Now You Know
Secret beer deals: Nighttime handoffs at Buffalo Bayou Brewing reveal a grainy,undercover truth
- Ryan Roberston has a labor-intensive job of raking the grain out of themash/lauter tun.Photo by Whitney Radley
- The vessel holds approximately 1,500 pounds of malted barley.Photo by Whitney Radley
- Larry and Katie Cooper use a vaccum cleaner to seal the bags of grain once theyreturn to their Hempstead farm.Photo by Whitney Radley
Spend some time near T.C. Jester and I-10 at dusk on a weeknight and you may find yourself privy to an unusual, fragrant exchange.
About once a week — sometimes more often, sometimes less — farmer and cattle rancher Larry Cooper and his wife Katie make the trek from their Hempstead estate to the inner Loop warehouse home of Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company for a grain pass-off.
It's not glamorous, by any means. In fact, that it takes place under the cover of night makes it seem almost illicit.
The Coopers arrive with a truck bed full of empty buckets around the time that brew master Ryan Robertson drains the wort — a sugary liquid extracted after mashing with malted barley — from the mash/lauter tun to the kettle, where it will be mixed with hops and other ingredients to complete the brewing process.
This odd exchange has been taking place since Buffalo Bayou officially began brewing in January.
"Once all of the fermentable sugars have been extracted, it's trash to us," Robertson says. "But it's a ton of free feed for them."
Robertson rakes 1,500 pounds of grain out of the tun and into industrial-sized trash bins. Electric fans attempt to dispel some of the heat from the brewing room — both the mashing and lautering processes are heat-intensive — as he heaves all of his weight to tilt the rolling can onto its wheels, clutching the handle as he drags it to the wide bay garage doors.
There, the Coopers wait with shovels to transfer that grain into smaller, trash bag-lined buckets, which they return to the bed of their truck. They will vacuum-seal each when once back in Hempstead, so that the wet grain doesn't continue to ferment — because that's when things start to smell.
This odd exchange has been taking place since Buffalo Bayou officially began brewing in January. Robertson and his business partner, Rassul Zarinfar, initially sought out to partner with goat farmer near Waller, who put them in touch with the Coopers.
"The grain feeds about 14 of our cows for about 12 days," Larry Cooper tells CultureMap.
The brewery avoids disposing of thousands of pounds of wet, musty grain each week, and the Coopers enjoy free feed for their cattle.
He says that they mix the malted barley with other nutrient-rich feed, since the brewing process takes some of the valuable proteins out of the grain. The rest of his herd, which is raised for both milk and meat, grazes on grass.
Though the Coopers don't plan to imbibe any of the beers that Buffalo Bayou brews, nor have Zarinfar or Robertson sampled any of the beef that feeds off of their spent grain, the relationship between the brewer and the farmer is a symbiotic one. The brewery avoids disposing of thousands of pounds of wet, musty grain each week, and the Coopers enjoy free feed for their cattle — a supplement especially useful in periods of drought.
After the last of the grain has been transferred, Larry Cooper stacks the heavy buckets in the bed of his truck and secures them with taut ropes before making the drive back to his Hempstead farm.
Robertson, for his part, gets to cool off with a nice, cold craft beer.