That next pint of beer you buy might be a boon to Bay State tourism and agriculture.
That’s the hope of local brewers, farmers and state officials, who last night introduced the Massachusetts Craft Brewers Trail and the Craft Brewers Passport, a pocket-sized guide to the state’s 60-plus beer makers, at the Harpoon Brewery in Boston’s Seaport District.
The project was funded by the Massachusetts Brewers Guild, with grants from the state Department of Agricultural Resources and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Beer tourism and local sourcing are big trends in the brewing world. The goal is to capitalize on those trends and on Massachusetts’ status as one of the nation’s most productive beer-making states.
“(The Craft Brewers Trail) brings people into our breweries, promotes tourism and makes the connection between brewing and agriculture,” said Rob Martin, director of the Massachusetts Brewers Guild and owner of Mercury Brewing Co. in Ipswich.
A cottage farming industry has grown up around the beer-making community. Massachusetts brewers get just 2 percent of their raw materials from state growers, including grains from Valley Malt in Hadley and hops from Four Star Farm in Northfield. However, that number was zero just a couple of years ago.
When it comes to specialty ingredients such as herbs, fruit, honey, maple syrup and even oysters, about ?90 percent of those products used by Bay State brewers are purchased from Massachusetts farmers, according to the state agriculture department.
“Massachusetts is one of the few states that have seen an increase in the number of local farms,” said commissioner Gregory C. Watson.
