BARRE – Phil Stevens carried firewood to a furnace, pulled open a metal door and pushed the wood inside. Wispy smoke emanated from within, partially obscuring Stevens, who wore a hat with earflaps and a quilt-lined coverall.
On frigid mornings like this one, he’ll have to feed the furnace at least three times throughout the day.
Nothing comes easy at the family-owned Carter & Stevens Farm, a dairy farm kept alive by its 3-year-old brewery. Like most tasks here, heating the well water crucial to Stone Cow Brewery takes manual labor. “We can’t just flip a switch,” said Stevens, the patriarch.
But burning wood harvested directly from the 1,000-acre farm keeps Stone Cow’s energy bill low. And the brewery has never relied on fossil fuels.
Brewery co-owner Sean DuBois, Stevens’ son-in-law, views the brewing business through an agricultural lens, always making sure to limit its impact on the farm and, by extension, the environment that surrounds it.
And though not actually on a farm, other area breweries have tried to think more like farmers, too, emphasizing sustainability and self-sufficiency.
It hasn’t been easy — or cheap.
Charlton’s Tree House Brewing Co. announced last week that it has entered the farming business with Tree House Orchard & Farm Fermentory, a more than $1.6 million investment.
Tree House purchased the 93-acre Devon Point Farm in Woodstock, Connecticut, where it will manage an orchard to harvest ingredients for a farmstand and fermentation program, including apples, blackberries, cherries and peaches, among other fruits. Woodstock Town Clerk Judy Walberg confirmed Tree House bought the farm. The location of the farm was first reported by the Worcester Business Journal.
The farm, Tree House said on its website, is “ripe with over sixty acres of agriculturally prime soil, grazing pasture for grass fed cattle, an existing produce and flower program, an appreciable number of heirloom apple trees, and vast expanses of land to be cultivated and planted for many years to come.”
Tree House will also use a barrel room at the farm for conditioning, fermenting and fruiting cider and other beverages. And the brewery plans to offer a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.
Also last week, Tree House reinforced its commitment to getting greener.
The brewery is working with the Watertown company Cambrian Innovation to treat its wastewater onsite with an anerobic bacteria treatment system. The technology, Tree House said, will reduce contaminants and pollutants in its wastewater stream by nearly 100 percent, making the water fit for re-use.
Gas produced from the treatment process will eventually provide energy to Tree House’s brewhouse, Cambrian said, accounting for about 40 percent of its energy needs in the first two years, and 100 percent within five.
At the same time, much of Tree House’s organic waste will be sent to an anaerobic digester at Longview Farm in Hadley. The digester breaks down the waste from Tree House and 12 other food suppliers to produce fertilizer used at the dairy farm.
Tree House wrote that it’s focused on reducing its carbon footprint annually by more than 21,600 metric tons of carbon dioxide through “a big investment” in renewable energy and wastewater treatment.
“These investments join a number of others already made or in the works,” the brewery wrote, “all with the aim to maintain a sustainable future for our guests, employees, and future generations …”
The Trappist monks of Spencer Brewery embrace sustainability as part of their faith. That commitment translates into measures such as reducing the amount of wastewater they produce with an underground injection control well that filters out iron, putting clean water back into the ground.
“It can cut out almost a truckload of wastewater a week,” said brewery director Father Isaac Keeley.
The brewery, which cost an estimated $10 million to build, also has a yeast propagation tank that helps the monks reuse yeast after each brew.
“It will pay off for the larger community in the long run,” Father Keeley said of the brewery’s sustainable design. “In the short run, it cranks up your investment.”
Brewers source local ingredients for beer as another way to promote sustainability; in Massachusetts, though, local hops and grains can cost more, and the list of farms growing the ingredients is short.
In rare cases, brewers harvest ingredients directly from their breweries.
Since opening, Stone Cow has planted a modest harvest of cascade hops for an American IPA it calls Can’t Stop WET HOP. The hop binds — usually about 500 plants — grow 20 to 30 feet tall.
Breweries in cities or downtowns that don’t have the land to grow ingredients turn to Four Star Farms in Northfield for hops and Valley Malt in Hadley for grains.
Valley Malt works with local farmers to grow grains such as wheat, barley and rye — planted in the winter and harvested in the summer, then malted for eight days in four 1-ton stainless steel vats.
Andrea Stanley, co-founder of Valley Malt, said the malthouse produces six times as much malted grain as it did when it opened in 2009.
“Certainly, some brewers reached out because they were drawn to us. On a personal level, they were interested in supporting farms and sustainability, and we’ve kind of helped them walk the talk,” Stanley said. “We’re working with people aligned to the same values as us, but it’s not an easy path.”
Each year, Medusa Brewing Company in Hudson works with Valley Malt and Four Star, acquiring ingredients for Friendly Territory, an imperial IPA. This year’s version includes barley and wheat from Valley Malt and a blend of hops from Four Star.
“There’s a lot more demand for ingredients now,” said Medusa co-founder Keith Sullivan. “Hops are a challenge because the flavor of the week is always hard to get your hands on. It’s hard to score some of those hops because the bigger breweries have more buying power. Being a smaller brewery, you have to be a little smarter and a little more flexible. So we use local hops: They are available, and the quality is excellent.”