This profile first appeared in Yankee Brew News.
Located on a sprawling 300 acres in Moreau, New York, Dancing Grain offers both ‘brews and views,’ thanks to its backdrop of the stunning Palmertown Range and its mission of ‘field-to-beer’ in all its operations, and second-generation owner Rachel McDermott was integral to its success.
How It Started
Rachel grew up running around her family’s farm alongside her dad, Jim Czub, and her uncle, Bob Czub Jr. After leasing the land for more than three decades, Jim and Bob bought the acres in 2016, inheriting several dilapidated buildings, extensive competition and no additional cash flow. Rachelleft her career in investment banking to leverage her seven years in finance and make the farm more profitable.
How? By producing crops that are more valuable than the traditional crops her family had grown: specifically, crops used in craft brewing and distilling. New York’s farm brewery law requires farms to sell beer made primarily from locally grown farm products in order to receive a brewery license, so Rachel took inspiration into action, starting a small specialty grain in 2017, providing products to area craft beverage producers.Over the last five years, Rachel, and her family have trialed dozens of small grains varieties to bring the best New York State can grow to breweries and distilleries.
The Birth of a Brewery
In 2019, Rachel and her family began to take steps to creating their own brewery, and reached out to Bert and Christian Weber, the father-son duo that run Common Roots Brewery in South Glen Falls. Not only did the Webers tell her Rachel that she could make this brewery a reality, but they also offered to be investors! So, in 2021, McDermott and her husband Sean purchased a camper and moved their baby, dog, horses and cats from Schaghticoke to Moreau to undertake a full farmhouse renovation.
Still, building a brewery in a rural setting was more complicated than they knew with no sewer or three-phase power, the preferred power for brewing systems. Eventually, they were able to reverse engineer the brewing system and switch it to single-phase power so everything could work smoothly in the new Dancing Grain location, which opened in August 2022.
The Meaning Behind the Name
“Before we harvest the grain in July, you can see the malting barley and other specialty grains in the field below the brewery. When the wind blows, it looks like the grain is dancing, like it’s happy to be here. That was our inspiration.” (Source: Glenn Falls Living)
Field to Glass
Dancing Grain Brewery is designed entirely around crops that suit the farm. More than 90% of the ingredients in each beer come straight from the farm’s fields, and the Dancing Grain team members grow, brew, taste and test all of their products on the farm, fine-tuning season after season with a goal to bring patrons the freshest, most sustainable, and environmentally friendly beers possible. Other investments include the plentiful maple trees on the property, bees to make mead, and Rachel and her husband are constantly foraging edible plants like fiddleheads and mushrooms along with native herbs and flowers.
Sustainable Farming
Rachel is committed to sustainable farming, a term she uses to describe the symbiotic relationship between land and farmer: one can only give as much as the other gives. She aims to reduce waste across her farm’s supply chain by repurposing byproducts, incorporating crop rotations and cover cropping methods, to reduce the farm’s reliance on chemical applications, focusing on carbon sequestration through evaluation of perennial grains, and evaluating renewable energy options that not only reduce the farm’s overall reliance fossil fuels but also its energy bill.
Looking Ahead
“We want to continue to learn as much as we can,” Rachel said, “and then use the grain from those efforts to make more products.” Rachel also envisions making the farm’s fields more immersive and educational in the future. “Because I’m so passionate about what we do and what we grow – and then what we make with what we grow,” she said, “I want it to be very transparent and clear that you know where this beer comes from, and you can trace it back to its origins.” (Source: Times Union)
Dancing Grain Farm Brewery
180 Old West Road, Moreau, New York
