Popular Brewers Rely on Same Malt Provider

There’s really nothing more refreshing than a cold beer after a long day of hard work. Or after a long anything for that matter. The bottom line is once that crisp, malty beverage hits your lips, euphoria sinks in and problems seem to slip away. Think of it as Yoga in a bottle.  In the spirit of Oktoberfest we decided to dive a little deeper into one of our favorite hobbies: beer. In particular, one of its main ingredients, malt. We used Import Genius to search for the essential ingredient and found something pretty intriguing.  There are hundreds of malt distributors here in the U.S. and around the world that supply the malt in some of our favorite beers. And after dissecting some of the data in an Import Genius search of Malt shipments into the US, we felt compelled to write on 2 of our favorite brewers, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and Oskar Blues Brewery, and how closely related they are. Knowingly or unknowingly is up for debate.  This isn’t a review on either of these brewers or the exact science into which they use this product, it is instead a look into an essential ingredient these brewers use and where they import it from. In particular the unroasted and roasted malt that they import from the UK.  Looking at the malt imports of Sierra Nevada Brewing reveals some interesting data. Since 2011, Sierra Nevada has imported over 450 shipments of beer related products, most of it being bags of roasted malt totaling hundreds of tons of the key starch ingredient. Of these shipments, over 70% were shipped by French and Jupps Coloured Malt Specialists out of the UK.  The find is significant because this could very well be the brewers exclusive supplier of the malt it uses in its line of beers. Digging even further into the data, you will notice that French and Jupps has a somewhat limited distribution network.  This is where we make our Oskar Blues connection. Aside from Sierra Nevada, and the Brewers Supply Group, the malt distributor ships a monthly supply of roasted malts to Oskar Blues Brewery, makers of the popular ‘Dale’s Pale Ale’, in Longmont, Colorado. The brewer began importing from outside the US in November 2011 when it renamed its Imperial Red beer ‘Gordon Ale’ to ‘G’Knight’ exclusively from the same malt provider of fellow brewer Sierra Nevada.  Pretty interesting that two of the most popular Pale Ale brewers in the U.S. use the same malt supplier in the UK.  We may have not uncovered a great mystery here, but it’s interesting that trade data provided by Import Genius allows us to make connections between two popular brewers that use the same product form a small distributor in the UK.  If anything, both beers are great and the real reason for the research. So sit back, grab a Sierra Nevada pale ale or Dale’s Pale Ale and enjoy all of the malty goodness provided by French and Jupps.