Specialty Grain

Missouri’s first Black-owned brewery, Kansas City’s Vine Street, released this light, hoppy, fonio-focused riff on the Black Is Beautiful open-source collab in 2025.

In this excerpt from our Illustrated Guide to Homebrewing, we discuss brewing with extracts and steeping with specialty grains—and why there is much to be said for embracing them at home.

Let's affirm the importance of building malt complexity. By mixing up your base malts, bringing in rye or oats, or experimenting with specialty malts, you can bring depth and nuance to your beers, creating a knock-out recipe.