Sitting in a fermentation vessel on T Street NW is a five barrel batch of corn lager. But not just any corn lager, a Bloody Butcher Corn lager.
What is Bloody Butcher Corn? So glad you asked!
Bloody Butcher is a type of corn that’s been around for at least 150 years. Its name is attributed to the features of the corn, bright red, crimson even, rich and deep, inclining to purple. It’s a corn that might’ve been around for a couple hundred years, and according to Stout Heritage Farm it has high fat and high sugar contents. It’s tall, 15 and even 18 feet high is not unheard of. It’s not genetically modified, and perhaps most germane to our interests at DC Beer, it makes a dynamite corn lager.
Josh Chapman, owner of the just-born Upweller Beer Company, now has brewed a 10-keg batch at the Right Proper Brewpub Shaw and we urge you to follow along with Upweller Beer Company to get more about this beer’s release and new beers and events coming down the pike.
Chapman tells DC Beer “I…didn’t realize how singular that wort had become to me. I’ve tasted thousands of worts over the last 15 years. I couldn’t tell you how any of them tasted. But damn, the memories attached to this one the moment I had it,” and so we feel compelled to tell you, dear reader, to follow along with Josh and Jen Chapman as they embark on their new adventure with Upweller.
Per Upweller and their social media communique from June 27:
Thor and Leah [Cheston] (the dynamic husband and wife duo of Right Proper) threw out the concept of us starting our own side project brewery right there in Shaw. After a while, the thought grew into a really beautiful dream, Upweller Beer.
We didn’t have a brick and mortar space, but we wanted to continue to make beers of time and place. We also knew that we weren’t done with The Shore. We hoped to continue to forage and create one of kind brews that reflected the local land + waters. We also missed the collaborative spirit of The City’s beer community. We couldn’t pass up on the idea of being in both worlds. We’re beyond excited for the opportunity to brew out of Right Proper Shaw >>> COMING SOON!
SALTS + HOW BOUT IT (Josh’s award winning beers) will flow once more from the same taps where we brewed and tapped the very first Black Narrows beer, IN A COMMON SEA. In the coming months, we hope to have distribution set up to bring these SHORE GROWN beers back to where the ingredients and stories originate (and beyond.)
Chapman has been growing Bloody Butcher for three years now. He and Jeff Bloem, founder and maltster Murphy + Rude Malt House, had essentially contract-grown the shore Bloody Butcher with Bill & Bob Savage of Pungo Creek Mills 3 years ago. “That ended up being their last year farming the corn, and from there I connected with long time friend and organic farmer on the shore Aaron Cooper [of CutFresh Organics] with the hopes of keeping it going,” Chapman tells us.
“We landed on a 9 acre plot that was away from his other parcels to plant 3 acres of the corn (that way we could crop rotate each year). We’ve had one full cycle of planting, harvesting, and then malting at Jeff’s Malthouse, and we’re currently in year two (the corn is growing as we speak!).”
While I haven’t stepped foot between the rows of Chapman’s corn, I did get a chance to see another brewer’s Bloody Butcher corn back in 2022.
That brewer is Kevin Powers, owner of the Powers Farm Brewery, located in Midland, Virginia. Standing in Powers’ corn field it was clear a massive harvest took place and some left-over stalks of the Bloody Butcher made a great impression on me.
Per Powers, 50 pounds of Bloody Butcher seed became 20,000 pounds of corn. “We got something like 80-100 bushels/acres which is very low by modern standards but the price made up for it!” Powers told us.
Malted corn is not to be confused with flaked corn and for the majority of craft brewery corn lagers on the market today, flaked corn has the rule of the roost. If we listen to this Brülosophy post, the author perceived flaked corn cold IPA as having a brighter hop character and a slight alcohol bite whereas the malted corn version was earthier, with muted hops and a subtle medicinal quality.
When the Upweller beer hits the market we recommend trying it alongside a craft lager with flaked corn and judge for yourself!
