Michael Agnew

Dave’s Brewfarm – Brewing Sustainably

Dave’s Brewfarm sits atop a ridge in the rolling rural landscape of western Wisconsin about sixty miles east of the Twin Cities. Standing there one feels far removed from everything. Wilson, Wisconsin, the nearest town, is home to only about 180 people. A big sign set with heavy timbers at the top of the drive is the only thing that distinguishes the brewery from the farmsteads that dot the countryside around it. Dave’s Brewfarm is the brainchild of owner/brewer “Farmer Dave” Anderson. As he describes it, “This is a true farmhouse brewery. We are on 38 acres. We grow our own hops and other supplemental herbs and what not. I’ve got a neighbor across the way who wants to do some heirloom barleys.” The rustic red building is a live/work space that required a special waiver from the TTB. Upstairs is the living quarters that Farmer Dave shares with his wife. Downstairs is the “labrewatory.” The brewery itself, still under construction, consists of a fifteen-gallon pilot brewery and the bits and pieces of a soon-to-be seven-barrel brewhouse in various stages of completeness. The Brewfarm currently has one beer on the market, Brewfarm Select, a full-flavored, golden lager contract brewed at Point Brewing in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Another, Matacabras, a very tasty, rye tinged, Belgian strong dark ale, will be released in bottles soon.

One other thing sets the Brewfarm apart from the surrounding landscape, a 120-foot wind generator. “The Billboard” as Farmer Dave calls it, is visible from the highway long before you reach the brewery. It’s a kind of beacon that points to both the physical property and the ethos of sustainability that makes Dave’s Brewfarm stand out in the landscape of the brewing industry as well. According to Farmer Dave, “We’re not just a brewery. We’re not just a brewery in a house. I call it a demonstration project. This is my vision of how a sustainable business can operate.” The brewery already generates power from the wind and uses a geothermal unit for heating and cooling. The building is plumbed for solar/thermal panels that will eventually be installed on the roof. Additionally, the brewery drains all lead to a 5000-gallon tank for reusing gray water. The idea of sustainability is literally built into the business.

“Originally I was going to have just some little brewery in a pole building.” says Farmer Dave. “But it was 2007 when I was looking at properties.  At that time gas was four or five bucks a gallon. Oil was a hundred and forty or a hundred and fifty bucks a barrel. I was like, ‘Duh. The writing’s on the wall.’ I looked a probably eighty different properties up and down western Wisconsin. When I came to this place, first it was beautiful. Second I stepped out of the car and was almost blown over by the wind. It was huge. And it was this incessant constant thing. So we’ve got this great wind resource, why not take advantage of it. It just made sense.” The decision to utilize that resource led to further ideas. “The more you dig into the wind thing you start thinking, ‘well, we have to have a way to heat and cool things.’ So I found geothermal.” And geothermal eventually led to solar/thermal. The solar/thermal panels will be tied into the brewery’s hot liquor tank to reduce the energy needed to heat brewing water. The projection is that these measures will account for fifty to seventy-five percent of the brewery’s energy usage.

This emphasis on renewable and sustainable practice is rooted in more than just environmental concerns. “I don’t consider myself a tree-hugger by any stretch.” Anderson explains. “I look at the renewable aspects of this project as…I hate to use the word smart because that sounds a little grandiose…forward thinking is probably a better way to phrase it. Breweries are large users of both energy and water, so trying to minimize those outlays with renewable just made sense, environmental and economic sense. It’s not just whizz-bang for whizz-bang sake. It’s got to earn its keep so to speak.”

Until the farmhouse brewery is complete, all Dave’s Brewfarm beers for commercial release are contract brewed at either Point Brewing or Sand Creek Brewing. Even after everything is up and running the plan is to continue brewing large batches of beers that gain market traction at these facilities. To Farmer Dave this is all part of the sustainable practice. “I consider contract brewing a sustainable practice because we’re maximizing an existing infrastructure to get what we need instead of me buying an all new bottling line and putting energy and resources into that. Being able to utilize existing capacity to me makes sense.”

All of this investment in sustainability doesn’t come cheaply. “Having the windmill installed was sixty-seven grand. I’d love to have that money so I could buy this or I could buy that.” But Anderson views it as an investment in the future. “It’s not a short term picture. It’s a long term view of where you want to go, I guess, versus just making a quick buck and getting out. We’re going to be here for the duration so what makes sense. It will pay its way down the road. I mean, ‘sustainable’ is multi-faceted. Sustainable means you actually can exist and keep going. So that means you have a cash flow. You have to make money. But how do you go about doing that? That’s one aspect. Sustainability also means we’ve got available resources like the wind and geothermal that we can incorporate. In the long term it’s more efficient and it’s less expensive. Then I kind of look at sustainability and stewardship as being intertwined. We’re human and we’re the biggest parasites on the planet. There are things that we can do to lessen our impact on the planet and try and leave it hopefully a little better than we found it.”

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