Nearing the end of the trip, it is finally day ten, and we are starting off our morning visiting The Colorado Farm Brewery. This is the only farm and/or brewery that starts their product and finishes it all the way through for consumers, meaning they grow and ferment their own beer then sell it at their venue or distribute it to smaller brewery’s around the area almost as far as Denver, Colorado.
The San Luis Valley used to be a lake plain and completely underwater now it’s a victim of the continental divide and a very dry desert that receives maybe at most six inches of rain a year. The farm uses a well that can only pump 2000 gallons of water a minute or waters from the Rio Grande after a snow melt. To be able to run ditches to the Rio Grande and use the water you have to have water rights. Ditch writers decide who uses the water for beneficial use and how much they are allowed to have since water is scarce.
Before they began the brewing company they bought the property as a dairy farm, they milked all the way until 1995. Jason and Josh’s father started farming through 4-H. He saw his dad work hard everyday in the field , he knew as a young kid that’s what he was meant to do and it was his calling. Despite dropping out of high-school in 1972 his father was able to secure a grant that all allowed him to purchase his father’s farm and in addition 20 more jersey dairy cows to kickstart his new farm.
Eventually some of the stainless steel milk vats were converted into a machine that they had no idea they were inventing. This machine does three steps all in one malting grains such as barley, wheat, and rye. Anything they process and do not use or products smaller such as rye , they sell to micro-breweries and distilleries around the area for things such as rye whisky.
