- I've always enjoyed beer, but, and especially craft beer, but it's my sense of satisfaction from this is creating a product that other people can enjoy.

- Microbrew is a definition of of size.

So the larger you produce in barrel quantities, a barrel is 31 gallons.

So right now we're on track to produce upwards of three to 400 barrels.

- I run about a 75 minute boil, during that boil that's when I had my hops.

- I think long term, I'm probably gonna have to fallow 35 to 40% of my family's legacy of land.

So what do I do with those lands?

I think if you just see yourself as a victim in the water thing and don't take actions to improve your lot, you will be a victim.

And so one of these drought tolerant plants is agave, and agave is part of the asparagus family.

So if you look at this... - [Man] Oh yeah, it looks like a giant stock of asparagus.

- It looks like a giant stock of asparagus.

- Where we're standing here is the alley where we do our agave processing.

The first step which has to happen for any agave processing, is the cooking of the plants.

- They know what they're doing.

And so when we tasted their stuff, we've decided to go with them and they have done fabulous bottles with us.

- In our brewing endeavor, we look at where we get our ingredients and we realize that they all come from a common platform, and that's the ag industry.

Without the farmers nationwide doing what they do, we would not be able to do what we do.

- If you look at your returns as a return per acre foot of water, if you look at your limiting factor, I would argue there's nothing better than a crop that uses almost no water.

- Farmers are desperate to find a economic alternative to keep farming.

- Like, how did we get here into a spot that is so tough for farming and these ag communities and what have you.

Really, I think this is more a story of like adaptation.

- Two, three.

(indistinct) (crowd cheering) - [Narrator] Production funding for "American Grown."

My job depends on ag.

Provided by James G. Parker Insurance Associates, ensuring and protecting agribusiness for over 40 years.

By Gar Bennett, the Central Valley's growing experts.

More yield, less water, proven results.

We help growers feed the world.

By Brandt, professional agriculture, proudly discovering manufacturing and supplying the ag input that support the heroes who work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By Unwired broadband.

Today's internet for rural central California, keeping valley agriculture connected since 2003.

By Hodges Inc.

Battery storage systems.

Would you rather invest in PG&E's infrastructure or your own.

By Harrison Co. Providing family farms with the insights they need to make the best possible strategic M&A and financial decisions.

By Sierra Valley Almonds, dedicated to sustainable agriculture and water efficiency for a brighter farming future.

By Cal-Pacific Supply, providing agriculture the field supplies needed to keep field operations on track.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family owned for over 50 years, dedicated to supporting agriculture and the families that grow food for a nation.

(upbeat music) - So you guys can see how much canning is kind of a pain.

It's just very labor intensive the way that we have to do it.

And that's why we don't do a ton of it.

We just have basically that for retail sales.

(upbeat music) - So our new spot will have an automated canner, so it'll we'll be able to feed cans in, it'll fill the cans, it'll seam the cans and then kick them out, finished.

We won't have this type of setup.

It'll be more automated.

We'll have to clean it and do all our clean and play cycles on it, sterilization cycles on it, but it's all one piece of equipment that will be able to run.

- I'm Dustin Hale, I'm the co-owner of Burning Sun Brewing Company with my business partner Matt Denson.

We are located in Clovis, California and we are a small micro brewery in the heart of downtown Clovis.

Microbrew is a definition of of size.

So the larger you produce in barrel quantities, a barrel is 31 gallons.

So right now we're on track to produce upwards of three to 400 barrels of beer annually.

So as you continue to grow, the more barrels you produce, that turns you into a regional brewery, macro brewery to where you have the large scale breweries like Anheuser-Busch or Coors.

- So what I'm trying to accomplish here with the cracking of the grain is I'm using a two roll miller behind me to expose the starches in the middle of the grain.

It's those starches that are converted into sugars that will ultimately, the yeast that we use to ferment the beer will convert into ethanol and carbon dioxide.

- Matt and I, we went to high school together.

My wife went to elementary school with Matt.

So we've had longstanding relationships for a long time.

We liked music, love going outdoors, camping together, and we just started talking about home brewing.

He was brewing in the Bay Area and I got a gift from my wife, a Mr. Beer kit, and that was a one gallon extract kit and it was pretty fun.

And when Matt moved back to town with his family, we messed around the garage like, "Hey, we should home brew."

And we kind of took our passion together and kind of started building our home brew empire of, you know, stainless steel, a five gallon kettle, then it was a 15 gallon kettle, then a 30, and it just kept going on and on from there.

(somber music) - In my father's day when he came out to western Fresno County and he had pretty reliable water, his primary focus was, you know, how do I optimize this farming operation?

How does our family do this?

And so he was very selective in the crops that he chose.

I mean, he chose crops that California had a global competitive advantage, that were not super labor intensive, crops that we could grow better and more productively here with these fine soils and the latitudes that we find ourselves.

So we chose almonds, pistachios, processing tomatoes, and a host of other crops.

He was very strategic in that.

Today, given the water constraints and issues we have, I think my goal is to figure or my mission, how do I optimize the lands that I can't farm?

So I think long term I'm probably gonna have to fallow 35 to 40% of my family's legacy of land.

So what do I do with those lands?

And this is my challenge.

And so I regret in some ways, but part of the solution is on some of the most productive and diverse prime farm land in the United States, I've gotta put solar and generate income.

I'm not selling the land, I'm gonna lease it out, generate income from solar.

We purposely moved some of our crops out of this region to other regions of the state where there was more reliable water.

And then lastly, I'm looking at alternative crops that simply don't require as much water.

And so really I think this is more a story of like adaptation.

I mean I can keep joining my fellow farmers and arguing and bickering over the state and the feds and how they manage water.

But here on the ranch we wanna figure out what are the steps that we can take to have more control over our own destiny.

This is an Americana.

There's over here, right up here these are weberi.

- [Man] And do they all kind of grow about the same?

They're not super in particular.

- Well this we don't know.

(men laughing) So this is a funny thing.

So we had this test plot, we bring them out here, we put 'em under drip irrigation, we farm 'em all identical to one another.

And so we don't know, maybe we shouldn't be irrigating like this variety right here, the weberi which is just as beautiful variety.

It's doing well here in California, but we don't know if this one requires less water at different times, less anything than the Americana.

You know, my interest in agave, it kind of interesting, my wife started drinking more tequila because she was told that from like caloric intake or whatever, it's better to drink tequila for one reason or another than other distilled alcohols.

I happened to like tequila in mezcal and I had a moment at my house where I was thinking, what could I grow in California that doesn't require much water?

And anyway, it kinda led me to think why aren't I growing some of these plants?

These are desert plants.

They, unlike most normal crops, they respirate at night and they go dormant during the heat of the day.

They can grow in a desert.

And I thought, I've gotta get like put together a test plot, put a handful of varieties in there and just see how they'll do on the west side.

At the same time I drove all over the west side and surprisingly was pleased to discover there are agave all over the place, many of which are not being irrigated that seem to be thriving.

So I was really intrigued by this.

And at the same time I'm reading articles that both tequila and mezcal are some of the fastest growing distilled spirits by category in the United States.

Here about a year ago they surpassed whiskey and they're on their way to surpass vodka, the US number one distilled spirit in dollar value.

So this is Craig Reynolds.

So he's grown the agave.

- [Man] Is he up north?

- Yeah, he's the woodland guy.

- [Man] Yeah.

- And the founder of this organization.

And then, so he's supplied a couple of these different just craft distillers with the agave.

Well actually this is a group of people that are all interested in agave and we have a couple California distillers here.

We have a number of growers.

We have interested parties that are, they're considering this as a viable crop here.

And so we're just kind of spreading the word and kind of trying to build the community, if you will, of those interested in this new crop.

- I'm Craig Reynolds.

I'm the founding director and I guess president now of the California Agave Council.

And we're here for a board meeting that we held at Stuart Wolf's office here.

And we had a great meeting today.

Today was really focused on firming up our mission and our vision for this industry, which is in its very early stages and, but it's an important time to have that conversation about where we hope this industry can go and be part of California's agricultural future.

- So we're experimenting in Fresno area where we have a huge water shortage and if this flies and if we can grow agave and it works and if the community globs onto the idea that there's an agave spirit that tastes great grown here in California, we're golden if it works.

But we don't know if it's gonna work.

So there's a two part thing.

Will it grow?

Will distillers use it?

Will the product taste good?

And will the market then glob on and say yes, "We'll try a California grown agave spirit."

We can't call it tequila, we can't call it mezcal.

It's gotta be something else.

We've planted enough plants than in about five years, six years, 'cause it takes that long to harvest.

There's gonna be a giant amount of liquid in California.

An agave spirit.

(dramatic music) - As everybody is aware, the Central Valley is a prime location for ag.

It encompasses many processes, business empires, food vendors, breweries, wineries, no matter where you look, ag is around us, whether we know it or not.

Without ag and the farmers, we would not be here today.

We utilize different types of grain, different types of barley, different hops.

All of those come from an agricultural source of somewhere in some parts of either California or the Pacific Northwest.

We get our hops locally sourced from Yakima Chief and Yakima Valley Hops.

The weather is very conducive in the northwest region of the United States for prime growth of hops.

And so without those hops going back into the cycle of beer making, we wouldn't have beer.

- Measuring out my 60 minute edition hops right now.

These are a product called Lupomax Columbus.

They're a high alf acid pop.

So I use these for bittering the beer.

(grain dropping) (upbeat music) - So when we got this place, it was a golden opportunity for us to see where we could expand.

Now we're here and we've seen some challenges.

What do you think we need to do at the new place to make it better?

- I think for us it was a proof of concept to get into this facility, start making our product, start building our brand, getting out to market.

But we've definitely reached a point where we needed a larger space to grow into.

We also are looking forward to a tap room where we can share our product with our customers without having to point them to restaurants and bars.

- Yeah, I think for me that the amount of effort here, it was fun but no drains.

- Yes.

- The limited ability, we made a mess every time we would brew.

- Yep.

- Be soaking wet.

- Yep.

- Socks would be drenched.

And we wear rubber boots.

- We were limited on the ability to scale our equipment because of the electrical limitations in the building.

So we also have equipment now that we couldn't install in this facility, like our grain crusher.

So we've been doing it with a home brew mill up until this point.

So we're looking forward to getting that installed.

So yeah, a lot of good things will come from this transition to the new spot.

(upbeat music) - We were at our warehouse for about 18 months and the opportunity came up for another building and when we found out that the building was a previous brewery, that sparked our interest.

So we went and met with the current business owner and went through the property and kind of going through pros and cons list of is this what we wanted to do?

We knew that we wanted to have a tap room.

It was a little bit faster than probably what we were wanting to do, but the opportunity was right.

And so it took a team of friends and family to put this together in a short amount of time.

Matt was busy brewing on the brewery side 'cause we had to have enough capacity and have beers on hand to open.

So as we were building the wall and the taps behind us, Matt was on the brewery side brewing at the same time.

(somber music) - [Woman] One, two, three.

(indistinct) (crowd cheering) Awesome.

- Awesome.

Great to be here and great to have everybody come out and support us.

Great.

- Hey, welcome to Clovis.

Thank you for opening your business in Clovis.

This is what we're all about.

You're bringing jobs to our community, you're bringing a great brewery to our community.

I know you moved a block away, but we're happy that you're right here on railroad and congratulations on this fantastic new facility and bring joy to our community.

Gimme a hand.

- Yeah.

(crowd clapping) - My name is Ana Diaz and my husband Mark Peterson.

We are the owners of Rancho Del Sol with our family and we grow seven different varieties of mezcal here in Montecito, California.

- When we first acquired this property, it was an avocado ranch, but with the drought and not watering the trees, they really suffered and died.

So then we were thinking about what should we use this land for about five, six years ago.

And as we did the research, it came out that these agaves need little water, don't need much work, and seemed like the perfect thing for us to grow.

And that's how we got started with growing the agaves.

- The first step which has to happen for any agave processing, is the cooking of the plants.

We use this stainless steel open top tank right here.

It's got a lid, we fill it full of the split and trim and clean the agave.

We put the lid on there and we steam it for about two or three days.

What goes in as a white and green plant comes out as a dark brown cooked plant with a really sweet molasses style sweet flavor.

It's got maybe like sweet potato aromas.

So it goes from being very grassy and green to being very sweet and brown.

- My name is Henry Tarmy, I'm CEO at Ventura Spirits and one of the four founding partners.

Top level everything we make, all kinds of booze are they're farm products, they're agricultural products.

If we didn't have something growing on farms and ranches, then we wouldn't have anything to put in bottles.

One of the main things that animate us Ventura Spirits as a company in terms of deciding what to make, what to put through our stills is just to think about, all right, where do we fit into the local agricultural framework?

You know, being as close as we can literally and figuratively to farmers is the place we want to be.

We have diverted, for example, millions of pounds of strawberries.

We're working with a lot of blueberries and these are situations where maybe berries are over ripe or for some combination of reasons they can't make it to the store shelf.

And so we're making beautiful brandies and fruit (indistinct) and that sort of thing, by looking around and saying, alright, what are people going around here?

What sort of surplus is there?

What are the needs of farmers in California in our region and how do we fit in?

And so the agave project is definitely an extension of that idea where you got plenty of farmers who are dealing with water constraints or conservation mandates.

They want to keep their land in some kind of farming, but maybe the orchard crops or other sort of heavy water using crops they had in are no longer viable.

Well agave might be a good option for these guys.

- [Man] Are you using a separate dedicated workforce?

- No.

- For this work or do you... You own your own (indistinct) I imagine.

- No, we are not.

So we do use a farm labor contractor.

Most of these gentlemen have been working with us in other parts of the ranch.

We have our own full-time employees and then we supplement with a farm labor contractor.

But you know, it's kind of funny, when we first started handling agave and planting them and growing them, I took a bright young man that came outta Cal Poly and put him in charge of the farming operations for a new crop that none of us had experience with.

The thought never occurred to me.

I have probably over a hundred guys on the ranch that grew up around these plants and they would tell us, "You don't know what you're doing."

(laughs) Which we have a lot of experts here.

I think if there's any hesitation here relating to agave is the fact that we really don't have enough distilling capacity, or we have distilling capacity, but we don't have those that are making distilled agave spirits on scale.

So, you know, I'm planting a lot of plants.

Each one of these plants ultimately when it's mature, should be able to produce about eight to 12 bottles of a distilled spirit.

And last year I planted on our ranch, just ours, about 200,000 plants.

So I'm talking to folks that have large scale distilling capabilities about the opportunity to have a California based distilled agave spirit, but that presently doesn't exist.

So I'm planning as are others betting on the (indistinct) that eventually people will want to distill this here.

And we can't call it tequila, we can't call it mezcal, so it will be an agave spirit.

You know, some of the guys from Mexico that are on our ranch have told us that we're over irrigating, but again, our summers are longer and hotter.

We have 'em on drip and we've given them less than three inches of water per year and it's hard to believe that we would be over irrigating anything.

I mean- - [Man] Well for context, gimme some other crops and how many inches they use.

- So those pistachios over there, they'll use somewhere in the neighborhood of about 40, 45 inches of water.

Almonds will use 48 to 55 depending on water quality and all this stuff.

- [Man] Are we talking about per acre?

- Per acre.

And like our processing tomatoes, we're gonna use about 32 plus or minus inches per acre and these are gonna use, two and a half to three.

It's crazy.

Forever and a day we had pioneers that came out and started planning rootstock from Europe and what have you.

And I think we realized we created our own version of red wine.

A California blend is something different than you're gonna get elsewhere, right?

My hope is that ultimately happens here.

And so where tequila's only made from one variety of agave, in all likelihood we'll create our own ensembles.

We'll have our own terroir.

That's our hope.

We're not trying to do a knockoff necessarily of tequila and espadin.

We want to create our own version and celebrate that rich legacy in Mexico and build upon it.

- [Narrator] Production funding for "American Grown."

My job depends on ag.

Provided by James G. Parker Insurance Associates ensuring and protecting agribusiness for over 40 years.

By Gar Bennett, the Central Valley's growing experts, more yield, less water, proven results.

We help growers feed the world.

By Brandt, professional agriculture.

Proudly discovering manufacturing and supplying the ag input that support the heroes who work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By Unwired broadband.

Today's internet for rural central California, keeping valley agriculture connected since 2003.

By Hodges Inc.

Battery storage systems.

Would you rather invest in PG&E's infrastructure or your own.

By Harrison Co. Providing family farms with the insights they need to make the best possible strategic M&A and financial decisions.

By Sierra Valley Almonds, dedicated to sustainable agriculture and water efficiency for a brighter farming future.

By Cal-Pacific Supply, providing agriculture the field supplies needed to keep field operations on track.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family owned for over 50 years, dedicated to supporting agriculture and the families that grow food for a nation.

(upbeat music)