To make NC Craft Beer Month even more exciting, we’re thrilled to announce that our first malt licensor is Riverbend Malt House based in Asheville, North Carolina!
We wanted to be seriously intentional about using malthouse branding in our products. What does that mean?
Well, if you’ve been following us for a while now, you can see that we flip the bags inside out so that the malt supplier branding is on the inside of the bags. We do this for a few reasons, and one of which is because we’ve been hard at work talking with these awesome malt brands to figure out how to incorporate their designs into our products – in a thoughtful manner.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing a line of licensed Riverbend upcycled products thanks to our finalized licensing agreement with this NC malt powerhouse.
“Over the years, we’ve had some fun with upcycling projects, but the Beer to Bags partnership is taking things to another level!” says Riverbend Co-Founder Brent Manning. “We’ll be shipping hundreds of recaptured bags from local breweries out to become really cool lunch boxes, and tote bags. I can’t wait to see these hit the market.”
1% of every purchase of these licensed products will benefit the American Malting Barley Association (AMBA). AMBA advances a resilient supply of quality malting barley by unifying stakeholders to leverage innovative research, development, and advocacy efforts.
We landed on AMBA with Riverbend after learning more about their important work that supports American craft maltsters like Riverbend. As we face environmental changes that impact the ability of barley crops to grow in places like the Southeast, it is groups like AMBA that directly invests in barley research that will ensure the resilience and sustainability of a local barley supply chain for the US brewing industry.
“This partnership with Beer to Bags and Riverbend is a great illustration of how our humble industry works together to support innovative research that directly impacts the viability and success of barley, " says Ashley McFarland, AMBA Vice President. “We are grateful and look forward to investing in research relevant to Riverbend’s sourcing region.”
We’re excited to see the reaction from craft beer lovers once we release our first licensed Riverbend products. Just as Riverbend and AMBA are doing incredible work in their respective industries, we take pride in the quality of our upcycled products.