random row brewery – C-VILLE Weekly

Local entrepreneur capitalizes on brewing’s ignored ingredient

Beer has been made with malt for hundreds —if not thousands—of years, but a Charlottesville entrepreneur only recently thought to exploit the steeped, germinated and dried grains to find a unique way into the craft beverage world.

Jeff Bloem opened Murphy & Rude Malting Co. in Woolen Mills in February. He intended to focus on delivering local craft brewers and liquor makers specialty malts—prepared grains (i.e. base malts) that have been further processed to give beverages roasted, caramel or other unique flavors. But in the last several months, Bloem has found his niche providing his standard, all-Virginia grown malts to those same small-scale brew and booze producers.

“I thought I was this wise young buck and what I could do to differentiate myself would be to focus on the specialty malts,” Bloem says. “But everybody wants base malt. You set your thinking through this very small piece of a business, then the customers dictate what you are going to do.”

While small craft breweries, and to a lesser extent small craft spirit distillers, have banked on the buy-local movement to capture consumers’ attention, the only thing local about the drink that ends up in folks’ hands is typically the production facility address. Craft breweries by and large rely on the same hulking, national malt houses as macrobrewers like Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors.

Bloem admits he can’t compete with the big maltsters on price. His grains are always going to be more expensive than what craft brewers can get from Cargill or Rahr. That’s why he figured he would settle in the specialty malt niche, where the value he adds through extra processing can justify the higher cost. And he hasn’t given up on that model.

But for now, Bloem’s found the higher price tag is worth it for certain beverages, specifically for brewers and spirit makers who don’t widely distribute their products and have lower capacities.

“As a smaller brewery, we can experiment a bit more and are okay with the product varying a little batch-to-batch,” says Kevin McElroy of Random Row Brewing Co., which uses Bloem’s malts in its taproom staple Mosaic Pale Ale. “Something new and local is exciting for us to try out, and having that personal relationship with the maltster is a benefit down the road.”

So how did Bloem, an avid craft beer and spirit fan, end up working upstream from the beverage production lines? He’d spent his career analyzing supply chains for a large government consulting firm. After 17 years figuring out how to break into new markets and find new revenue streams for other people, he wanted to strike out on his own and he took a look at the artisan beverage space.

Hops, Bloem says, were on lots of folk’s radar, from both a production and agricultural standpoint. But malt was nowhere to be found.

“I dug in and got addicted,” he says. “Five years later, here I am.”

Bloem’s new 6,300-square-foot malt house on Broadway offers 200 tons of annual capacity. He’s processing three tons of raw grain per week in his 400-pound drum roaster and sourcing 100 percent of his grains, including two-row barley, wheat, rye and triticale, from Virginia farmers.

Bloem would like to be cranking out five tons of grain per week within five years. In addition to moving more of his production to specialty malting, he wants to break into the raw grain market. His malts should be available to homebrewers at his facility and Fifth Season Gardening in the next two to three months.

“I am trying to change the relationship model between the brewer and the ingredient maker,” Bloem says. “This is really bringing an entirely new, individual perspective to craft beer and spirits production.”

Home base

In addition to Random Row’s Mosaic Pale and Apple Sour, Murphy & Rude has supplied malt for South Street’s May Day Mild, Fine Creek Brewing’s Kentucky Common, 1781 Brewing’s Virginia Hefeweizen, Spencer Devon Brewing’s third anniversary Saison du Local, and Spirit Lab Distilling’s whiskey, among other bevvies.

Against the grain: C’Ville-ian Brewing’s mea culpa

“Out of 56 places in Charlottesville to get beer, we’re rated number 56,” says Chris Kyle, the new manager of C’Ville-ian Brewing Company. “Dead last in all categories.”

That’s a strange thing for a business to admit, but the folks at C’Ville-ian have started a process of redemption akin to a 12-step recovery process. They have admitted that they have a problem, taken inventory, apologized to those they’ve hurt and started to make amends by brewing much better beer.

C’Ville-ian was opened in 2014 by Steve Gibbs, a veteran of the Iraq War. Gibbs had a vision of a brewery that would attract other military veterans and give them a place to feel comfortable. “He’s passionate about that as a cause,” says Kyle. “He thought that opening a veteran-owner brewery in Charlottesville would be a good idea. There’s a big learning curve in there, trying to do all of that by yourself.”

Things didn’t go well. One early reviewer noted, “The owner is still a little overbearing, but at least in a nice way. Brushing your teeth with guests around is a little weird. …The beer ranged from sophomoric to infected and terrible.”

In a town full of world-class breweries, the standard for beer is high. C’Ville-ian became a notorious flop. The bar was dirty, the atmosphere uncomfortable and the beer tasted like a bad homebrewing experiment. An investor filed a lawsuit against the business, which is ongoing.

Finally, Gibbs faced reality: While his vision for a veteran-oriented brewery on West Main Street might work, he needed to step away and put someone else in charge. Gibbs accepted a military contracting job in Afghanistan (he could not be reached for comment), asked his mother to make any major business decisions in his absence and hired Kyle to step into a situation reminiscent of an episode of “Kitchen Nightmares.”

Kyle cleaned house—literally and figuratively.

“When I came in the staff was a little demoralized,” says Kyle, who decided to part ways with all of them. “It had become common in their minds that this was the way it had always been and this was how it should be. The place was rundown, it was dirty, it was missing some type of character. …If you don’t have the best beer on the block and your place looks like crap, that’s a recipe for disaster. So that was an immediate thing.”

On a recent Thursday afternoon, the bar was visibly cleaner and remodeling had started. A wooden “firing line” had been built to safely accommodate a dart board for patrons’ use. American flags are still boldly displayed. Kyle poured a flight of beers that was nothing like the C’Ville-ian of old. Standouts included a pineapple wheat beer, perfect for hot weather, and a rye-based IPA.

Kyle brought in a contractor, brewer J. W. Groseclose, to design recipes for the new brews, and Alex Bragg handles the day-to-day brewing operations. Their challenge is making beer with equipment that can only brew beer in 25 gallon batches. Refrigerated space is limited, making the lagering process impossible. They can only make ales using yeasts that tolerate fluctuating temperatures.

“We’ve got about 12 to 14 days from grain to glass,” says Bragg. “That gives us just a little bit of time. We’ve just got to keep everything moving. It’s tight in here. We’re doing what we can with what we’ve got. …We had to come up with our own carbonation system.”

As they’ve turned the brewery around, business has picked up. Suddenly, C’Ville-ian has a problem that it’s never faced before—the prospect of running out of beer to sell. “We are at the limits of our environment in terms of what we can make,” says Kyle. At some point, they will have to figure out how to cram a larger, closed brewing system into a brewing space the size of a walk-in closet in Farmington.

Two new breweries are about to open nearby: Random Row Brewery on Preston Avenue and Hardywood, only three blocks from C’Ville-ian on West Main.

“Even though we’re on the same brewery map next to those places, we’re the only nano-brewery in Charlottesville,” says Kyle. “We don’t distribute and won’t distribute. Everything we make, we’re going to sell in this location.”