Brewing Maine’s Future at Blue Ox :Joel Alex

Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you're listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. We are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. And today we have with us Joel Alex, who is the founder of Blue Ox Malthouse and also a longtime resident of Maine. Enjoyer of Maine, education, all things Maine. So welcome and thanks for coming on Radio Maine today. You grew up in Old Town, which for people who don't know Maine as well, is kind of the Bangor-ish area.

Joel Alex: Yeah, north of Bangor. I grew up about a quarter mile or half mile from the University of Maine in Orono.

Lisa Belisle: And then you ended up getting your education at Colby?

Joel Alex: Yeah, so I was fortunate enough to get into Colby College, so I went to college in Waterville and there was definitely a lot of really exciting resources. A great college. I don't think I could get in now. It's definitely become more prestigious since I was there, but it's done a lot of really great things for that area. So I'm really excited.

Lisa Belisle: You and I were talking before we started recording about how you've been all over the state. You now live in Biddeford, but you spent time all the way up in Limestone, which is very far north. So I guess I'm interested in your journey, and you've also been international because some of your education was abroad.

Joel Alex: My kind of geographic history was, I grew up in Old Town, like you said, and went to school in the Bangor area and was really fortunate, growing up, to participate in an organization called CISV. That was a youth education, leadership and peace education program. And through that I got to travel a bunch up through high school. I was at Colby. While at Colby I was fortunate enough to be able to go abroad for a year. I studied in Madagascar, studied international conservation and sustainable development. And then the second half of the year I spent in Geneva, Switzerland where I was able to do studies in the international policy arena, kind of see sustainable development on both ends, as you say, on the ground, and then at that high up policy level. That year abroad got me really interested in Maine and what it looks like to do sustainable development at home.

And so when I came back, I spent the last year at Colby, as part of my environmental studies capstone, looking at different energy uses and other environmental policy issues here in the state, and got really excited about doing economic development work here. I don't think I had that language exactly at the time, but with time I've been able to do that. So yeah, I've traveled all over the state. Actually, after college I didn't travel very much at all. I went to Farmington for about four, almost five years where I did community organization around mapping and geospatial education and sense of place, and worked on a project called Maine Trail Finder, which is really great. Interspersed with that, I did a little work with the Ecology School, which is down near where I am now, in Saco, teaching ecology to primarily middle schoolers.

And after about four years in that community, a lot of my friends were doing food-related work. So they were either homesteaders themselves, organic farmers, somehow involved in food production or food processing. And I really got excited about working in that space that connected with this agricultural state that we live in. We talk a lot about forest products, but we have a really strong agricultural history here, and the idea of economic development, sustainable development, how do we make being part of the food system a viable economic option for these people that are doing this work and create vibrant agricultural working landscapes. So I was toying around with all this thought, I would go to grad school, and in that process I was at a farm for a birthday party potluck and talking to a craft brewer about utilizing local ingredients. And they basically were like, yeah, we have a few people who are trying to do hops but nobody's doing grain.

And I can explain that maybe a little bit later, exactly why they couldn't use that grain. But that set me off on this whole thing. I was planning to go to grad school and do all this other work around food systems and economic development. And that idea of being able to connect Maine-grown grains with the craft beer industry and what was happening with the growth there, really was exciting. So I then decided to pursue that. You asked me what my geographic history was, and it's all sort of tied into that, because at that point I lived in Old Town, I had gone to school in Waterville, lived in Farmington with a short little bit everywhere else, but like a lot of Mainers, I hadn't been to Aroostook County yet, hadn't spent a lot of time really spanning the whole state. And then I decided, in pursuing Blue Ox Malthouse, I transitioned out of my position in Farmington.

I left my apartment there. For the next 18 months, I was really based out of my car. It was not true to say that I was living out of my car, because I was spending a lot of nights on family and friends' couches and in guest rooms. But it was based out of my car, driving all over trying to put together the picture of what malting in Maine could look like. That brought me up to Limestone, which you mentioned, where I was piloting. I've spent some time in Belfast where I lived with my grandparents, spent some time down in Portland. Ultimately where I ended up, the Malthouse is at its current location in Lisbon Falls. There's a lot of really great reasons for the business to be in Lisbon and Lisbon Falls. For those who might not know, Lisbon Falls is a village of Lisbon, the town of Lisbon. So we use them interchangeably, but they're the same place. And since then I've lived in Lisbon, I've lived in Topsham and Brunswick and Freeport, Portland. I've sort of moved all over the area, and pandemic and a bunch of other reasons and housing, I found myself in Biddeford, which is now the community I call home. And I really love it.

Lisa Belisle: I'm not sure that a lot of people who are from Maine could say that they have the sense of place of the state in its entirety that you've just described.

Joel Alex: Yeah, it's interesting. I think we are really focused south. And what I mean by that is there's just this pull south. So if you're in York, Kittery, you could be going to Boston a lot anyway, so you've got this pull south. If you're in Portland, you are not often probably going up to Bangor. Freeport is considered maybe close, but we're a little bit north of there. Oh no, we're still south of Freeport. So yeah, we're still in that bubble of what people in Portland will consider close, but if they're going to do any significant travel outside of Portland, usually it's west, or I know I have a lot of outdoorsy friends, so they might go hiking in New Hampshire, or they're going south to Boston. Growing up in Bangor, even in Old Town, I knew all the towns south of Old Town to Bangor and even further south, but I couldn't tell you the towns north of me.

And then I think if you go up to Aroostook County, it's a similar thing. They know what's up there, but then it's Bangor down to Portland, and there's just this willingness to travel. And I think there's a study on what's considered local in Maine and Vermont. This is a little bit old at this point, it was a few years ago, but they were looking at what was considered local. And I think it's really funny because people up in Aroostook County consider Aroostook County local. People in Bangor would consider anything Northern Maine, Midcoast, that sort of all local. People in Portland would consider anything in Maine local. People in Massachusetts consider Maine local food. People in New York consider Maine local food, but it doesn't go the other direction. So there's definitely this interesting dynamic where even people that are growing up in Maine don't really connect with it.

And I think that's what I realized when I was abroad. I was doing a program where I was living with families. I was really focused on understanding these microcultures that existed in each place. Madagascar has 16 ethnic groups, for example, and slightly different languages. Geneva, in Switzerland, which has official languages of German, French, Italian, national languages of Romansh, and some very culturally diverse areas with very geographically centered cultures. And I realized that I couldn't really speak to it. I knew Maine was different, but I couldn't speak to why. And I really realized I didn't know as much about why Maine was different. And that was what I was excited to come back and do, and really lean into having grown up here. And so yeah, I feel like I really do have a sense of Maine as a place from top to bottom and east to west.

Lisa Belisle: It is interesting when you talk about Aroostook County and the crown of the state, where there's a very strong sense of community up in that region and there's a real sense of pride. And I actually think there is that in different pockets and places in Maine. But I think I've sensed it the most up there. And I've often wondered, is it because they are a little bit more remote from other parts of the state and they kind of have to figure out how to get along and how to have a sense of pride in where they are, because it's not necessarily an easy place to live, particularly not in the winter, let's just say.

Joel Alex: Absolutely. I mean, that resonates with me. I would agree with that. And that's probably, in some ways, as a state. In the last few decades maybe it started to shift a little bit, where Maine is more sort of in line with national politics. But I think we have this independent streak in Maine, and I think that is largely because, a colony of a colony, we've always had to take care of ourselves. And I do think you're right, the further north you go, the more away from the cultural or economic centers you are, the more you have that idea of self-reliance and that idea that we have to take care of ourselves and we have to take care of our community, because other people aren't going to take care of us. And I think that leads to a sense of independence, at least to a sense of pride in your community. And I think we've had that as a strong tradition in Maine that has persisted even against more and more connectivity with what's happening everywhere else.

Lisa Belisle: I really like the idea that we are becoming increasingly connected and kind of globalized, but also where you're from and where you're raised and where you call home, it still has a pretty significant impact on who you are as a person, which is going to be distinct, even if you're connected with somebody in a human way. It's going to be very distinct from people who may not be from that same place. And I think there is that interesting tension between those two things, that we are very much connected as humans and also in some ways very much distinct. And so to be able to have that respect in both directions, I think, when you talk about grains for example, and you talk about you can use these grains but you can't use these grains, food is a great example of how not every banana is the same banana.

Joel Alex: Our current economic system does have a lot of benefits, which we all enjoy, moving things around. But to that banana, I'm sure some people watching or listening to this will have heard this one before, that heirloom tomato that you buy at the farmer's market is something you can't get in the store. And the reason is because that heirloom tomato, or some of these really local foods that we buy, whether it's a grain or varieties, they don't travel well. So you can't get that tomato because that tomato doesn't ripen evenly, or it gets bruised really easily in shipping. And so once it's bruised, it'll start to rot. So it can't be shipped across the country to a store in California. Similarly, a lot of our tomatoes and produce comes from out west or from those areas. And varieties that might be really important to local culture might not fit into the needs of the shipping and the economic system we have, which really homogenizes what we think a tomato is or what we think a banana is.

To go back to your example, or what we think grain is, to talk more about what beer is, to just talk about the product made with the product that I make. I think that we do have to go onto the beer side of things. Maine brewers have really done a good job at staking out a really strong place as being a leader in beer, and then also starting to diversify. I mean, the largest brewery in the state right now, Allagash, is a Belgian-style brewery with Allagash White, which again, many listeners and watchers will be familiar with, but that's not the domestic pilsner that everyone expects. So I think people in Maine, maybe it's because of the independent streak, will develop more unique products. We play around a little bit more with foods and things like this, like grains. Yeah, I could really talk for hours and hours and hours about specific grain varieties. And we haven't really gone into the process of what I do yet or anything like that, but I'm going to hold back so I don't go down the rabbit hole. You just let me know.

Lisa Belisle: I would love to hear what it is that you do, the process of what you do, and actually different grain varieties. Those are all of interest to me, because I will say, as somebody who, I eat primarily vegetables, and so I've had the opportunity to be like, a grain is not a grain is not a grain. You have amaranth, you have quinoa, you have different types of grains.

And even amongst amaranths, you're going to have different types of amaranth, let's just say. So that is very interesting to me. But also, what is a malthouse? What does that even mean?

Joel Alex: Yeah, so the spiel that I give, which I've had a lot of time to hone, to explain what malted grains are, is that malted grains are to beer what flour is to bread. It's a processed grain ingredient. And just like milling grain for bakers, you can malt any grain or really any seed. So you can have a malted barley, a malted wheat, a malted rye, malted oats, malted triticale, malted spelt. Any grain or seed you can malt. And the reason that we do that is because if you take a raw grain and you crush it up and you add hot water, you get a porridge like oatmeal, or a paste. You don't get a fermentable liquid that yeast can then utilize and access starches in order to create a fermented liquid like beer. So what we do in the malting process is we take that raw grain while it's still alive and we hydrate it by soaking it in water.

Then that gets the embryo in the grain to start to grow, and it changes the chemistry. So it starts to unlock all of those starches and create enzymes that it needs to create the food to grow into a plant. That's the same food that the yeast would like to use to make alcohol. So once the embryo has done that work of converting the grain, or the starches, and freeing those up, we capture the chemistry by baking that grain back down to a dry product. And so we bake that in what we call malt kilns, but it's very lightly baked most of the time. We want to preserve that chemistry and not denature it. So at very light temperatures, often not exceeding 175 degrees Fahrenheit, 180 degrees Fahrenheit, we'll bake that down to a dry product. And then when brewers take that grain, they lightly crush it up, add water to it, you get all these sugars that can dissolve into the solution, and they take that and then they boil it, add hops, maybe add some other adjunct flavors or characteristics before they pitch the yeast. And that's eventually what becomes beer, or they can take it further and distill it. As a society, we use a lot of malted barley and malted products in baked food goods. Anyone who has any cold cereal almost ubiquitously is eating a malted barley product every day. Anyone who buys any sort of bread from the store, that's maybe not from the bakery section, but even a lot that's in the bakery section is going to have malted barley flour, because it adds some sweetness, it adds some color.

So it's used in a lot of baked goods for that sweetness and that color. That maltose is that sugar that's named with the malting process. And we can bake at different temperatures to produce more color or to produce more flavor, to produce more toasty, cracker, graham cracker kind of flavors. And anyone who is a beer drinker listening or watching this, familiar with the different colors of a pilsner or maybe an Oktoberfest beer or a stout, the malt lends that color. Unless it's like a cherry fruited beer and it's red, if it's anything on that brown from straw up through a dark roasted color, that's coming from the malted grain, just baked or processed at different temperatures. So anyway, all the sugar and alcohol is coming from malt. So after water, it's the largest ingredient in beer, but most people don't realize it's in beer, because everyone just hears hops. So they're like, what makes a beer? Hops and water? And I still have, my grandmother passed a couple years ago, but even up to her passing, she'd be like, how's the hops? How are the hops going? And I was like, well, they're going great, grandma, thank you.

Lisa Belisle: I give her credit for asking, so we'll start with that.

Joel Alex: Oh no, she was great. My whole entire family has been super supportive of me.

Lisa Belisle: That was something I was going to ask before, which is, you grew up in Old Town. I'm assuming there weren't a lot of people wandering around your high school halls saying, I'd like to get into food chemistry and social entrepreneurship and global and economic sustainability. I don't know, maybe there were. There weren't in my high school.

Joel Alex: No, there weren't in my high school.

Lisa Belisle: So tell me, but there must've been something about that family background, in that context, that caused you to be supported in going this direction.

Joel Alex: So my mom's side of the family is from Rumford. They worked in the mills over in Rumford, a mixture of the Italian side and just some of the other communities that were over in Rumford. Especially in the mid-century, you just have a lot of energy and pride. And you were mentioning pride in the community and in doing well and investing in children. My dad grew up in Unity, and so he came from, when he was really young, it was still a working dairy farm, and I wish I remembered the variety of cows that he worked with, but he said that his grandfather was one of the last farmers to be working with this one breed of cow in the area. And as he grew up, the dairy farm shut down, but my grandparents still lived and worked on that. So I grew up going to this farm and exploring that and having that connection to rural agriculture, in that sense of place.

And this farm had been in the family for years. So I would go up in the attic and you'd find the old hair wreaths that they used to make in the 1800s to preserve hair, and the old Civil War swords and things like this. We would sort of go find all those treasures. So there's definitely a strong sense of place that I connected to with both of my parents. And then my parents themselves, after graduating Colby, that's where they met. They traveled around. My dad was in the military, but they had an option of, I think going to Japan or coming back home to be near family. And they decided to come back home, be near family, and they started a Montessori school in Old Town, which they ran for almost four decades. And I think their desire to really be a part of their community, to really be a part of Maine, to make their community better, and their entrepreneurial spirit, it's not a business in the way that a lot of people think about businesses, but there's probably enough people watching or listening to this who understand that nonprofits are businesses and schools are businesses, and they were able to successfully run that, and had thousands of kids in the community go through the school.

So I had that model of change makers and of people that would be that entrepreneurial spirit. Not that I immediately thought that's what I was going to do. Probably a lot of kids, you grow up thinking you're going to do anything but what your parents do. And I did not go into education. My older sister did, and she went into education, is a great teacher. I took my path that was a little more wandering at first. At Colby, one of the great things about going to a liberal arts school, when you don't know what you want to do, is you get a lot of opportunity to get exposed to a lot of different subjects and different opportunities, and to try things. So I initially went in thinking I'd do an anthropology major, then I got really excited about environmental studies, growing up in Maine and having access to all this beautiful outdoor space was really important to me growing up.

And then as I got into that space and I started to really understand the importance of sustainability, which is really about people. I think that's missed. People think that sustainability is about the environment, but sustainable development is about not reducing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. So it's about meeting the needs of the present while not compromising the needs of the future. It's people-based, and that's economic, that's cultural, and then that's ecological. And I think we really focus in on that ecological piece, as a society, but we need to remember that it's all of those things, and that people are the center of what sustainable development is and what sustainability is. And I did some graduate coursework in strategic sustainable development and I was just really interested in that. And food systems really piqued my interest because they're connected to everything, and we all have, if I wanted to be an educator and to help people understand what sustainability is, food is such a great, powerful tool to do that, because we all eat. You mentioned already, talked about your diet.

It's so tied to our personal sense of identity. It's tied very often to the place that we are, to the community that we're in. So it's cultural, it's our healthcare, it's tied to our energy, it's tied to just so many different facets of our life, and we all have a relationship with it that we interact with every day. So if we can get people to start just thinking about their food as they consume it and not mindlessly consume it, I think they'll start to ask the questions of, how is this chip that I am eating produced? Where did this potato initially come from? And I think as we get curious and start asking those questions, we inevitably get to a place where often the food that's better for us is also better for the environment, it's also better for our communities.

So I just got really excited about that space. And it was paying attention there, in a little bit of naivete, that basically got me to a point where I was at that previously mentioned potluck in Canaan, Maine on a farm and was like, we have this whole missing piece of our food system here in Maine that we could really be increasing the economic viability of our farms. I had friends that were specifically doing dry goods, like grain growing, and talking to them and talking to others, one of the big stories I heard was the need for premium mid-size markets, because the size of agriculture here is too small. It's too small to compete on a commodity market, but it's large enough that it's really hard to just make your living with a farm if you're only doing farmer's markets. Farms are supported by something in that larger size. And so I was like, well, how can I develop mid-size premium markets where you can really increase the economic viability of these farms by providing a high value product or rotation crop? Because one of the great things about grain is that it is a rotation crop with other foodstuff. So it's really part of it. And I hear me talking a lot about food, it's just reminding me, this thing that I've really been talking a lot about recently, which is, as a society, we don't treat or think of beer and alcohol as being food or being part of the food system, but it is a huge part of the food system, and the amount of grain used in alcohol, at least in Maine and the Northeast, I think exceeds the amount used in baking, for example.

We just really have this big opportunity to rethink that, and to understand that our alcohol choices, and where the ingredients in our alcohol come from, actually affect our communities and can support local agriculture, and they can support that Maine potato or broccoli. Speaking of the county, I spent a bunch of time up there because we have, it has changed over the years, but some of the more recent numbers that I have is about 54,000 acres in potatoes up in Aroostook County. And those potatoes are grown in rotation with something else. And a lot of the time that's grain, and small grains, that actually makes Maine the largest producer of small grains in the Northeast, because when you get down to other really large agricultural areas like Northern New York and Pennsylvania, corn is kind of king. And in northern Maine, because of the potato rotation, and historically because of the growing season, corn hasn't done particularly well.

So you don't see that as a really staple crop in northern Maine, where we have all this scale and agricultural data. So it's like, how do we support that industry? And I saw malting and I was like, ah, that seems like a great idea. Somebody's got to do it. I looked around at the time, in 2012 when I was doing this, there was maybe five operations in North America, all between three and five years old or younger. The people who started them were home brewers, were environmental consultants, social workers, engineers, former pharmaceutical, that's the range of people. And I was like, well, if these people can do it, why can't I do it? And then I leaned right in. I sort of jumped in feet first and I've been doing it ever since.

Lisa Belisle: Joel, did you go through a Montessori education?

Joel Alex: I did. I did go through a Montessori education. I was at my parents' school for 9, 10 years before I went to another school. And I think I did say this, and that's why you probably asked, my parents started the Stillwater Montessori School and that was the school that they ran. And it was an amazing school. It's a very child-centered, multi-aged classrooms. You're learning with peers, but different peers at different levels. There's a lot of self-choice, so there's certainly structure, but you also know that you have to do your reading four times a week, but you get to choose when you're going to do that reading, or that you need to have it done by Friday, but between now and then you get to do it. So there's definitely a lot of independence, I think, that you can get, a lot of one-on-ones. So yeah, I am a product of Montessori education.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I asked that because I also went through, at least early on, Montessori, and I had my kids go through early on Montessori education. And what I liked about it was the fostering of independence, the structure, the fostering of independence, but also in particular the hands-on nature of it. I remember vividly being in Orange Park kindergarten down in Jacksonville, Florida when my dad was in the Navy. And part of what we did was they showed us how to clean the mirrors and how to set the tables. And so when we think about that as such a basic, what's the big deal? But you're using your hands to do these things and there's a direct output. And so when you're talking to me and you're telling me this story of, I'm going to do this thing that has a theoretical base, but I really want to find a very practical ramification of the work that I'm doing to bring that to fruition, it kind of all seems to make sense from the way you're describing it.

Joel Alex: Yeah, I've never thought of it exactly in that way, tying it to the Montessori school. But you're right, Montessori is great because there's a lot of focus on practical skills. Pouring, not with needles at a very young age, but sewing, or making food, making tortillas when we were learning about Mexico, for example, and just all those different connections. The way that I have thought about what you're saying is, I mentioned that initially I was going to go to grad school. My plan was to go get an MBA after working in rural Maine as a community organizer. I interacted with hundreds of nonprofits, mostly in the conservation space. And my observation for a lot of them was that these are really awesome organizations that are trying to do a lot of really good in their community with their limited resources, and they could really have a much bigger impact in their mission areas if they just had some more professional skills.

And I don't think so much anymore, but certainly 15, 20 years ago, I think there was still this idea that professional skills, corporate, is bad and you don't want that in the nonprofit space. But it's like, one thing that one business does really well is bring resources to solve a problem, whether it's producing a widget or providing a service, really effective at that. And some of those skills could be really utilized to really help these organizations broaden their impact. And that's kind of got me into social entrepreneurship thinking. So I was going to go back, get an MBA, do some kind of joint degree in food systems, and then try to come back. And I thought I would start a nonprofit. All my background was in education or nonprofit organizations. But then I applied, I went through the whole graduate school program.

That's what I was in, sort of, when the malting idea popped up. And once I got all those applications off, I was like, well, what do I do? What do I do if I don't get in? What if I do? And I was like, well, the malting idea was really cool. I've got a few months. Why don't I just start to explore what that looks like? And by the time I got an acceptance letter from a program, I was way more excited about doing the work than studying the work. And Maine is a really great place for starting something, I believe, because we have so many resources, economic development resources that are really accessible, really open, and really cost-effective or free for people wanting to start and run businesses. So I did a Top Gun program through the Maine Center for Entrepreneurship, and I got grants from the Maine Technology Institute. I worked with SCORE Mentors, I participated in some other accelerators. I got some grants from the Maine Grain Alliance.

And at the time, there was also the Slow Money Maine, which was a network of individuals, investors, and organizations that were focused on food systems. And so all those resources were there and easy to access and accessible. So they definitely gave me the confidence. It was like, okay, I don't need to go take out student loans and spend three years somewhere else and then try to probably have to go to somewhere else to pay off the loans and then come back to Maine and do the work that I want. There's enough resources and help here that I at least should see if I can try to do that work first and create that thing, and create this opportunity and space for me. So slowly momentum builds, and maybe I've led the vision for this, but it would not have been possible without all the people who share that vision and have helped realize this along the way.

Lisa Belisle: When we asked you about some of your creative inspirations, you talked about being a fiddle player and a reader, and being influenced by narcissists and Goldman, and also the Lord of the Rings series, which, I don't know that my favorite quote comes from that series, but I know it comes from that author, and that is, all who wander are not lost. And so as you're talking to me, I'm thinking, this is an individual who's wandered. He's wandered, but he wasn't really lost. He didn't maybe know exactly where he was going, but he kind of had a sense of where he wanted to end up. And it seems like you've been kind of a traveler and collecting things along the way that you've brought to the useful place.

Joel Alex: I'm laughing just because I do know the context of the original quote. It is from the Lord of the Rings. It's not one I've ever applied to myself. But yeah, so it's funny for me to think of it in that way, but I guess it's true. Being an environmental policy major, international studies major at a small liberal arts school, and malting becoming, which is very science and engineering, that doesn't seem connected, but to your point, if I think through, I can draw the direct line with how that work got me here. It's not obvious, but there is a line there that you can follow. So it's definitely true. And yes, then I do play the fiddle and I do a bunch of other things. I played the violin growing up, but I mentioned wanting to come back and really lean in and try to connect with Maine.

One of the things I did, I didn't really play violin through college, but when I moved to Farmington after college, there's an amazing fiddler who teaches there named Steve Muse, and he was running adult ed programs at the time. And that was an opportunity for me to connect with other people. And we also had this tradition of contra dancing in Maine, which is a very community-focused tradition about coming together and celebrating to live music, which is often the fiddle music. And that really sort of allowed me to connect to a lot of the traditions and sense of space and cultural aspects of Maine. And I really fell in love with that community and that style of music. And I play now, I used to play a lot more with people, it's been off and on over the years with the business, but I've definitely been playing a lot more music recently and just got a new five-string fiddle. So I've got that viola, low C, for anyone who, if you don't know, violin and fiddles are the same instrument, so I'm using those interchangeably. And if you don't understand what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. But you've just got this lower sound, so you can kind of really dig deep in some of those lower tones, which I enjoy playing around with. So it's been fun.

Lisa Belisle: Well, this has been a fascinating conversation.

Joel Alex: Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And I hope it's been interesting, or I've said something interesting for the listeners and watchers.

Lisa Belisle: I think so, yeah. What I've always loved about talking with people who, like me, are from Maine is that it's a relatively small state and we're kind of at the edge of the country, but we have actually incredibly broad experience, many people. And talking to you, I'm reminded of that fact. We have a strong educational tradition, agricultural tradition, family tradition. And so I think Maine just has a lot to offer, and sometimes we explore some aspects of it, but not all of them. And I think you've just sort of exemplified many of the things that people don't necessarily think about.

Joel Alex: Yeah. Well, and I'm still learning, so.

Lisa Belisle: Same.

Joel Alex: Yeah, still learning. But yeah, I appreciate you having me on.

Lisa Belisle: Absolutely. So Joel, how can people find out about Blue Ox Malthouse?

Joel Alex: You can certainly find us online. That's probably the easiest place. And I believe we're at Blue Ox Malthouse on both Instagram and Facebook, which are the two platforms we're most active on. And then we have our website, blueoxmalthouse.com, and those would be the starting places. Certainly at your local brewery, we work with over a hundred customers a year, and that number is growing, mostly here in Maine, but increasingly more far afield, especially in New England, in the Northeast, for any listeners who are out of state. So go to the brewery and see where they're sourcing their grain from and if they're getting it locally from us.

Lisa Belisle: Very good, thank you.

Joel Alex: All right, thank you very much.

Lisa Belisle: I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you've been listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. Today we've been speaking with Joel Alex, who is the founder of Blue Ox Malthouse, and I encourage you to learn more about the work that he is doing to create sustainability for the people of our state, and really some farther reaching implications, given that the distribution network is growing. It's been a pleasure to talk with you today.