On Friday, the Dixon Gallery & Gardens is hosting the Brewers’ Feast, which will highlight the home-brewed creations of Mike Lee, owner of Mid-South Malts, and Dale Skaggs, a long-time home-brewer who is the Dixon’s director of horticulture.
Skaggs took the time to answer a few questions about beer for Hungry Memphis.
You’re both a horticulturist and brewer. Where does the twain meet?
The fact that all the ingredients in beer are from cultivated plants is a natural convergence of brewing and gardening. Both involve growing living things for our purposes. In brewing, yeast grows in a media of natural sugars; and in gardening, plants grow in a media of soil. Historically, if you look at the beers brewed in medieval times, many more plant-based ingredients were used than only the barley and hops used today. Both gardening and brewing are celebrations of the natural world.
