Northeastern brewers are shrinking the distance between fields of grain and pints of beer

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
"When you see a can of beer do you think of agriculture? Well, grain — an essential ingredient in beer — grows on farms that are usually far away from the Northeast. Now an alliance is working to build a regional grain supply chain that supports local farmland, one pint at a time.

To find out more we headed to Exhibit A in Framingham, Massachusetts where a hulking, industrial mill was cracking kernels of malted wheat in the brew house.

“As a young brewer, I didn't really think about the agricultural piece of this at all,” co-founder and head brewer Matthew Steinberg recalled. “I didn't know the farmer, but I knew the supplier — but there was this gap.”...