Lessons learned: Brewery expands focus on local ingredients

FAIRBURY, Ill. — The past two years have been a learning experience for Lincoln Slagel at Emancipation Brewing Company as he turns his focus to 2023 using those lessons learned.

“To sum it up, there was a night and day difference between 2021 and this year. Last year, especially with COVID, everything was so up in the air,” Slagel said.

“Things just weren’t normal, and even if they were somewhat normal in this area, a lot of the areas we get supplies from such as the Pacific Northwest or Europe, we struggled with some things such as freight costs or the unpredictability of availability. There were places where they still weren’t letting their workers go back to full capacity.

“This year was a huge improvement on that part. Stuff didn’t really get cheaper, but the out-of-stocks problem that we had with a lot of our suppliers mostly disappeared.”

Local Advantage

His takeaway from the past two years is to work as many local ingredients as possible into the beer he brews.

“Using as much local ingredients as possible gave us a huge advantage in a lot of ways. Instead of dealing with freight from Washington, Oregon, Montana or wherever it might be, we had to deal with freight from western Indiana,” he said.

“Knowing the growers made a huge interest, too, because of those personal relationships. We knew they weren’t trying to take advantage of us. We were trying to work with them on their increased costs and those kinds of things.

“So, I do think that it was a good lesson. For example, our maltster in western Indiana didn’t raise their prices at all throughout this whole thing because they were not as impacted as some of the other areas further away and the freight was a huge factor.”

Slagel added there may be times when one may wonder if it’s “worth all the hassle” to deal with local business rather just ordering products from a website. He learned the contrary.

“It reaffirmed our focus on local products because they proved really to be helpful in those tougher times. The big thing for us is working more towards that and designing more beers that work more of those local ingredients into them,” he said.

“As we go into wintertime where there are more dark beers or heavier beers, it’s harder to get local ingredients if you’re making a flavored stout or something like that, but we’re kind of revamping some of our existing beers to include more local stuff. That’s kind of our path forward.”

Future Plans

Looking ahead toward 2023, Slagel will try to establish more local accounts where his beer can be sold.

“We want to create the same type of relationship that, for example, the maltster has with us where we can provide value because of being local,” he said.

“We do our own deliveries, and we do free deliveries of our beer to restaurants, bars and stores. Letting them let us know what they need and working with them on a more personal basis is a big advantage for us over a larger brewery or distributor.

“If they call here with questions about a beer or they need a specific beer, they’re talking to me personally which I know from my experience on the other end is very nice.

“We started out not using as many local ingredients, but then when it became apparent that the quality wasn’t up there compared to what we could get elsewhere, we slowly started switching in more local ingredients. The goal for next year is to continue working more local ingredients in until we get to where we use as much as possible.

“We’ll also be coming up with new beers in 2023, as well as hoping to improve the old favorites by working in more local ingredients.”

Area Harvest

Most all of the corn and soybeans in Livingston County have been harvested.

“The corn and soybean harvest around here couldn’t have gone smoother for the most part. There was a little bit of weather issues for a few days, but it had to have been one of the smoothest harvests that we’ve had,” Slagel noted.