What if there was a grain that didn’t have to be replanted every year? One with deep roots that stay in the soil, trap carbon, prevent erosion, filter water. Kernza – the world’s first perennial grain crop – could be a game changer when it comes to sustainable food production and using our land to help fight climate change. But the big question: does is make a good beer? In this episode, Amy heads to Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee to find out.
Kernza® is the trademark name for the grain of an intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium) being developed at The Land Institute in Kansas.
Host:
Amy Barrilleaux
Guest:
Russ Klisch, Owner and Co-founder of Lakefront Brewery
Background Reading:
Kerna Crunch: The Race to Develop the First Perennial Grain Crop (podcast)
Impacts of Conventional Agriculture in Wisconsin
The Land Institute: Kernza Grain
Where to Listen:
Transcript:
Amy What if there was a grain crop that didn’t have to be replanted every year, one with deep roots that stay in the soil, trap carbon, prevent erosion, filter water? Kernza, the world’s first perennial grain crop, could be a game changer when it comes to sustainable food production and using our land to help fight climate change. But the big question: does it make a good beer? Kernza, the world’s first perennial grain crop, could be a game changer when it comes to sustainable food production and using our land to help fight climate change. But the big question: does it make a good beer? In this episode, I’ll head to Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee to find out. I’m Amy Berrilleaux, and this is State of Change from Clean Wisconsin.
Amy On a Tuesday morning, hours before doors open to the public, I meet Lakefront Brewery owner and co-founder Russ Klisch for a beer. It’s a little early, but this is a special beer made with Kernza.
Russ When you have something like Kernza, you don’t want to hide the flavor of it. You want to make sure that that’s the star of the show and the flavor comes out that everybody’s going to be drinking. So when you have this one, it’s purposely low hopped. So you try to get the sweetness. You try to get the flavor of the Kernza. But yeah, it is on the sweeter side.
Amy It’s smooth.
Russ Yeah. Well it’s smooth, but wheat beers in itself, get a little creamier. Maybe or a little bit smoother. Kind of. Just the mouthfeel. Kind of coates your tongue a little bit more. It’s not as sharp. You know how the carbon dioxide doesn’t seem to affect this much, or that it’s a different type of a smoothness that’s on the tongue.
Amy That’s good. So it’s popular, then?
Russ Yeah. Everybody loves this.
Amy I sit down with Russ to find out what made him brew a beer with an ingredient most people haven’t even heard of.
Amy So how did it come about that you heard of Kernza?
Russ I believe that, I heard about some other brewers brewing with it, and I’ve read some articles about it, and all of a sudden it’s like, well, I imagine we could try to get some Kernza and brew with it, so I could actually order some online if you like. And we got some. I got some pound bags and we looked at it and it was kind of a challenge to brew it. But after we did that, it’s like, well, let’s try to to get some. And then we found a local Wisconsin farmer who had it. And so one thing led to another and we got Briess Malting to flake it, and we ended up making a batch.
Amy So if you had to explain to somebody, which I’m sure you’ve had to do what Kernza is, how do you explain what this grain is?
Russ I let them know that, it’s a part of the wheat family, and it’s a perennial. The fact that its roots go down ten feet into the ground and it comes back every year. You don’t need any fertilizer. You really don’t need to water it. You can plant it and harvest it, and hopefully it keeps on going. But, yeah. So it’s a very sustainable crop. There’s still some work to be done on, on the breeding of it, but, but right now it’s still make it makes a quality product. And so that’s the good thing about, about Kernza it tastes really good.
Amy What made you think, okay, this there might be some challenges with brewing something with Kernza, but I’m going to go ahead and and try it, try it out and maybe even make a batch that I sell in my brewery?
Russ Yeah. The one problem with Kernza is that it’s, it’s a small seed, compared to what a barley, malted barley seed is. And malted barley seed is a little bit larger than a grain of rice. But like a Kernza seed looks more like a grass seed, if you ever try to plant grass, very small. And so with brewer’s grain, you have like, what they have a crushing machine that comes in that takes the barley and, and just kind of cracks and cracks the husk. And you really it’s hard to do that with the Kernza. You can try putting it through, getting it very close with the rollers, and, but you don’t crack as much of it. And also, it’s not malted malting as a germination process. Malting basically takes the endosperm and converts it to sugars, or the seed needs food for growth. So when you put a seed like you had in your second or third grade, you put it between two pieces of wet tissue. It absorbs the water. The enzymes in there start taking the starches, converts it to sugar, and then it starts to grow. And so then there’s sugar that becomes into the into the barley malt. And if you ever had malted milk balls, malted milkshake malt or meal, all that is is from maltose, which is in malted barley. But right now Kernza is not malted. And so it’s not as plump or not as easy to, to break. But we were able to get it flaked, and there’s still a lot of great starches in Kernza that we could use. And that’s what we we did at Briess Malting Company.
Amy Kernza is kind of starting to become known as a grain that can help fight climate change, which I think people have a hard time understanding how that might be. So what’s your understanding of how Kernza intersects with fighting climate change?
Russ There’s a couple of ways where it fights climate change. One, the fact it’s a perennial, the fact that you don’t have to use the energy or fuel to go out and plant every year. So that’s, that’s one part of it. It’s also good for, no pesticides from an environmental standpoint, but I guess I think the big area where it’s really beneficial is that the roots of it go down about ten feet into the ground. And so you have a plant that basically takes the, the carbon from the air, sucks it in the plant, makes plant material going down in the ground. And it then it’s, it basically turns into an organic compound down there, you know, ten feet down. And so essentially, you’re making very good dirt, out there with, with the Kernza ten feet deep where you’re, you’re basically taking a lot of carbon from the atmosphere and just sucking it down to the ground.
Amy You made, kernza here, that very first batch Kernza beer here at lakefront. What happened when you put it on out, you know, for customers to try? What was the reaction?
Russ Well, we had it called — the name of it was called Radical Root, and I think it was too radical for people I know you learn a lot by brewing and different names and how important it is. And I don’t think the name root was not very appetizing to people. And we switched the name from Radical Root to, Pretzel Wheat because it is a wheat and it tastes like a pretzel. And it sold three times better. But people didn’t understand it was Kernza. They were mostly trying to drink a wheat beer, but I thought it was very, interesting that, you know, for people drinking wheat beers, this this was very successful and very liked. And like I said, we’ve been blowing through the half barrels ever since, since we switched the name.
Amy So you’re calling it, a name that has pretzel in it but has no pretzel in it, exactly.
Russ Pretzels have wheat. And so it’s, you could you could easily make a pretzel, a Kernza pretzel. And, and since it’s, you know, they have — maybe that’s what we should try now and maybe see if we can make a Kernza pretzel and go with it.
Amy Because you don’t have the root in the name, do you find yourself, still trying to educate customers about what this is or that it’s made with something different, that’s not exactly wheat?
Russ Yes. Yeah. We we try educating our staff and letting them know, when they, we have time. Sometimes we get very busy, and it’s hard to tell a long story during this, this period. But we’re more than happy to, to try to, let people know. We have done, different things, around here with the staff with, we had posters up for a bit about the beer and, and let people, know about it. Had social media posts posting about Kernza. So we, we try have tried to do it. We could probably do a better job though.
Amy Well, are people intrigued when they start hearing that this is some sort of climate friendly grain that’s in the beer?
Russ There are people that definitely are intrigued and, are very, gung ho about it. I think our staff is very gung ho. And then there’s other people that maybe you need a little more education with or look at. But, you know, to me, I look at it as just, you know, there’s a couple ways you can be very environmentally friendly, which it is. And we, you know, we would support. But even if you didn’t support that or didn’t believe in climate change, it’s a very, good way to make something, better and cheaper. You know, you have it, even though Kernza could be expensive. But the thought of the fact you can have a perennial, I know they’ve been searching for, like, perennial corn for a long time and other crops that come back every year. And and if you find one of those, then there’s a great benefit to the farmer and to the food chain.
Amy You’ve kind of overcome a few challenges to brew this beer. Why is it important to you to take on that challenge and try to expand Kernza in Wisconsin?
Russ Well, to me, it’s kind of our DNA of our brewery. We were the first organic brewery in the United States here back in 1996. And, I always remember an interview I heard on NPR about some German farmer and, and he said about how, you know, every year you had to go out, you had to put fertilizer down and you had to put pesticides down. And, and the cost of, you know, going out there with a tractor and a fuel was so expensive. And, and he had to do all this work with it. And then he said, well, then he heard about, you know, organic. And he said, well, you don’t have to, you know, put the, fertilizer on. And it wasn’t that expense. And so he saved money. And then, my background is engineering and in engineering, if you’re doing it correctly, you always want to make it more simple. You don’t want to make it harder. And you want to make it better. And so to me, that was part of it. You know, it’s it’s the next generation of farming, next generation of coming along and trying to make something better. And, you know, it tastes good. So, you know, you obviously want to try to promote it. And, you know, it’s it’s it’s eco friendly. It’s a great story. And it’s something that, you know, there’s still a lot of work to be done. The seed gets, gets a little bit plump. The price of Kernza is very high right now. But I think, you know, once you work with it a little bit more, it’s going to come down. I used to be in the automotive battery business and you know, in the 80s you know, you always had electric cars but the price of gasoline had to be like $6 a gallon to make it be good. But they kept on working on the battery. And now obviously we have, you know, electric cars, are going to be the norm here pretty soon. And, you know, and it’s it’s going to take some more work and eventually that’s going to happen. And then we’ll have a perennial, we will save a lot of energy. It will take a lot of carbon and sequester it down into the into the ground.
Amy So as good as, Kernza is for the climate and for water quality and soil health and all those things, it’s hard to have a product if it doesn’t taste good. And so how would you describe the taste of your beer made with Kernza?
Russ Well, yeah, when we had called it Pretzel Wheat, that’s kind of close. I mean, the if you took a pretzel, a kernel of Kernza kind of has like a Triscuit flavor a little bit when I’ve, I’ve always had it. So it’s a wheat flavor that, that you have, almost maybe a little bit like rye, maybe a touch, but, so we have a lighter style beer, but, you know, that little flavoring gives it a nice flavor. To have the Kernza in there. We used about 30% Kernza in that in that batch. And that’s enough, of, of a flavoring to, to make it a little bit creamy, and a little bit flavorful with the wheat.
Amy This is your first beer that you brewed with Kernza. Do you expect maybe more different types of Kernza beer, or more often serving this one up to customers?
Russ Yes. We have one in the tank right now that we just brewed last week, and it’s going to be a, Kernza weizen. And so weizen basically stands for, like, wheat, but, but it’s also, usually a weissbier. And so weiss beer usually has a little more clove phenolic flavor. And I think those would go very good with, with the Kernza because usually, wheat beers in Germany are call weissbiers, white beers and, those, you know, it’s very similar to that and, and style and nature. So we will be interesting to see how this one comes out. It should be tagged in about two weeks.
Amy So two weeks from now people can try a whole new Kernza beer. Does it have a name yet, or?
Russ No, we haven’t named that one yet. I don’t know what what it’s called. Kernza weiss. But I don’t know if that’s going to be on the tap handle sticker. I don’t think we’ve made one yet, but it will be here. But, it might be like up to a month before it comes out. Once we keg it, we have to wait for something else to open up on the tap line. And so it’s not like, you know, it’s kegged and all of a sudden it’s on draft. And so, you know, please call ahead if you if you want to. But I would say let’s see with May, middle of June for sure that we’ll probably have that on draft here.
Amy Okay. Well keep us posted on the name. And I think you’ll have a ton of people from Clean Wisconsin coming to try it out when it when it comes out.
Russ No, I’d be it’d be great to promote it, you know, and promote Kernza and in general and of course, because that’s, you know, one of the things it’s the chicken and the egg. If you don’t have the demand, you’re not going to get people growing it. And so to me, that’s, that’s part of the quest here, is to get people interested because it’s going to be good, just not for brewing, but for baking, making muffins. And maybe I should make make that pretzel out of Kernza. And you could, you can have these different things. And if we can get it flaked for people, like Briess Malting Company did for us, that’ll make it a lot easier. And it is such a great story. And there will be people that are willing to pay, you know, a dollar more a muffin or something for Kernza or a couple dollars just to help support this technology, to bring it along and create the demand so farmers can go out there and grow more and, and have a good cash crop.
Amy Russ Klisch, co-founder of Lakefront Brewery, thank you so much not just for talking with me, but for your dedication here., for all the things you’re doing for the climate and the planet. I really appreciate it.
Russ Well, thank you, Amy, thank you for coming here letting me tell my story.
Amy To find out more about Kernza, where to try it and how it can benefit our environment, log on to cleanwisconsin.org. I’m Amy Barrilleaux, and you’ve been listening to State of Change Powered by Clean Wisconsin.
