There’s been a budding movement over the last decade to reintroduce locally-grown grains into our over commoditized food system. Just a few years ago, consumers likely never considered nor cared where the flour in their bread was milled. But now a growing number of businesses from bakeries to restaurants to distilleries have started advertising the local grains used in products.
But what’s really the difference between store-bought and heritage grains? And why does Colorado grow some of the best? To answer these questions we dug deep into the state’s terroir and history behind the plants and the people who use these grains.
Heirloom Grain In Baking
New to the Denver food scene but not new to using whole foods in his cooking, Miles Odell, owner of Odell’s Bagel in the Highland neighborhood. To make his array of Denver-style bagels, he purposefully sources flour from the Boulder-based mill Dry Storage.
“Storebought flour is generally made in a giant factory, and the farms supplying them the grains want to produce wheat as cheaply and quickly as possible, relying on genetically modified varieties designed for high yields,” said Odell. “As far as the milling goes, they have these giant machines that mill as fast as possible, and really strips a lot of the germ away, which makes their products consistent.”
Not only does putting grains through the commercial factory process strip the grain of nutritional value, but it changes the true character of the wheat, he added. Beyond nutritional value, there’s also the flavor factor. Heirloom and heritage grains produce distinct and complex flavor profiles not found in commodity flour.
“I almost compare it to tasting wine,” Odell expressed.
At Rebel Bread, founder of Zach Martinucci committed to using 100-percent regionally-sourced flour at his Denver bakery. Not only did he want to use Colorado products, but he was excited by the chance to work with local farmers as well.
“We’ve always been committed to giving back, not just to our local community, but also to the environment. By intentionally switching our primary ingredient at the bakery, we saw an opportunity to make a meaningful impact,” he said. “Before, flour was just a product we bought from a food distributor. Now, we’re connected to the source.”
The Best Miller In Town
Odell’s and Rebel Bread are just two of more than a hundred businesses that have latched onto the local grain train with Dry Storage, which is owned by Is Est Hospitality (Bruto, The Wolf’s Tailor, Basta, Hey Kiddo). The mill was first founded in 2019 and exclusively uses Colorado-grown wheat for its flour.
“All of our wheat is grown within about five hours of Denver. We prioritize working with farmers who emphasize soil health, focusing on regenerative practices or those transitioning to more sustainable methods,” said Devin Jamroz, CEO of Dry Storage. “We provide the seed varieties we want and buy back the entire yield from our partner farms.”
Dry Storage’s stone milling process dates back thousands of years, unlike industrial milling factories that use roller mills. This ancient method allows the grains to get processed while still maintaining the flavor and nutrition of the end product.
“The stone mill is a very, very old means of milling grain,” Jamroz explained. To grind this way, the company uses a big stone that sits stationary as another large stone above it spins in order to grind the entire grain. “A lot of the flavor compounds and nutritious oils live in the bran and the germ. Those all get totally discarded in a roller mill, but a stone mill grinds those up with the rest of the wheat kernel.”
From Grain To Glass
Just as mass-produced flour sacrifices flavor and nutrition for efficiency, the same can be said for grains used in whiskey. Take Laws Whiskey House, a small-batch distillery that exclusively sources its corn and heirloom wheat, barley, and rye from Colorado. According to owner Al Laws, not all malts are created equal.
“In Kentucky, for the most part, they’re using commodity grains, the cheapest grains that they can get, to make whiskey at 60,000-gallon batches,” said Laws. “We don’t, we’re using pot stills, which concentrate flavor more, and doing 1,000-gallon batches. So we have much more control over it, we can coax out the flavors and make adjustments.”
By using locally-grown grains, the true terroir comes out and gives the whiskey that desired sense of place imbibers look for.
“Most worldwide whiskies are tied to the terroir where they’re made,” he said. “If we all made it from the same place, you would lose a lot of your variation, differentiation, and complexity. To me, whiskey should taste like where it comes from.”
Laws’ latest limited release whiskey, the Super Wheater, is a prime example of this philosophy.
“For our Super Wheater, we’re using 100-percent Centennial White Wheat, a softer spring wheat designed for Colorado’s climate, instead of the harder red wheats used in most whiskeys,” Laws explained. “It creates a whiskey with big, spicy, bready characteristics but also this distinct orange flavor that comes from the specific conditions of the land where it’s grown.”
Great Grains To Look For
Not all grains are created equal, and in the bakery Rouge de Bordeaux rises to the top as a favorite.
“Rouge de Bordeaux was the original wheat used for baguettes in France,” explained Jamroz at Dry Storage. “Over time, however, farmers moved away from it because it didn’t yield as much as other varieties. People missed the unique flavor and texture Rouge de Bordeaux provided, and eventually, there was a huge effort to reintroduce it.”
The passion for this grain grew so much, said Jamroz, people started to literally scour fields in the Bordeaux region of France for seeds. Now, the Rouge is one of the grains Dry Storage grows and mills in Colorado. From there, places such as Rebel Bread and Odell’s purchase it for breads and bagels.
“With Dry Storage’s Rouge de Bordeaux, they leave a lot more of the germ on, and what you get is this fruity, nutty quality that really plays well with our bagel recipe,” said Odell.
On the other hand Martinucci picks up cinnamon and baking spice notes in the Rouge. He also uses White Sonora from Dry Storage, which, he said, “Brings a buttery creaminess to the bread, even if there’s no dairy in the loaf.”
Local Grains, a Sustainable End Product
For the businesses committed to using local grains, sustainability isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a guiding principle shaping sourcing decisions.
Dry Storage, for instance, has cultivated long-term relationships with farms that prioritize regenerative practices and soil health. The mill uses grains from Golden Prairie, a third-generation family farm near Fort Collins run by Jean Hediger.
“Jean in particular has been in the game for quite a while,” said Jamroz. “She was actually around and on board when organic certification first became a thing and when that whole movement started, so they’re real OGs in the organic space.”
Another place Dry Storage works with is Jones Farms Organics in the San Luis Valley. This farm has embraced the Rye Resurgence Project, an initiative aimed at promoting rye as a winter cover crop to combat desertification. Back on the whiskey side, Dry Land Distillers in Longmont released its first Regenerative Organic Certified rye last fall to showcase the grain. It also pays homage to the terroir of the state through its other spirits.
Similarly, Laws Whiskey is completely dependent on two family-owned farms, the Cody Brothers in the San Luis Valley and the Whiskey Sisters Supply out on Colorado’s eastern plains. Because of the business Laws has brought them, an entire sub-industry for smaller producers has sprouted up around them.
However, when Laws first started the distillery in 2011, he struggled to find local suppliers.
“From the start, sourcing local grain was a priority for us, but we quickly realized it wasn’t going to be easy,” said Laws. “No one could point us to local suppliers…[and] the few who responded to us weren’t interested in selling us the smaller quantities we needed.”
After around two-and-a-half years, he met Stephanie Ohnmacht, who ran a farm near the Colorado-Kansas border.
“We ran into Stephanie from Whiskey Sisters [Supply], before there even was a Whiskey Sisters, and they agreed to start selling us corn,” Laws recalled. “Because we said we would buy corn from them, they got other people to buy corn and mixed grains too, and they started [Whiskey Sisters Supply]. For a farm of their size, it allowed them to continue to sell to feed commodity markets, but at the same time take some of their grains and get a higher value add.”
Ultimately, producers prioritizing the use of local grains aren’t just crafting bread and spirits, they’re telling a story of place.
“I’m not saying every flour that we buy at the supermarket is terrible. I just think for what we’re doing, I’m happy [using locally milled flour] because it’s better for the environment and we think it tastes better,” Odell concluded.
