Recently, Sons of Alchemy members toured two Pennsylvania brewing ingredient producers: Deer Creek Malthouse in Glen Mills, PA and GEMS Farm Hops in Carlisle, PA, on August 1st and 15th, respectively. Both tours were facilitated by Meredith Rebar of Deer Creek Malthouse.

Founded in 2012, Deer Creek Malthouse is the first Pennsylvania Maltster since prohibition and uses locally grown grain. In addition to a range of barley malts, Deer Creek also malts Corn, Wheat, Buckwheat, Spelt, Oats, Rye, Sorghum, and Triticale. Deer Creek is is committed to creating more sustainable malting infrastructure in Pennsylvania. Our tour included a taste and guess test involving several malts and some local beers brewed in collaboration with Deer Creek.

GEMS Farm Hops began prducing hops in Carlisle, PA in 2017, and currently has thousands of hop plants in five varieties, including Triple Pearl, Comet, Mt. Hood, Newport, and Tahoma. Notably, GEMS uses lots of custom home built equipment. The GEMS tour included a demonstration of harvesting and picking, more sampling of Deer Creek malts and collaboration beers that Meredith brought, and the opportunity to take home some (free!) freshly picked Comet hops.

A big Thank You to Meredith at Deer Creek and the Reifsnyder family at GEMS. And Thanks also to Sons member Mike Ross for coordinating with Meredith.