If a 100-mile diet isn’t locavore enough for you, how does sipping a one-mile beer sound?

The tiny in-house brewery at Black Creek Pioneer Village has made up a batch of brown ale from barley and hops grown on-site. They even malted and roasted the barley themselves, before making a 70-litre batch on the pioneer-style brewing system without the benefit of electricity, or even a thermometer.

“If you wanted to find out what beer tasted like in the 19th century, this is as close as you’re going to get,” said Black Creek brewmaster Ed Koren, who expects the new brew to be ready by Thursday. Samples will be available as part of the brewery’s standard $4 tour, and a few “growler” jugs will be available for takeout while sales last.

While some craft breweries — particularly in the U.S. — have been able to grow some of their own barley and hops, most of the time, it’s not on-site at the brewery, and they’re certainly not using pioneer equipment.

“I think it’s fascinating they’re able to do this,” said Brett Joyce, president of Oregon’s highly-touted Rogue Brewery, and no slouch at going local himself. In addition to ordering malt and hops from outside providers, Rogue has 17 hectares of its own hop fields, and 87 hectares of barley. They even have their own malt house.

“Economically, it’s suicide, but we thought it was the right thing to do as a matter of principle,” said Joyce.

None of Rogue’s barley and hops, however, are grown as close to the brewery as it is in Black Creek’s case, Joyce admits. At Black Creek, there was a half-hectare plot of barley about 50 metres from the brewery, while there were six or seven hop vines planted in a garden right beside the brewery. The Koren had about 45 kilos of barley at his disposal.

Bill Manley, spokesperson at California’s Sierra Nevada brewery, which each year makes a small batch of “Estate Ale” from hops and barley grown on-site, was impressed when told of Black Creek’s project.

“That’s insane. But anything that reminds people beer is an agricultural product is great,” said Manley. Sierra Nevada’s Estate Ale is done on modern equipment, and doesn’t malt its own barley, Manley pointed out.

“It’s a great idea,” said Ken Woods, president of Etobicoke’s Black Oak Brewing. While the 100-mile diet might seem like a modern fad, the Black Creek beer is really a return to brewing’s hyper-local roots, Woods said.

“Whatever you’ve got in the garden close by, that’s what you’d end up using to brew,” said Woods.

While Koren usually uses malt made to exacting technical standards by commercial malting companies, this time, there was a distinctly homemade quality to the ingredients. It was probably the most challenging brewing he’s done since the Black Creek brewery opened in 2009, he said.

“We malted it ourselves, and then basically dried it on a cookie sheet in an oven. It was our first time doing it, so it wasn’t exactly perfect. Every step was a learning process,” said Koren. The malting was done off-site, at Oakville’s Trafalgar Ales and Meads. Next year, Koren says even that step will be done at Black Creek.

The homemade ingredients behaved a little differently than the standard kind of malt, Koren said.

“Usually with the mash, the barley will be all nice and soft, but this was really hard. I ended up having to boil it for longer,” said Koren, referring to the “mashing” process, where the malted, crushed barley is mixed with hot water to form a sweet liquid called wort. The wort is strained, then boiled (which also kills any bacteria), along with hops. The hops also act as a natural anti-bacterial agent in the beer.

While Koren wasn’t aiming for inconsistent ingredients, it would have been quite normal for a small village brewery in Canada during the 1860s, Koren explained.

“There was no consistency to anything, the ingredients or the taste,” said Koren.

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Even when using commercial malt, Koren said, pioneer-style equipment — particularly the lack of refrigeration to cool down the warm wort, makes it all but impossible to get a perfectly uniform beer from batch to batch.

“No two batches will ever taste the same,” said Koren.