Paul Post photo
By Paul Post
While many people were at the beach or enjoying backyard barbecues, Rachel McDermott spent Fourth of July weekend harvesting barley for her new craft brewery.
Ninety percent of Dancing Grain Brewery’s ingredients are raised in fields surrounding the farm-based business, located at 180 Old West Road in Moreau, just south of Northway Exit 17.
“This is all hand-selected intentionally to give you something you can’t get somewhere else, from people who have painstakingly suffered all the trials and tribulations to make it possible,” McDermott said. “I want to grow really good crops. I want to share that story with people who come here to enjoy good beer. This is the first brewery I know of where a grain farm is taking on this production aspect of beer.”
Raised in Schaghticoke on her family’s West Wind Ag farm, McDermott studied applied economics and management at Cornell University en route to an exciting investment banker’s career with firms in Houston and New York City.
But upon turning 30, she took inventory of her life’s goals and gave it all up to come back home and help out on the farm.
Quite simply, the long hours, stress and city’s expensive cost of living weren’t worth it.
In 2017, McDermott started a small specialty grains program at her family’s farm. Two years later, she and her family started taking steps toward creating their own farm brewery.
“I’m always looking at things to see how can you take what you do and make more money from it,” McDermott said. “We had tractors, planters, harvesters. I said, ‘Let’s take all the stuff you’ve invested in over the years and make it work for you’.”
Her vision came to fruition in mid-August when Dancing Grain Brewery began welcoming its first customers. In the evening, patrons sit outside and relax, looking westward as the sun dips out of sight over the picturesque Palmertown Range.
Initially, plans called for a 10-barrel brewing system, but it quickly became apparent it would take up too much space and limit the variety of beers that could be made.
“So we have a 3.5-barrel brew system and eight fermenters instead of four, which means we can really pump out a variety of beer,” McDermott said. “A lot of what we do is somewhat experimental. We want to push the boundaries, we want people to think of beer less as an IPA and more about the malt. The fact of the matter is, you can make beer without hops. You cannot make beer without malt. So we want to have more of a malt-forward brewery because we want to highlight the ingredients we grow.”
Malt-forward means that malted grains are the leading flavor contributor, as opposed to hops or yeast. With a malty beer, people can expect a range of malt-derived flavors, everything from bread, biscuit and toast to nutty toffee, caramel, coffee or chocolate.
At present, grains raised on-site are sent to a malt house, but McDermott would eventually like to make this part of the operation, too.
“I never worked in a bar, but now I’m running a taproom,” she said. “We’re going to do some lagers, some Belgian-styles and porters. Another goal is to do two fruited sours a month. Instead of having a list of 10 IPAs, we’re going to keep rolling out these different fruited sours.”
James Dowell is the head brewer.
McDermott owns Dancing Grain with minority partners Bert and Christian Weber, a father-and-son duo whose Common Roots Brewery in South Glens Falls has grown over the past few years. The Webers have been willing to share their experience and advice to help McDermott avoid costly and time-consuming mistakes.
Instead of viewing Dancing Grain Brewery as a competitor, they see it as providing critical mass that helps their business by attracting visitors to a “beer corridor” connecting numerous small breweries from Saratoga Springs to Lake George.
Spurred in part by state legislation that makes it easier to own and operate such businesses, the industry has boomed throughout New York in recent years.
Empire State Development says New York is now number two in the country for most breweries, more than 460, and that beer made in New York has a $5.4 billion total economic impact.
McDermott said she’s spent much of her investment banking career savings, about $500,000, to get Dancing Grain Brewery started.
Commuting from Schaghticoke took too much time each day, so McDermott and her husband, Sean, bought a camper and moved to the Moreau property with her son in order to get work done.
And early this year, a friend and fellow Cornell alum, Amy Del Prado, provided help by letting the world know about Dancing Grain Brewery on social media. So when doors first opened, McDermott was overwhelmed by the response.
“We weren’t initially prepared for the turnout,” she said. “It was like, ‘Oh my god, this is great, now I’m terrified. How do I manage this?’ There was a lot of pivoting and changing taking place.”
All Dancing Grain beer is sold on tap at the brewery.
“We don’t distribute our beer at this point, I don’t know if we ever will,” McDermott said. “It’s really important that people come here because every dollar spent here goes back into this place. We have more to do. There are still some old structures on site and landscaping that can be done.”
West Wind Ag LLC owns the land Dancing Grain Brewery is situated on and her father and uncle, James and Bob Czub, do much of the physical farm work.
One surprising aspect that greets visitors, not found at most craft breweries, is the sound of children playing outside in the peaceful farming setting. “Younger parents in particular want to let kids run around in a safe place,” McDermott said. “At a restaurant, they might spend money on things kids don’t want to eat. We don’t serve food, but we let people bring food in. If you let people experience things the way they want to, they’re likely to stay. They’re likely to come back. But if you bring it in, you take it out. We’re not handling your trash.”
By next summer, McDermott hopes to make paths available through plots of grain where people can learn about malting barley, wheat, oats and rye. “It becomes informative and immersive, which is important, connecting to your supply chain. A lot goes into making beer, from fields to the glass. That’s what we want people to see. It’s really important to us.”