This month’s edition of The Session is hosted by David S. of Brewing in a Bedsitter, and he suggests a topic that I don’t believe we’ve discussed as such before: Farmhouse brewing.

Whether it’s about the success of modern craft breweries like Jester King and Burning Sky, the worldwide spread of saison or the revival of international interest in Northern European traditions, farmhouse brewing is an recurring theme in the beer world. It’s a very resonant idea but also one that invites many perspectives, so it seems like an ideal topic for the collective conversation that is The Session.

I’d invite people to approach the topic however they like – the more creative the better – but here are some ideas to get you started.

You could talk about how the word “farmhouse” is used in modern craft breweries, or about historic brewing traditions. You might want to think about how, if at all, the two are related.

If you think that farmhouse brewing or farmhouse beer refers to something meaningful and relevant in modern beer, you could write something touching on what it means to you. What’s its defining element? Is it about style, ingredients, location or something else? Would you call a crisp, clean pilsner or a hoppy IPA a farmhouse beer if it was brewed from local ingredients in a medieval barn? What about a mixed fermentation barrel-aged saison brewed in a light industrial unit in a suburb of Manchester? Why does any of this matter?

David suggests some additional ideas, but I’ll riff on “farmhouse” in general for a bit.

I do own the book Farmhouse Ales by Phil Markowski—I’ve had it for years, actually—but I’ve not yet gotten around to reading it. (I know, I know! Too many other books/projects/things and never enough time!) So while I’m unable to wax poetic about the topic based on that directly, I did find a short piece Markowski wrote for All About Beer Magazine in 2010. (I don’t know how long this might be online, since the print edition just folded, among other revelations.) In particular I like this summation of farmhouse beer:

Pretend you are a 19th-century farmer/brewer getting ready to make one of several batches of ale you produce each year. What will you brew with? You had a bumper crop of wheat so you trade a neighbor for some barley to blend with your wheat and rye. Your hop crop wasn’t great so you might substitute some evergreen boughs, juniper berries and seeds from your recently bolted coriander plants. The point is that you improvise; you brew with what is at hand.

A no-two-are-alike legacy lives on in many contemporary “farmhouse” ales. Emphasis on individuality, rather than uniformity, is evident in modern Belgian, French and American versions. Though this lack of conformity may be vexing to those who like their stylistic ducks in a row, attempting to narrowly define the beverage misses the point. A true farmhouse ale conveys a sense of origin; a great one, transcendence. You feel the rusticity, imagine the field and sense the unpredictability of the season—the liquid summation of “terroir.”

Today, outstanding versions of farmhouse ale are not and need not be brewed on a farm. The requirements for authenticity are a healthy respect for their origins, the brewer’s art and its many variations, and an open mind.

The idea of native, locally-available, on-hand ingredients is one I always apply to brewing locally here in Central Oregon. Bend is located on the edge of the High Desert, with the Deschutes River as a kind of informal dividing line between the arid steppe-like climate to the east and the ponderosa pine forest, mountain-foothill climate to the west. I grew up in the eastern side, so in terms of native ingredients I relate more to things like juniper berries (and trees), sagebrush (not the culinary type of sage), and other such flora.

Central and eastern Oregon had a period of desert or dry farm homesteading that took place in the early 1900s. I have a short bit about it in my book, Bend Beer:

The railroad was two-way, of course, and 1911 also saw the beginning of a short-lived era in desert homesteading, as the railroad brought increasing numbers of settlers interested in getting a plot of the government land. Homesteading was not new in Central Oregon; the Homestead Law of 1862 allowed U.S. citizens 160 acres of public domain land provided they could live on it for five years, develop and cultivate it, and pay a small fee. “Up to 1890,” writes Raymond Hatton in High Desert of Central Oregon, “homesteading in Oregon was essentially confined to the more attractive, fertile, watered lands west of the Cascades.” The homesteads of Central Oregon were similarly located near settlements and water sources. However, there were millions of acres of High Desert available, all of it public land—much of it open range used by the stockmen and sheepherders, across which range wars and conflicts still raged—and a revised homestead act of 1909 increased the acreage provided to settlers to 320. With the arrival of the railroad and the subsequent opening up of Central Oregon to the outside world, attention centered on this vast swath of public land and over the course of the next several years many, many homesteads and communities sprung up on the desert.

This homesteading era would not last more than five years, and by World War I it was virtually over. The reason? Despite the optimism and determination of the settlers to start their new lives, the reality of life on the desert soon dashed those dreams. Lack of resources (particularly water), unforgiving climate, isolation and desolation—all contributed to the general failure of the desert homestead. It might be a romantic notion to imagine starting a new life on a big plot of land, growing your own food and livestock, hewing much of what you need by hand—perhaps even brewing your own rustic beer with ingredients harvested and collected yourself. But the reality for Central Oregon homesteaders was much different. They were required to eke out a hardscrabble life in a one- or two-room shack on a plot of waterless desert land. Their attempts to grow rye and other grains were constantly thwarted by jackrabbits, harsh nights, and the short growing season. If they were fortunate enough to own a plot of land with enough native bunch grass, perhaps they could even raise a few cows—assuming the coyotes didn’t get them.

As a thought experiment I’ve often wondered about what a farmhouse beer might have looked like for such a desert homestead. While I have not encountered any direct testimony or evidence that any of these desert farmers were brewing beer, there is some indirect evidence. Growing hops, for instance. Rick Roy, owner of Steens Mountain Brewing Company in Burns, Oregon (the heart of homestead country in many ways) sources many of his hops from old homestead sites where they survived (went feral). As far as he has been able to determine, some of these abandoned sites had hops growing as far back as anyone could remember.

(I’ve written a bit about Steens Mountain over the years, you can flip through the archives here.)

For what purpose to grow hops on a homestead other than to use in brewing?

At any rate, were I to brew a farmhouse ale inspired by the setting of a desert homestead, I expect rye grain would be a decent contribution to the malt bill. As far as spicing it with what’s on hand, look to juniper (berries, boughs, and the inner bark), possibly sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata, which in fact is toxic in more than small amounts), edible weeds such as dandelion, nettles, and lamb’s quarter, yarrow, and thistle. Of course whatever seeds or herbs that might have been grown in the garden could be used as well. Hop additions would likely be minimal, and probably using a hop derived from noble or even English varieties.

Yeast? That is a good question, one I don’t readily have an answer for. By the time the homestead era took hold, the early local breweries (both located in Prineville) had already closed, so there really wasn’t any local brewery yeast available. Possibly such a beer would be spontaneously fermented—using wild yeasts found on juniper berries, for instance. Perhaps a yeast cake leftover from baking. Regardless I expect there would be a tart, possibly funky component to it. For a modern brewing recreation, I would of course rely on a saison yeast, though I’d be tempted to supplement with juniper berries in a secondary to see about a bit of wild addition.

My point… if I have one beyond general rumination… is that I think the tradition of farmhouse brewing can be adapted and applied to a variety of circumstance. Even homebrewing—we have (at least one) member of our local club that literally brews in his barn; if that’s not a farmhouse tradition, then I don’t know what is. So I’d have to say if a modern commercial brewery in a city suburb brews a farmhouse styled ale, it’s at least honoring the tradition and history of the style and is just as legitimate.

Okay now I’m off to figure out my Homestead Ale recipe…