Panel OKs brewery at dairy farm near Turlock

A dairy family near Turlock won county permission to start a microbrewery in an old milking parlor.

The Stanislaus County Planning Commission voted unanimously Thursday night for the Blaker 40 Brewery, on Fulkerth Road about 4 miles west of town.

Unlike most breweries, this one plans to grow all of the hops and half of the wheat for its beers. The milking parlor already has a sloping floor to help with drainage and cleanup.

“It’s ideal for what we want to do,” applicant Tom Lucas told the commission.

Its vote will be final unless appealed to the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors. The brewery also needs a license from the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control before selling to stores, restaurants and bars.

It will start very small – 20 gallons a week – but could grow to perhaps five times that, Lucas said. No employees will be added at the dairy farm for the brewery, which will not be open to the public. A taproom could be added in a nearby city at some point.

The brewery, named for a nearby road, will build on homebrewing the family already is doing. A website for hobbyists shows several Blaker products, such as Plowed Under Wheat IPA, Hop Stampede and El Torito Vienna Lager.

Blaker 40 will offer barley and wheat beers, the latter made in part from homegrown grain. Both grains are commonly grown for dairy cattle in the San Joaquin Valley.

The sourcing will be 100 percent on-farm for the hops, which add varying levels of bitterness to the products. The U.S. beer industry relies almost entirely on hops grown in the Pacific Northwest, but Lucas said they do fine in the Valley. They were part of the rain-fed agriculture that dominated the region before canals were built more than a century ago.

The 1,944-square-foot milking parlor, last used in 1978, will have grain storage, grinders, fermentation chests and other brewing equipment. The “spent grain” will be fed to dairy cows, and wastewater will go into the farm’s existing system for livestock waste.

“We feel like it goes along with the ag element,” Lucas said, referring to a county policy that requires rural businesses to be compatible with farming. Dairy is among Stanislaus’ leading industries.

Beer is not, but a few entrepreneurs in the Turlock area are giving it a try. Dust Bowl Brewing Co. is expanding into a much larger brewery just west of Highway 99, and it also has a downtown taproom and restaurant. Sandude Brewing Co. is just off 99 at the city’s south end.

The Ceres Chamber of Commerce has featured Blaker 40 homebrews at events and is interested in a larger presence.

“We are trying to court the Lucas family into bringing their taproom eventually into Ceres,” President Renee Ledbetter told the commission. “We definitely see the benefit of having them here, whether it’s Ceres, Turlock or anywhere in the region.”

This story was originally published April 2, 2015 at 7:01 PM with the headline "Panel OKs brewery at dairy farm near Turlock."