Craft brewers create terroir-specific beers

A LITTLE MORE than 2 miles from the Sierra Nevada brew house in Chico, Calif., a barren field holds thousands of barley seeds that will sprout next month and be harvested come spring, the beginnings of the brewery's Estate Ale. After the barley has been malted, brewers will combine it in the kettle with several different strains of fresh hops—Cascade, Chinook, Citra and an unnamed experimental variety—grown on 8 acres next to the brewery.
The Estate Ale was designed to express the essence of the North Sacramento Valley. The idea that the land shapes the character of a beverage isn't new—the French word terroir has been used for centuries to describe the way a wine conveys aspects of the place where it was made. But it is a term only now gaining currency in the craft-beer world.

"It's clear that the beers using our own ingredients are going to taste different because of weather, elevation and all the things that go into making any crop grow," said Brett Joyce, president of Rogue Ales, based in Newport, Ore. In 2010, Rogue launched a series of beers, called Chatoe (since renamed Rogue Farms), using hops and barley grown in Oregon, on two farms the brewery leases and operates.

At Sierra Nevada, they're discovering just how specific terroir can get. Bill Manley, the brewery's communications coordinator, explained how Chico-grown Citra hops possess notes of ripe honeydew melon, while the same variety of hops grown in Yakima, Wash., have more characteristics of tropical fruit, namely mango.

In the past, American beers have typically expressed a puzzle of provenance; a single bottle might contain Belgian yeast, German barley and Pacific Northwest hops. "Brewers are not tethered to the soil and a single ingredient the way winemakers are," said Sam Calagione, president of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales. "Since our ingredients are dried before shipping, we can use ingredients sourced from around the globe."

The growing preoccupation with place extends not only to locally grown grains and hops, but also to the way they're processed and the yeasts employed in fermentation. More and more, breweries are seeking out iconic regional ingredients, from spruce tips to fresh cherries, to further enhance the flavors of their brews and convey a sense of the landscape.

At the main Dogfish Head Brewery, in Milton, Del., the D.N.A. (Delaware Native Ale) 2012 was made with yeast collected from local fruit farms that was DNA-sequenced at the University of Delaware, along with local wildflower honey, blueberries and barley milled at an 18th-century mill near the brewery.

Still, Mr. Calagione, known for his restless creativity and adventurous palate, isn't inclined to limit his brewery's output to the expression of a single place. His Palo Santo Marron beer, for example, captures less of Delaware and more of a stand of palo santo trees in Paraguay, the source of the dense wood used to create special 10,000-gallon tanks for the Dogfish Head brewery. The dark, rich beer ages for a month in the tanks, which impart unique notes of incense and caramel.

"For us terroir has less to do with the dirt underneath the breweries where we make our beer," Mr. Calagione said, "and more to do with the gray matter in the brewers' heads."