Sauve & Son Farms + Frau Gruber Craft Brewing
COLLABORATION 3 / JUNE 2021
The Sauve family has proudly grown premium hops since 1938, when Louis and Delia Sauve established their first hop acreage and farming operations in Eastern Washington. They built their family home in Mabton, which is still utilized as the center of their operations to this day. The farm was later continued by Louis and Delia’s son, Mike, and grandson, Rick, passing down their passion for producing quality hops from one generation to the next. With a strong dedication to continuing their family legacy, Rick’s son, Erik, has also taken on responsibilities, establishing the fourth generation of family farming. Despite an ever-expanding industry, Sauve and Son Farms remains a small close-knit family farm, allowing them to continue to be hands-on with the day-to-day farm requirements and ensure their values are reflected in all aspects of their final product.
Over the years, Mike and Rick have enjoyed evolving with the industry, incorporating new varieties, practices and equipment into their operations. As an original participant in Yakima Chief’s Green Chief® farm quality program, Sauve and Son is proud to be an early adopter of innovative farming techniques, including major investments in state-of-the-art picking technology and water-efficient drip irrigation systems. They respect the creativity reflected in the brewing community and are passionate about appealing to a variety of brewer preferences. They are thrilled to be a part of this growing industry, welcoming the many new brewers to come in the future.
In the winter of 2016, the two Augsburgers, Enzo Frauenschuh and Matthias Gruber, founded FrauGruber Brewing (FRAUENSCHUH + GRUBER = FrauGruber) and brewed their first beers as Gipsy brewers in spring 2017 at the Old Factory in Gundelfingen. Over the next three years, Ms Gruber has managed to export her beers permanently to more than 20 countries..
It quickly became clear that all the ideas, experiments and further developments could only be realized very difficult without their own brewery and the associated freedom. In Order to grow quantitatively and conceptually, FrauGruber had to grow. We were able to realize our dream of owning our own brewery in January 2020. So we came to our goal of creating a kind of “lifestyle” and building a community with which we can share the enthusiasm and passion for beer. Our aim is to test and live the incredible variety of beers, to act sustainably and, in Particular, to give beer a higher value.
It is important for us to have the greatest possible influence on technology as well as the raw materials used. Regionality is a big issue for us, which is why we have our own barley of the variety Steffi and Marthe grown by 4 friendly farmers and then fattened by a nearby malthouse.
While in 2019 there were still about 11ha (approx. 60 tons) of cultivated area, we were able to increase this to approx. 40ha (approx. 220 tons) in 2020. In this way, we ensure that we do not have to work with new high-performance varieties that are only bred for yield and resistance, but where the essential things for us (full-bodiedness, fermentation behaviour, technological processing, etc.) have faded into the background.
We also raise the 13 yeast strains used in production in Order to be able to control both the quality of the yeast and the quantity of yeast cells themselves.
The international hop varieties used from countries such as USA, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and of course Bavaria are sourced either directly from the hop grower or from our partners worldwide. Fortunately, we can trust them 100 percent, as they know our quality standards and share them as well.
