The craft beer industry talks a lot about sustainability. Pledges get made. Logos get printed. But when you dig into the supply chain, most of it still runs on industrial grain from systems that treat soil health as someone else's problem.
New Belgium Brewing decided to do something different.
Working with Root Shoot Malting, Olander Farms, and Downforce Technologies, they set out to answer a simple question: can you make great beer from barley that actually removes carbon from the atmosphere?
The answer matters. Not just for brewers chasing Scope 3 targets, but for anyone wondering whether "sustainable" can ever mean more than a sign in the window.
The challenge
Brewers need malt with a verifiable climate story. Farmers need regenerative practices that actually pay off. And everyone needs data that holds up to scrutiny, not just internal dashboards and approximations.
Olander Farms had been building soil health for years through cover cropping, conservation tillage, and precision water management. Root Shoot Malting had the quality credentials, with 15 Malt Cup medals over seven years. New Belgium had the ambition to integrate real farm data into their sustainability reporting.
What was missing was the connection. The verified, audit-ready proof that these practices were delivering measurable climate outcomes.
What we did
Downforce Technologies provided independent monitoring using our ISO 14064-aligned methodology. We tracked soil carbon trends going back to 2017, assessed field-level inputs, and generated verifiable data that could flow through the entire supply chain.
No estimates. No industry averages. Just real numbers from real fields.
Why it matters
This project showed that the pieces already exist. The farmers are doing the work. The maltsters are producing quality grain. The brewers are ready to buy it. What's been missing is the connective tissue: trusted data that lets everyone prove what they're doing.
