Jeremy Beach
Visitors can have a glass of beer or sample a flight next to the fields where the ingredients were grown.
Beer comes from farms. This is not — even in an agricultural state like Wisconsin that loves its beer — a common association. That’s why Jeremy Beach is opening the field gates of his fifth-generation family farm on Sunday afternoons this fall for a different kind of beer-tasting pop-up event.
“Beer is an agricultural product, and it takes a farm to produce it,” says Beach, who started the Cheese City Beer brands about five years ago as a way to call attention to how the main ingredients in beer — barley, wheat and hops — all come from the hands of farmers. He’s underlining that by hosting beer tastings on his Cheese City Beer Farm near Monroe. Visitors drink beer alongside the fields that were used to grow the crops that made it. “It shows how beer is a farm-to-table product,” he says.
Beach studied rural sociology at UW-Madison and he’s worked for the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., as a farm survey methodologist. He returned to Wisconsin in 2016 and took a position in the UW-Madison Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics where he teaches agribusiness management and is also an instructor in the farm and industry short-course.
Beach was introduced to homebrewing by friends about 10 years ago. “That’s when the light bulb came on, and I thought, ‘why not try to grow these crops on my own farm and use them to make my brands of beer?” he says. He took about 10 acres of the family farm and planted crops he would like to showcase in his beer.
Beach’s farm is located a few miles southwest of Monroe, the Green County town known for its cheese. The county has more than two dozen cheesemakers. Green County is also no slouch when it comes to beer, as it’s home to the New Glarus Brewing Company and the Minhas Craft Brewery.
Visitors can taste up to seven different Cheese City Beer Farm brews during a pop-up. The main brew is Agricultural Ale, a light-bodied easy drinking blonde-colored beer that features the farm’s barley, wheat, and Cascade hops. The other beers are variants of it, infused with other crops grown on the Beach's farm that include Frontenac and Marquette red wine grapes, Frontenac Gris and Edelweiss white wine grapes, aronia berries, ground cherries, hazelnuts, and plums.
The barley and wheat harvested from the farm is processed off site. The barley is taken to a maltster near Indianapolis, while the wheat is processed by Proximity Malting Company of Milwaukee.
Beach grows about two acres of Cascade hops, which he has dried and pelletized with help from the Wisconsin Hop Exchange. Then the ingredients, even water from the farm, are taken in 700-gallon containers, to the Brewfinity Brewing Company in Oconomowoc, where the beer is brewed and kegged. Beach travels there on brew day to oversee the process.
On Sundays this fall, visitors can sample the beers and take a self-guided farm tour of the fields, grape-growing area and hop acreage. Options include four-beer flights ($8) or by the glass (12-ounces/$5.50). Light snacks are also available and visitors are encouraged to bring in picnic baskets and their own food; tables and chairs with sun umbrellas are set up for that purpose, though people can also bring their own blankets or camp chairs.
The Cheese City Beer Farm’s pop-up tasting events are held from noon-5 p.m. on the Beach farm, southwest of Monroe (west of State Highway 69, off Melvin Road at N1671 Honey Creek Road). In case of inclement weather, check the farm’s website or Facebook page, where changes in the schedule will be posted early Sunday morning.
Beach says the pop-ups will continue Sunday afternoons “through the end of October at a minimum. Beyond that we'll wait and see.”
