Broadcast Date: November 12, 2024 | 11:30am - 12:30pm Central
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Webinar Summary
Before a few years ago, few people in the West had heard of fonio. The millet type Digitaria exilis has been cultivated in Western and Central Africa for more than 5,000 years. Records of beer brewing with fonio stretch back into antiquity. Fonio, which grows up to two crops per year in the Sahel at the edge of the desert, requires no irrigation, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no fungicides, no chemicals at all. It grows well in poor soils and requires no tilling. Received steamed and pre-gelatinized, fonio is a remarkable brewing grain. It saccharifies easily as an adjunct or with use of enzymes, it is gluten free, and most importantly unlike many sustainable grains, it creates highly desirable (from a Western perspective) flavors and aromas in beer. At the same time, it resists climate change and brings food security to thousands of smallholder farmers. This seminar will give you everything you need to know to make fonio a useful and meaningful part of your roster of fermentables.
Learning Objectives
- Review the history of fonio
- Fonio production and sustainability
- Modernized fonio processing
- Suitability for beer production
- Organoleptic properties
- Recipe design
- Cultural considerations
- Procurement
About the Presenter
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Garrett Oliver is the brewmaster of The Brooklyn Brewery, the author of
The Brewmaster’s Table, and the Editor-in-Chief of
The Oxford Companion to Beer. He has been brewing craft beer since 1989. An original board member of Slow Food USA, he later went on to become a Councilor of Slow Food International. In 2014 Garrett was the recipient of the James Beard Award as the country's top drinks professional. In 2020 he founded the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling (MJF), a 501(c)(3) grant-making non-profit organization that funds scholarships for technical education in the brewing and distilling fields for people of color. Garrett began brewing with fonio in 2019 and in 2024 led “Brewing For Impact,” a program of seven extraordinary fonio-based collaborations with breweries on four continents, including a fonio stout with Guinness, and a 100% fonio beer with Carlsberg.
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