Inside the Making of India's First 100% Millet Beer
Pune-based Great State Aleworks recently launched two new millet-based beers, substituting imported wheat and barley malts for Jowar, a local drought resistant grain. Shivani Unakar, who works with the craft brewery heading their Millet Beer Project, takes us behind the scenes into the making of these new brews and what the larger impact of this beer means for both farmers and consumers.
In Maharashtra, millets are most notably used to make bhakri, but at Pune-based Great State Aleworks, millets are used to brew beer.
Our tryst with millet beers began as an experiment — a challenge to use more local ingredients in our brewing process. After considerable tinkering, we were able to begin incorporating millets into beer, releasing six different styles of small-batch millet beers over the years. We began by substituting 30% of the traditional wheat and barley malts with millets, gradually working our way up to 56% and finally we cracked the recipe for India's first millet beers, entirely substituting imported wheat and barley malts with local bajra and jowar.
Over the years, we realised that to brew something truly local and to increase our impact as a small business, we needed to go to the source — the millet farm. We began looking into sourcing grains directly from farmers around the state of Maharashtra.
“Over the years, we realised that to brew something truly local and to increase our impact as a small business, we needed to go to the source — the millet farm. We began looking into sourcing grains directly from farmers around the state of Maharashtra. ”
Our friends at Taru Naturals connected us with a group of farmers in the village of Mohi, in the arid Maan Taluka. Located in the district of Satara, but bordering the drier Solapur district, and situated at the top of a ghat, Mohi is prone to scanty rainfall, facing drought-like conditions nearly once in five years. But it is precisely in such conditions that millets grow.
Mohi in Satara district, is known for its millet fields. Photos credit: Harshavardhan Kute
On our first visit to Mohi, in October 2023, the year’s bajra crop had just been harvested, a meagre yield due to poor rains earlier in the year, and on the same fields, jowar was now being sown. We learned that due to steadily declining market demand over the years, and concurrently declining market rates, most farmers have switched to other commercial crops, including moong dal and fruits like pomegranate and chickoo, which are more demanding on the soil and groundwater, but earn them better returns. What little jowar and bajra is still grown, is primarily for home consumption, with the occasional surplus being sold to traders at the local market.
Given that grain is the primary ingredient in beer, we saw an opportunity to create a new segment of market demand for Indian millet farmers by simply trying to use more millet in our brewing processes. We set ourselves an annual target of 5000 kilos per year. Moreover, by buying our jowar and bajra directly from small farmers, we could cut out the middlemen, and ensure the full price we paid reached the farmers’ pockets. Since millets require little water to grow, we also decided to focus on working farmers in drought-prone regions like Mohi, where it is most critical to encourage millet cultivation.
Drought-prone regions like Mohi are where millet cultivation need to be encouraged.
“If there is a demand, we’d happily grow more (jowar and bajra),” admitted Sachin and Madhuri Deokar, the first family of farmers we met here, when we explained our interest in purchasing grains from them for our beer. They introduced us to various others, including Madhuri Tai’s father, Shrimant Salunkhe, the former Sarpanch, Sahebrao Bhagat, and friends Arun and Sanjay Deokar, all of whom echoed this sentiment. If all went well, we would be able to buy a portion of the upcoming jowar crop!
We returned in November 2023, to see the jowar fields and learn more about Mohi’s history of millet cultivation, memories of farming and eating jowar and bajra over the decades, and how the market works today.
On this visit, anxieties were high. Although millets thrive even in drier conditions — they don’t need to be irrigated — as rainfed crops, they require at least 2-4 good showers early in the planting cycle to be able to grow well. But there had been no rainfall since sowing the jowar a month earlier. Any further delay could mean the entire crop drying up. As if by some miracle, on our second day there, clouds gathered. And there was rain!
Cousins Sanjay and Arun Deokar in their jowar fields
Over the next few months, we stayed in touch with Sachin dada, Madhuri tai and Arun mama over the phone, receiving regular updates on the crop.
By the end of January 2024, it was time to harvest! In Mohi once more, we walked through fields of jowar, with stalks taller than each of us, swaying, heavy with tight bundles of grains. Pointing to a parcel of land, where a group of women were rapidly cutting through the crop, Arun mama said “The grain on this field is all for you”.
The harvest from earlier this year.
A few short weeks later, after the grain had been threshed and sufficiently sun-dried, 2500 kgs of jowar arrived at our brewery in Pune. Arun mama accompanied the delivery, eager to inspect our facility and see what we planned to do with his grain.
Arun Deokar with senior brewer Dinesh Thakur
On June 1, 2024, Great State Aleworks launched First Harvest, a 30% Jowar Saison, and Long View, a 100% Jowar Pale Ale — the first of our farm-to-glass millet beers brewed with jowar from Mohi.
In 2024, the brewery targets to purchase and use a total 5000 kgs of millet - roughly 18% of our annual grain (malted barley and wheat) consumption. Our goal is to continue sourcing grains from Mohi each year, and eventually from other arid and drought-prone regions around India.
Shivani Unakar is a food explorer and storyteller, particularly interested in the intersection of food, people and place. She travels with the objective of experiencing regional food cultures within their historical, geographic and political contexts.You can follow her at @shivaniunakar.
Photos by Harshavardhan Kute.
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