and hard to the beer fridge today for something from Notch Brewing. Didn't find it. Did find something from Fox Farm Cabin, their smoke hellish lager, but I'm not sure that uses Valley Malt. I think that might use Thrall, a Connecticut maltster, in addition to some other things. And so like Mike, I settled in on Essex, which at one point I believe was British malt as an ESB is, Maris Otter, and Crystal. But then in true American fashion, we threw that shit into the Boston Harbor, and now we are using Massachussetts' very own Valley Malt. Again, it's lovely on cask. It's very nice in my glass at about 55 degrees or so.

Jacob Berg [00:02:53]:
Nice prickly hot presents, little jam, little biscuits. What can you say? It's got, like, a nice tea ish quality to it. It's 4%. We like it a lot. Thank you to Bluejacket, and thank you to Andrea at Valley Malt as well. Alright. We got action-packed events this weekend, Friday, today. See some DC Beer folks over at DC Brau for a happy

Jordan Harvey [00:03:30]:
we've been all around the mid Atlantic and the DMV, and we're finally back in Maryland for another beer share. So I'm excited about that. We're gonna be at one of my neighborhood pubs, I'll call it, Third Hill Brewing Company. For those unfamiliar, it's in the the home of the place formerly known as Astrolabe. But, hey, 30 Hill is in the building, and they are doing wonderful things, growing copious amounts of beer, varieties seen everywhere and loved by all beer lovers worldwide. So, yeah, we'll be there. Come come and see us. Bring some of your favorite mixed firm or your favorite spring patio beers because we'll be enjoying those all beer share day.

Jacob Berg [00:04:12]:
So that is gonna be Sunday, 2 to 5. In between Friday Sunday is Saturday, and there's gonna be a Women's Brew Culture Club event at Lost Generation led by Brandy.

Brandy Holder [00:04:26]:
So this weekend is honestly the busiest weekend in April for DC Beer. Friday is a thing, Saturday is a thing, and Sunday is a thing. Saturday is the Women's Brew Culture Club, and and we're at Lost Generation. We haven't been to Lost Generation since last year. It's been almost a whole year. It's our anniversary of Lost Gen, and I'm so excited to be back. It's from 2 to 5 or 1 to 4. I don't know.

Brandy Holder [00:04:55]:
I'll look it up, and I'll put it on the Instagrams for you. What else is going on? So many things.

Jordan Harvey [00:05:02]:
Yeah. We we actually you know, if you if you're busy this weekend, you should be busy with DC Beer, but if you're busy this weekend, we'll forgive you. Just come and see us on Wednesday, we'll be at Other Half. Again, my one of my favorite haze factories in the whole wide world will be there for trivia. We do trivia every Wednesday, but at least once a month, you'll get a a DC Beer, capital trivia, and Other Half exclusive trivia, right? And for our Patreon members, you guys get a you guys do get a 10% discount, and, one of the rounds will be all things beer. So for you guys that wanna learn about beer knowledge or just kinda fix your beer knowledge muscles, come out and see us at the Other Half. We can start at closer to 7 o'clock, but, get there at 6:30 on Wednesdays, April 10th specifically, and, we'll have a good show for you.

Jacob Berg [00:05:47]:
Patreon, what's that? How can I be down and join Patreon?

Jordan Harvey [00:05:52]:
Well, Brandy has so eloquently put together some wonderful signs. You can scan our QR codes on our Patreon signs when you come to our events, or you can just click our link on our Instagram page. You can also learn more about us on Twitter or X, whichever you call it, it's still Twitter for me. Yeah. You can definitely do that, and you can and also just check out our website, you know, DC Bureau across all social media and dcbrew.com should it be starred and favorited in your favorite browser?

Brandy Holder [00:06:19]:
I wanna talk about how dcbrow is the first canned NA beer, but I'm but I haven't had it. I'm curious what it tastes like, and I'm sad because Other Half has had theirs out for quite a while now, and we'll be packaging very soon, but missed the, I guess, deadline of the being the first package.

Jacob Berg [00:06:40]:
Yeah. I am super curious about this as well. I don't think any of us have had the DC Brau beer. I think that all of us, the 4 of us on the show, we've all had all NA everything at one point. I mean, to me, it's good enough for, like, I'm at Other Half. And if I know I'm gonna be there for a couple hours, I'm gonna sub in all NA everything in the middle of a session and just, you know, chill out there for a bit and then go back to say, tall Kiwi, which I believe is still on tap, top notch, hazy, Jordan and I just making kissy faces, about tall kiwi. We love we love our southern our southern hemisphere hops, folks. You know? It's just So it's what we

Michael Stein [00:07:21]:
You're right. In that tall kiwi is delicious and that you can't have, you know, 4 of them in 4 hours. But you could have 2 of them in 4 hours and 2 and all NA everything

Jordan Harvey [00:07:43]:
Yeah.

Brandy Holder [00:07:43]:
For the women's for the women's panel at Other Half that I had to emcee. I started out with 2 at NA beers. And so and then my job was done and then and then I just drank whatever and then had that cocktail. But, yeah, for real.

Michael Stein [00:07:58]:
And a beer when you're at the control board and then something when it's, credit when the credits are rolling. But I think, Brandy, to your point, we always try to be, especially our esteemed editor Jacob Scoops Berg, first, first, right? We try to scoop Washingtonian and Barred In DC and DCist and all of our friends out there in the media escape but I think the reality is whoever puts beer in can first it looks like DC Brau is going to sort of best, quote unquote, best Other Half, if you will. Who's gonna be making NA beer 2 years from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now? Because there is market share to be gained. Right? NA beer is ascending. Craft beer, beer sales nationally are down. So if we can have a brow and an Other Half beer 2 years from now, 5 years, a brow and an Other Half and a beer 10 years from now, I'm on board with all of that.

Jordan Harvey [00:08:58]:
Yeah, just one point, and again, it's not beer, but it's beer adjacent. I'm a huge Hoplark Cop Tea fan, and Other Half, they did a collab with them, so, you know, they may not have canned their NA, but Other Half and, Hoplark did a collab and they canned some hot water. So I think Other Half is on the horizon of doing it.

Jacob Berg [00:09:19]:
But for

Jordan Harvey [00:09:19]:
now, you guys take the cake. I'm just, you know, I do have a can of, some Other Half hoplark in my fridge right now.

Brandy Holder [00:09:25]:
I will say when it's done well, because I've had some pretty not good NA beers that I would not drink. Here's the thing. I don't drink unless I like the flavor. Like, I know a lot of people who will just drink whatever is put in front of them just to get drunk or just to drink. If I don't like the taste of it, I'm not going to drink it. I've rarely had an NA beer that I really liked, And and I will say Other Half for me, really is the best NA beer that I've had. So I'm very curious, to try more and more. And I think the more they come out, the better they will be.

Brandy Holder [00:10:02]:
Right?

Jacob Berg [00:10:02]:
For sure.

Michael Stein [00:10:03]:
No. You're you're not wrong, Brandy. There's just, forces in the market that I find don't always bring the best product to market or have it readily available. And so what I mean by that is, when Jake and I were writing this piece on nonalcoholicbeer, go to dcbeer.com, check out our most recent on nonalcoholicbeer, We scoped the supermarket, and there were hop waters and dry hop seltzers. All of these products that are not beer, they're not nonalcoholic beer, they're hop water. They didn't have Port City's hot water in this grocery store. Right? And I just felt like, yeah, the Lagunitas is good. Yeah.

Michael Stein [00:10:42]:
The Sierra Nevada is good, but I feel like the Port City is better, and that's just my palate. But to your point, Brandy, about I drink what I want, and I don't just drink it to get a buzz on. I really genuinely want the flavor. There needs to be a reason and purposeful mindful drinking consumption even with something that's 0 calories and 0 carbs like hop seltzer.

Brandy Holder [00:11:04]:
Exactly.

Michael Stein [00:11:05]:
Yeah. The Port City is the best product, but for whatever reason, I could have La Canada seltzer, I could have Sierra Nevada, or I forget who the third one was. And so that's what's happened. Now we're hoping to see growth in the NA space because I saw over a dozen brands of NA beer, some that I didn't know, like, today I learned. Peroni has a 0.0, TsingTao has a 0.0. And I haven't tried either of those but, you know, if they're better than the Other Half or the Brau NA beer, I mean, 1, I'll be surprised. I'm biased, of course. But, 2, it's like the stylistically they're going for that, you know, light pale beer that cuts through street food, pizza, fries, like, lo mein, you know, those foods that are tend to be pretty hefty comfort food with light, crisp, highly carbonated beer.

Michael Stein [00:11:58]:
Right? But maybe you want a 0.0 beer.

Jacob Berg [00:12:01]:
Alright. On that note, we've got a wonderful guest for you. Mike Stein, take it away.

Michael Stein [00:12:09]:
I'm so excited to have Andrea Stanley, owner and founder of Valley Malt, as well as Ground Up Stone-milled flours with us. Thank you for joining us on The DC Beer Show.

Andrea Stanley [00:12:22]:
Thanks, Michael, for having me. It's great to be here with you. It's great to see you.

Michael Stein [00:12:26]:
The last time I saw you, you were at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. What a what a great event that was.

Andrea Stanley [00:12:33]:
That was a a pretty amazing event, and, what a final moment for Theresa McCulla, who did such amazing work in terms of craft beer history and at the Smithsonian.

Michael Stein [00:12:46]:
We are we are massive fans of Theresa McCulla, and her work. The archives and all the beer history she's preserved have been wonderful. But speaking of archives and beer historians, I reached out to our mutual friend, Ron Pattinson, who described you thusly. He said, Andrea has a passion for malting as strong as any brewer's for beer. She helped enormously in my Obadiah poundage collaboration with Goose Island by making brown malt the really scary way. Something that something that I doubt I would have have ever dared take on. She's also great company if you're a huge beer nerd with her depth of knowledge of barley and malting. So that was our good friend Ron Pattinson.

Michael Stein [00:13:36]:
So we'll talk a little bit about, Ron and his Obadiah poundage beer later, specifically the beer and your contribution to it. But I wanted to say, they say that malt is the soul of beer. Do you believe this to be true? Does this make you a certified soul woman producing the soul of beer?

Andrea Stanley [00:13:55]:
Michael, this is such a good question. I think people are the soul of beer. You know? People need to make the malt and the ingredients and the beer, and it's if I really think about what a soul feels like to me, I would say it's it's the humans that put everything into what they're making that make the soul a beer. However, making malt does take a lot of humans, so I guess, you know, it's a piece of it. But I can see why people back in the day made that statement because, you know, clearly so much about a beer relied on the malt, and even to this day it still relies on the malt for so much of what we love about beer.

Michael Stein [00:14:40]:
Well, that's that's certainly true. A lot of labor goes in, and you need people for the labor. You are one of those wonderful people. And without you, Valley Malt wouldn't exist. So tell us about Valley Malt. When did you start? How's it going? And and what projects are you currently working on that you're excited about?

Andrea Stanley [00:14:57]:
I'm gonna go real quick on the Valley Malte story. So 2009, was really interested in local food and trying to sort of have my footprint of what I ate and drank be as local as possible. And I've read an article in a local newspaper about a bakery that was starting to try to make one bread a week that had local wheat in it that was locally milled. And I thought, oh my god. I never thought about grains as a local ingredient and as an actual, like, agricultural product and that farmers had to grow, and that was, like, in the soil somewhere. So that kind of started my journey into thinking, oh, I'm a home brewer. Let's try to make an all local beer, realizing that malting was this missing step. And we started our 1st malt house in 2,000 10 with 25 acres of barley that was grown in the local field, and it's been a great journey of just like learning how to malt, learning about grains, trying to support more sustainable agriculture, and then, you know, understanding what it is that craft brewers in the northeast actually might want from a local maltster.

Andrea Stanley [00:16:08]:
And so that can kinda answer part of, like, your question of what's going on right now, which is, you know, we're making really great pale malt, pilsner malt, a Golden Valley pale, which we tried to clone, like, a Golden Promise style malt, but more locally, a dextrin malt. You know, we've kinda streamlined what we make because we're making 9 ton batches now, but we're also having fun. So, I I received a book in 20 19 when I was in the Czech Republic that was written by a maltster in 1929 in the Czech Republic, translated in 2005, and we're basically trying to recreate a Czech Pilsner malt. And so that's been really fun, is just to, like, think about how to recreate malts that we're not currently making, and why we would do that. And then like in this book, learning about, you know, even just tracing, like, COAs from essentially almost a 100 years ago. Right? 1929 is almost a 100 years ago. What did they care about on their COAs? You know? And, like, okay. Can we even recreate those COAs with the current testing that we have? I mean, we can, but, you know, like, commercial testing is always hard to find, you know, labs that can do certain things like a dextrin maltose ratio or a sugar to non sugar ratio.

Andrea Stanley [00:17:39]:
So if you know anybody that wants to buy an under modified Czech Pilsner malt

Michael Stein [00:17:45]:
So let's let's zoom let's zoom back out here for a moment. What is COA? And let our listeners know you went to the Czech Republic. What happened after that? What does Czech barley have to do with malting in Massachusetts

Jordan Harvey [00:18:01]:
to grow

Michael Stein [00:18:01]:
in New York, and what's a COA?

Andrea Stanley [00:18:03]:
Yeah. So COA of a certificate of analysis. So it's like, you know, if I'm a brewer, I wanna know how much, like, what's the color of this malt gonna be on my beer? Is it gonna make me a dark beer or a light beer? Or is it gonna give me a little bit of sugar that is gonna create, like, a low alcohol beer or a lot of sugar that's gonna create a high alcohol beer. So that kind of thing is, like, these important characteristics that you need to know. So it's a little bit of a contract in a way, like, here's what we're supplying you. But as you start getting into different types of malt, you're looking at that COA to sort of figure out how it's gonna impact your, like, what you're gonna be able to make with it. And yeah, the, the Czech Republic thing was like pre COVID 2019. We were all like traveling.

Andrea Stanley [00:18:52]:
There was a heirloom barley conference that was going on in Munich, and we went a little bit early because we were interested in visiting with some Czech barley breeders because some of the best barley in the world for malting and beer making comes from the Czech Republic. I was like, Oh man, this is like, I've been making malt now for know, 10 years, and this is like my big sabbatical trip where I get to go and

Michael Stein [00:19:18]:
Yeah.

Andrea Stanley [00:19:19]:
See where it all came from. You know?

Michael Stein [00:19:21]:
You're looking at the source, and I think it's really important to note that, despite those of us in the craft beer, independent beer, small beer world, still the majority of beer sold in America is light beer, but that light beer even is based on the golden Pilsner style beers of Czechia or Bohemia, and that is based around a high quality barley as the lore sort of goes. You know, our barley grown in America wasn't as light as the famous Czech barley, so we use rice or we use corn and to produce. But, anyways, yes, you were tracking the source. And so now that barley has come stateside or there's there's some connection when we

Andrea Stanley [00:20:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. It was more just, we went to the promised land. We I learned in my time there that actually, like, when the Czech Republic became part of the EU, there was this agreement that they designated, like, this is Czech Pilsner malt, and this is exact you know, almost like an appellation where it's like, this is exactly how it's made. Same thing with Czech beer. You know, it had its own sort of designation with the EU, and I was like, wow, that's really cool, like, on a certain level. You know? Because it's so un American on a certain level. So from a cultural standpoint, I was like, wow.

Andrea Stanley [00:20:39]:
You know, that's a unified thing.

Michael Stein [00:20:40]:
Right. Well, you do do something different with with regards to Bluejackets. So we have the local brewery Bluejacket who's been buying your malt for at least a year now. They recently received, I don't wanna say an award, but a certificate, let's say, from you because they've been using your malt which supports, local economies or local agronomics. Tell us a little bit about, cause it's not just Bluejacket. It's everybody who uses your malt once they use enough of it.

Andrea Stanley [00:21:06]:
So there's the beer history nerd, which is part of me, and Valley Malt, and then there's sort of the sustainability and supporting local sustainable agriculture, which is a huge part of what we, like, exist to do. And so, if a brewery like Bluejacket buys a pallet of malt from us, that supports 1 acre of sustainable agriculture, because that grain is serving as a cover crop. It's helping with soil erosion and leaching of nutrients into watersheds, so it's a really important sustainable crop that, by supporting the malting of it, you're supporting that sustainable agriculture, because otherwise it's really hard for a farmer to grow something that's sustainable if nobody's there to buy it. So yeah, so they Bluejacket, every time they get a pallet from us, they get a cute little card that says this pallet supported an acre of local of local agriculture. And then over the over time, they've racked up the acres so that then they get a a label for their brewery that says, you know, in 2023, we supported 5 acres or 6 acres of local agriculture, and then it could be a banner where they've supported 25 acres, 50. So over time, it really builds up. That support really has impact.

Michael Stein [00:22:34]:
Yeah. The last time I saw Roe Gunzel, who's the head brewer at Bluejacket, director of brewer operations, he was letting me know about this. He was like, do you wanna see it? But it was wonderful. And, you know, we we've been having Bluejackets Essex, their extra special bitter, and they used to use Maris Otter and English crystal malts, but they've now switched exclusively to your malt, to Valley Malt. Tell us a little about some of the value outside of the environmental value your malt adds to products, you know, like local beer or blue jacket or even local Spirits, because I know distillers are using your malts as well.

Andrea Stanley [00:23:12]:
Yeah. I mean, we try to be I think the sustainability is sort of our basic why we exist, but then also we have our own personalities that we each lend to how we run our malt houses, because I'm obviously, Valley Malt's not the only malt house in the northeast. And I think we're really into trying to find the malts that are coming from quite a distance that brewers just can't get away from, like something like a Maris Otter or, you know, serving German malts, Golden Promise is one of them. How do we try to make that malt locally and limit the amount of miles that that has to travel to get to the brewery? Not only for sustainability reasons, but bonus, it's fresher, and that actually does come through in the wort in the beer. When you're brewing something that was just malted 2 weeks ago, it's like coffee, you know? It's you can taste it, and you can taste that it has just a more intensity of aroma and and more layers of flavor in there.

Michael Stein [00:24:25]:
Yeah. Well said. I've heard you use the the metaphor as malt like coffee before, and it's so valid for It really makes a huge, tremendous difference with product. And, you know, it's it's interesting with your malt, you've had, big brewers like Goose Island. You know, Ron Pattinson, the the beer historian, mentioned using your malt in the Goose Island project, but you also sell the smaller brewers like Bluejacket, and others. Do you have a sense of, you know, the difference in selling to big brewers or small brewers? Do you have some favorites or people that you really enjoy working with?

Andrea Stanley [00:25:08]:
Both, honestly. Because at the end of every email is a person, and a lot of times, there's just, like, some really lovely relationships that can form even just over email, especially when you're geeking out about malt. So, yeah. No. I would say, like, I probably have certain biases against bigger breweries versus smaller breweries because we trend toward the smaller malt house. Right? We're kind of the underdog, and so I think I my biases are maybe more toward customers that are smaller. But also, it's you know, it really comes down to just, like, the relationships and who we're working with, and, like, there are some bigger breweries like Goose Island, where the people there are just so passionate about what they do and about, you know, trying to recreate this historic beers, and they have the platform to be able to do that. And, yeah, just the appreciation a lot of times that bigger breweries might have to be working with a smaller supplier, that relationship actually feels really great too.

Michael Stein [00:26:15]:
So before we close out, Andrea, I wanted to ask you a little bit about GroundUp, stone milled flours.

Andrea Stanley [00:26:23]:
So GroundUp started in 2019 as a sister company to Valley Malt. We had a bakery in our town approach us about milling for them, and we found out that there was a manufacturer of these beautiful stone mills not that far away in Vermont, so we added, a mill, and we just milled for that one bakery for the 1st year, and then COVID hit, and people couldn't find flour, and we started to really, started to really, realize that being a miller was something that we wanted to do, so and that was needed. And we make stone milled flours, which are very different than the normal flour that you would find on the shelves because it hasn't been bleached or bromated or enriched. It's just the whole grain going through the mill and then being lightly sifted, so it still has a lot of nutrition, a lot of dietary fiber, really good generally good type of carbohydrates, iron, potassium, things in it that, you know, are gonna give people the nutrition that they need in their carbs, and then we just added on a, pasta shop, so we're starting to make fresh pasta now out of these grains, which has been really delicious. And so, yeah, you just really get to really learn more and more about each type of grain and all the attributes of it in terms of flavor and texture, and it's kind of a fun adventure if people are interested in cooking, baking, making pasta. I would say check out Ground Up Grain because, you know, that's what we're trying to do is just be that local mill that is trying to express the best that local agriculture is growing in terms of grains.

Michael Stein [00:28:14]:
Andrea, thank you so much for joining us here on The DC Beer Show. You have been a wonderful interviewee. Any parting words or anything final you'd like to share with our with our listenership?

Andrea Stanley [00:28:26]:
Just that I can't say enough about how grateful I am for you, Michael, in our friendship over the years and, you know, what you do and the platform that you give other people to be able to share what they do. I really appreciate you.

Jacob Berg [00:28:41]:
Thank you so much, Andrea. Thank you, Mike, for interviewing. Alright, everybody. In addition to all the events that we mentioned, we will see you out and about. The Maryland Craft Brewers Festival is coming up as well. It's happening on the 11th May, and by that time, there could be, like, 6 more vanish locations in Maryland. I just learned this week there were 2 2 vanish locations in Maryland. I had no idea.

Jacob Berg [00:29:07]:
I thought there was one. But no.

Brandy Holder [00:29:10]:
Me either.

Jordan Harvey [00:29:11]:
Yeah. Yeah. And, again, we wanna see everyone, come and check us out at at Third Hill, and just come check out Third Hill. You know, they they make some awesome beer. And I'm not just saying that because I've had the the, honor and privilege to brew with them, but come check us out. And if you can't check us out, we just wanna wish all of you guys nationwide and internationally, happy National Beer Day. That is Sunday. Cheers.

Jacob Berg [00:29:31]:
Be well, everybody. We are @DCBeer across social media. Please do not stare directly at the eclipse without protective eyewear. Be safe out there.

Brandy Holder [00:29:41]:
See you this weekend.