(upbeat music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia.

Something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit georgiagrown.com.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating, doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

- The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

Let's hit the road here in Georgia and meet the farmers, producers, makers and bakers who keep us all fed and keep us coming back for more.

Straight ahead at "A Fork in the Road".

(singers humming) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - [David] Georgia farmers, artisans, merchants, and producers, we depend on these men and women every day of our lives through the choices we make in the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the end game remains the same, results.

(suspenseful music) (upbeat music) It's an iconic crop, flowing fields of wheat, one of the most grown grains in the country, wheat is a crop that's usually associated with the Midwest Great Plains region of the United States, but it is actually, grown in almost every state, including Georgia.

This episode explores the spring growth and fall harvest of this ancient crop and follow the grains to a local bakery and college town brewery.

(singers humming) Let's begin this episode just outside of Athens in Danielsville to meet a farming couple who took a chance on wheat and ended up with impressive results.

(suspenseful music) We visited in the spring to see the green and then the fall to reveal the gold.

Murray and Paula Brett have gone all in to produce USDA-certified organic wheat and dry pea varieties.

The grains are grown, cleaned, and even milled fresh on site in turn offering the most sustainably-produced and high-quality product possible.

(gentle upbeat music) - My wife and I run it together, a couple part-time employees and it's what we do.

- [David] We meet a lot of peach farmers, peanut farmers here in Georgia.

We don't meet as many people growing wheat.

- No.

- [David] Tell me about how this started and what it's meant to you and Murray.

- Well, we started out to support my son.

He wanted to go into doing vegetables for farmer's markets, organic vegetables, and he cleared some land.

All this land we were gonna put cows in, got too late in the season to put in grass, and so, we put in wheat to keep it from eroding and found a market for wheat.

And it just changed everything, evolved, everything about the farm evolved after that.

Soon we started doing exclusively wheat and corn and peas.

And now, with just the two of us, it's not quite so labor intensive as some of the other vegetables that we've done in the past.

(upbeat music) - We've grown quite a number of heirloom corns and quite a number of heirloom wheats, but the Catawba we settled on, it's a little higher yielder.

A guy named David Marshall over in North Carolina State developed that, and we like it, bakers like it.

Great flour for baking bread, but this wheat behind me, you see here is Rouge de Bordeaux.

It was grown in the 1800s, developed in the 1800s in France, and higher protein makes great bread, good baking qualities, and tastes great.

(upbeat music) So, this is red wheat from the Bordeaux region of France.

It was developed in the 1800s and it's a great bread wheat.

Hand thresh that you'll see some kernels that are more translucent and a darker color.

The darker, a high protein, that's probably 13 to 15% protein right there, and it has really great baking qualities.

- [David] And you have a third wheat.

- We do grow a third wheat.

We grow viper, a soft wheat, mostly to selling for breweries and a little bit of distilleries, but we have a good relationship with Creature Comforts down in Athens, and we produce anywhere from 60 to 80,000 pounds a year of soft wheat for them.

(upbeat music) - David] You know, people think wheat, they think Great Plain.

They don't think Georgia.

Why don't they grow it as much in Georgia?

- Well, primarily soft wheat is grown in Georgia, because of the climate, but there's a line of demarcation, I'm told it's about I-20 north of which there's enough cold days for a wheat to vernalize so you can grow hard wheat in North Georgia.

We are one of the few people in Georgia who actually, produce hard wheat.

We have seed cleaning equipment and milling equipment, sifting equipment, produce flour for restaurants and bakeries, and we found a niche.

It's a niche for us and we like what we're doing.

(upbeat music) - [David] It's fascinating to see the rolling hills of flowing wheat in either season, but understanding the milling and learning the how and why of Murray constructing it, was just as impressive.

(upbeat music) - All old combines, all old equipment, and we work on it and keep it going.

So, this machine cleans probably 90% of chaff and small weed, weed seed, dirt, broken kernels out.

And then we go into another machine over here.

This is called a gravity table.

The person who designed this thing, they had it going on.

This thing floats the product on a bed of a air and it shakes at the same time.

And the heavies will actually ride to the top.

It's called a gravity table.

It works on the principle of specific gravity and the heaviest material comes up here and out of this trough and it grades.

Lightweight material goes to that part of it.

And we collect lightweight material and dispose of it.

We bought both of these pieces of equipment used and rebuilt them over the years.

And you know, to tear up, we fix 'em.

(upbeat music) From the cleaner we stored in totes.

It comes in here looking like this.

There's some corn, white corn over there in that tote bag.

And here's some Rouge de Bordeaux right here.

Take a look see.

Everybody'd be happy to produce wheat like that.

I'm sure happy to have wheat that looks like that.

It's just about the prettiest wheat I've ever grown, and people who bake with it love it too.

This machine has a pneumatic air-handling system.

So, it takes the milled product from the mill, dumps it automatically into a cyclone, and a cyclone into the sifter.

This is set up now to mill what's called artisan flour.

Artisan around the world is called 85% extraction.

That means 15% of the bran has been taken off.

(upbeat music) 28% of the bran taken out, it gives you pure flour, and we do all purpose.

Plus we do a double O flour for pasta and pizza dough.

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) Cyclone separates the material, the solids from the air.

Air goes out the top.

Some fines are collected into a second cyclone.

We either sell that for fine flour, like a cake flour, or either put it back into an all-purpose flour.

(upbeat music) I love to see people's faces when they smell freshly-ground Rouge.

All right, smell that.

- [David] Oh, wow.

Yes, sweet.

- [Murray] It never, never fail.

- [David] Oh wow, that's some sweet wheat.

- It's incredible.

This is what whole wheat looks like.

See the coarse bran that's in it.

So, the next is bread flour.

So, this is a coarse bran taken out.

There's some restaurants like Fellows Cafe up in Roswell.

They love this better than whole wheat.

And then we do, we produce corn flour also.

It's really, really fine.

And some people use this to make cakes out of.

We have several restaurants and bakeries that use it for non-gluten flour.

- [David] So, how did I find out about DaySprings Farm in the first place?

Well, that begins in the world of beer.

Creature Comforts Beer to be specific.

I learned that the wheat for Creatures ever so popular Athena beer and a few others that they make were grown right here in Danielsville.

Inspiring a visit to the Bretts resulting in the story that I'm currently sharing.

So, to top things off, Murray took me to the office where he had a cooler full of not one, but several DaySprings Farm wheat beers from a variety of Georgia breweries.

This has gotta be so much fun.

- [Murray] Good that you make something that tastes so good too, you know?

- And there's the Athena, and here's the wheat field.

(upbeat music) All right, got the Wild Heaven Made with the Rouge de Bordeaux, and then made with the Viper wheat.

We got the Monday Night Brewery field trip.

And of course, the one that inspired it, the Creature Comforts Athena.

I think we'll go with the original here.

(can popping) (upbeat music) Oh, that's summer.

That's refreshing.

Whoa!

Thank you, Murray.

It's a farm built on faith and maintained through a commitment to sustainability and quality for their community and beyond.

(singers humming) So naturally, we journey just up the road to learn more about the inspiration of this episode, a Georgia-grown Creature born in Athens.

(upbeat music) The Creature was born in 2014, and as it has grown, so has the positive impact in the communities they serve.

The company founders say they exist to foster human connection and be a force for good in the world.

Well, this old tire shop turned tap room seems to foster human connection and the beer they serve has become legendary.

Not just in Athens, but all over the USA, and the founders will tell you it's been quite the ride.

(gentle upbeat music) - From the beginning, and when it was just five of us, you know, we knew that we, one, wanted to build a different type of business and really thought that we had the opportunity to just add more to the local scene of craft beer here, both through how we support communities and the type of business we built, but really the types of beers we'd make as well.

- Well, I remember the beginnings of Creature Comforts.

My first memory was trying to find Tropicalia.

I'd go to these places and I'd be digging through the back and I'd actually, go to the person who owned the store and said, "Do y'all have Tropicalia in the back?"

And they're like, "One six pack.

You can have one six pack."

- And whatever the price was, was what it was.

- Exactly.

- We wanted to be a business that people really looked at Creature Comforts and they wanted to feel good that Creature Comforts was here.

That we served a purpose within the community, that we were adding value to people's lives.

Not just beer, but something that really could be a great meeting place for folks to connect.

We didn't really know what that meant in the early days.

We had community as a pillar.

It's a little bit abstract in terms, but as we grew, we started to identify different needs within the Athens community here.

We worked with different faculty advisors from the College of Public Health and the Terry College of Business.

And they helped us understand the community's most pressing needs.

- I think there are a lot of companies who are committed to the idea of corporate philanthropy, right?

Generally speaking, those companies tend to focus on whatever their founder is passionate about.

If their founder's passionate about animals, they tend to support the SPCA.

In this case, what Creature decided to do was to really kind of ask the community to direct the giving of this company.

They didn't want to come in and feel like they were offering up the solution.

And so, you know, pretty early on what we did, we convened an advisory committee of folks.

We've got people from our local United Way, our community foundation, folks from the local government, and we essentially, asked them like, "Hey, we know how much money we're going to be able to generate.

People love our product.

We want to be a good neighbor, we want Athens to be better, because we're here.

What would y'all recommend we support?"

And it's through the advisement of that group of individuals that we've been able to selectively choose what we're directing our dollars towards, ultimately, with a goal of making the greatest impact we can have on this community.

(upbeat music) - [David] Now, I see a lot of equipment here.

- Yeah.

- A lot of barrels.

This is the original?

- Yes.

Yeah, so we opened this facility, we call it our snow tire facility.

It was an old Chevrolet dealership back in the forties, which became a tire shop later on.

And some of the old signage is still around.

We continue to brew here today, although we've built a large facility down the road about a mile away.

This continues on as a bit of an R&D facility.

It has our tap room here in Athens, Georgia, and it's just a lovely place.

It's near and dear to my heart.

You know, I hope we occupy this building forever, 'cause it's just got a really special vibe and a connection with its community.

(upbeat music) - You know, part of how we improve our community is by supporting it through our investment into the resources that we buy and that we acquire.

And so, from the very beginning, we have used different types of local ingredients in different types of beers.

As we've grown, we've actually, been able to incorporate more of that in.

So for example, Athena, which is our Berliner weisse, started out we were buying wheat from sort of a mass market supplier, if you will.

And we've since been able to transition that to DaySprings farms, which is only about 20 minutes away from us.

And then we work with them, we take that, get it malted in North Carolina at Epiphany Malters, and then we bring it back, and it's added a little bit of cost to the equation, but you know, it makes it a beer that's truly unique.

You know, no one else can really make that, because it's coming from, you know, local produce.

And so, we think that's a really cool story and a really unique thing to be able to do.

We've also worked with the University of Georgia and their UGArden program, as well as a lot of other local farmers on, you know, Ronda's Blueberries or Pearson's Peaches.

So, we've been able to incorporate a lot of that stuff into beers at different times.

- One of the first things we ever did was to invite the local farmer's market to set up shop on Wednesdays.

People could also have a beer, while they shop for their local produce.

That really became an entree into this community in a lot of different ways, mostly, because we use agricultural products here and you know, as brewers.

So, it created a lot of relationships for us.

And I think it was a great step.

- It's great to have, you know, what's fresh and vibrant and in season come into the brewery.

It really draws a lot of inspiration for our brewers and our consumers and connects them to a time and place.

(upbeat music) - [David] Other than where it's all grown, this is where it comes in, this is where it all starts.

- Absolutely, yeah.

We receive it in a silo outside from a maltster.

This is a malted barley that we're talking about, which is really the soul of beer.

It comes in on these conveyors, it gets weighed out here, and then we mill it in a two roller mill, which is adjustable so we can really refine how finely we want to grind it.

We want to grind it, because we're exposing the starch on the inside of that kernel.

It drops on these conveyors after it's ground up and then we shoot it off up into the brewhouse.

(upbeat music) We mill, and then we mash.

Mash is when we mix it with hot water.

That begins to convert the starch into sugar.

Some enzymes inside the malt that do that work for us.

And once that's finished, we just warm that up.

So, we're gonna separate the solids from the grain from the liquid that we're really interested in.

The solids actually, go to local cattle farms that just closes the loop on that waste stream.

So, it's really effective.

(upbeat music) After we're finished laddering, we get the spin drain out.

We're collecting wart here in our kettle, and wart is the name for it until we add yeast.

And that's when we begin to call it beer.

We begin to boil it.

We want to clarify it so it gets some of the protein to coagulate out.

And that also gives us the opportunity to boil hops.

So, hops are not really bitter unless they're boiled.

Hops really provide a counterpoint to the malt from a culinary point of view.

The longer you boil 'em, the more bitterness you get.

After you're finished with this boil, usually takes about 60 minutes, we shoot it into this whirlpool, spins around and around, and that allows the solid particulate that's left mostly in the form of hops to collect in the middle of that whirlpool and then settle out into the floor into a cone.

(upbeat music) - All right, I hear something bubbling.

- Absolutely.

Yeah, this is a fermentor.

So, this is the next step in the process.

Once we feed that wart to the yeast here in a fermentor, it is going to eat all the sugar.

It's gonna make alcohol, it's gonna make carbon dioxide, it makes flavor, and it makes a little bit of heat as well.

So, this is really when, you know, this sort of sugary water that we've been making in the brew house turns into what we all recognize as beer.

- All right, so we're outta the production facility.

This is kind of the last step.

- Exactly right.

- All right.

- Yeah, so once we're done fermenting back here, we go through a separation process in the centrifuge.

We get into a bright tank, we do a bunch of quality checks.

We taste it, we send it through a sensory panel to make sure it's tasting good.

And as soon as it clears all its checks, we're ready to send it into a package.

(upbeat music) - [David] A big part of this company is helping others, not just individuals, but also newer companies like Our Culture Brewing through the power of collaboration.

- It's the most collaborative industry I've ever worked inside of.

In fact, we did a residency program for a Black-owned brewery startup out of Atlanta, Our Culture.

We met the guys from Our Culture, the founders of that organization, and essentially, set up what would, and for all intents and purposes, like a year-long apprenticeship program where we identified their counterpart at Creature Comforts and set up one-to-one mentorship relationships, where they got to come on site, get, gather information from us.

We shared all of our SOPs, standard operating procedures.

They got to brew a beer with us.

We did a collaboration release with them.

Again, just really trying to invest in the development of another group.

I think there's probably something in the heart and soul this industry that lends itself to that type of collaboration.

I haven't quite figured it out, but I'm very happy that it is the case, 'cause I feel like we benefit from it in so many different ways.

(upbeat music) - So, be it an IPA, a lager, a pilsner, or a DaySprings Farm wheat beer, you have your pick of the pack.

Creature Comforts has expanded from Athens across the country to Los Angeles, California, and continue to leave their legacy by extending kindness and mastering their craft in the world of beer.

(singers humming) We now take a trip from Athens to Atlanta to a sophisticated, chef-driven farm to table restaurant that showcases Georgia-grown wheat in their menu.

(upbeat music) You will find both visitors and chefs roaming the backyard garden of the Chastain fittingly known for its convenient location across the street from Chastain Park.

A part of town where I actually, grew up.

This area for me personally, offers a sense of nostalgia.

But as you step foot in the bakery, there's a scent as well.

Be it executive chef Christopher Grossman, who we featured in a previous episode, showcasing Bill Yoder's exotic Georgia-grown tomatoes, or the work of celebrated pastry chef Christian Castillo, who has a particular love of the varieties of wheat that are grown and delivered from DaySprings Farm.

- The whole idea of the Chastain is to bring a lot to the table to the community, right?

So me, the best way to do is using the best ingredients, but not choose the best.

Sometimes you need really good nutrition ingredients, and I think flour is one of those ingredients that is lacking.

Farmers that are growing flour is so important.

Wheat, you know, it's so important that it's healthy for you.

It has a lot of nutrients for your body.

So that's the cool part, you know, that we can do something for the community to help the farmers and represent them very well.

- And it is important for you to know the farmer, know where your food comes from, and it's important to a place like the Chastain and what you serve for your customers to know.

We know where it's coming from.

We know what's in these ingredients.

- Yes.

(upbeat music) - People come here for incredible meals from Chef Christopher, but you also walk right in and you see all the creations you and your team create.

- The most popular probably is the cat head biscuits.

We make a sandwich in the morning, we make English muffins.

Also, we make croissants, pano chocolate cookies.

The cookies we use all get our flour from DaySpring Farm.

Muffins, I mean, I can keep naming.

- Yeah, yeah, I'm getting hungry.

Neither of us had breakfast, right?

(upbeat music) Well, this is fun.

You get to work with this beautiful backdrop here of the garden.

- Yes, it is really fun.

- Yeah.

- And I have right here the sourdough what we make here at the restaurant.

We use the Rouge de Bordeaux.

We use a little bit of the Catawba flour.

- Yeah.

- All from DaySpring farm.

We have order starter that we use, actually the starter with the Rouge de Bordeaux.

A little salt and water.

So, it's very simple, beautiful process.

It takes about two days to do the sourdough that we sell here at the restaurant.

- And explain why it takes two days.

- So, what we do is trying to do a really low bulk fermentation.

So, all the enzymes of the flour actually breaks and it's healthy for you.

So you get all the nutrients and you know, like we have actually, a lot of people that's gluten free and they actually, buy and can eat the sourdough.

- Oh, neat.

- So, it has a lot of benefits when you do a really low, cold fermentation.

- And I love how simple it is.

And it's so neat that I was just at the farm and I saw, yeah, there's the Rouge de Bordeaux.

Right there is the Catawba.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

I love it.

- [Christian] It's perfect.

Beautiful, right?

(gentle upbeat music) So now we can see that it's already very tense.

- Oh, wow.

- Feels a lot like gluten.

- [David] It's almost transparent.

It's neat to kind of break it down like this.

- And you see the difference in the color too, right?

So, it's not like regular white flour that you get in the store.

- Yeah, it's not bleached.

- It's not bleached, exactly.

(upbeat music) Now, we put the sourdough in a container, and then we do a bulk proofing in the walk-in- - Okay.

- for 24 hours.

- This is 24 hours later?

- This is 24 hours later.

That you can see has a lot of bubbles.

- Oh yes, yeah.

- You see?

It's like a spider net, you know.

(upbeat music) So now, we're going to let this rest.

- [David] Okay.

- And then we're going to shape it and it's going to take another proofing moment that is going to take several hours, and then we're going to take it.

- I hope people appreciate this bread, because I'm starting to appreciate it even more, all right.

(upbeat music) Chef Castillo then whipped up some of the Chastain's famous cat head biscuits baked with DaySprings wheat, of course.

It's just different when it's cooked this way.

It's just, it's a different level.

It's so natural.

Along with a few pastries and other artistic culinary wonders coming from the talented team here at the Chastain.

(upbeat music) It's been fun.

Making the bread, making the biscuit, meeting your team.

You run a great business, have a beautiful garden.

And you and Chef Christopher are inspirations.

- Thank you so much.

Thank you for coming.

- Yeah, has Murray had one of these?

- Yes.

(David laughing) - [David] It's quite amazing to see how this 95-acre DaySprings Farm has spread its wings of wheat all over the country in so many tasty ways.

This wheat through its unique flavor, be it beer or bread, delivers the story of this land and the family who grows it.

I'm David Zelski.

See you at the next "Fork in the Road".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by.

(upbeat playful music) - [Narrator] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating, doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

(gentle upbeat music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit georgiagrown.com.