Alum Matt Riggs crafts beer with grain developed by the College of ACES
Riggs Beer Company brews crafted with grain developed by the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) will be served at the Celebrate Food & Ag event before the Illini Football game against Nebraska on Friday, Oct. 6. Purchase discounted tickets to the game, which kicks off at 7 p.m. in Memorial Stadium.
Riggs’ Hefeweizen features Erisman soft red winter wheat developed by emeritus professor Frederic Kolb, and American Lager brewed with a special low-oil corn created by professor Stephen Moose. Both Kolb and Moose are faculty in the Department of Crop Sciences in the College of ACES.
Riggs Beer Company was co-founded by ACES alum Matt Riggs, who will receive the 2023 Young Alumni Achievement Award from the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) on Oct. 6. Riggs' craft brewery transforms his family farm-raised grain into American and German beers sold locally.
Matt Riggs said lower oil raw materials make the product more flavor-stable. Large breweries mechanically remove oil from the seed and reserve the starch for brewing, but this process is often too costly for small breweries like his.
He decided to seek out a low-oil corn and, through a quick Google search, discovered a publication from Moose’s lab in the College of ACES; he did not expect to find the solution just a few miles away at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“I prefer white corn’s mild, smooth flavor profile over yellow corn’s more aggressive flavors and aromas when used in brewing. As an added bonus, professor Moose’s corn has the lowest oil content in the world,” Riggs said. “It is uniquely qualified to be used in our beer since it was developed at my alma mater, and the Burr white corn variety that started the experiment — the original genetics of the corn we grow today — originated just three miles from my family farm in the 1800s.”
The low-oil corn, unofficially coined “ACES beer corn” by Moose, was developed by chance through one of the first and longest-running plant genetic experiments. In 1896, crop scientists began breeding a line of high-oil corn to improve the chemical composition of livestock feed. As an academic exercise, they decided to breed low-oil corn as well. Since then, crop scientists have maintained the experiment to see just how much (and how little) oil a corn plant could sustain.
Fast forward to 2017, Moose receives a request for low-oil corn from Matt Riggs, who it turns out, was a student in Moose’s biotechnology course a decade earlier. Shortly after, Moose began the years-long process of hybridizing the heirloom low-oil corn to modern corn varieties, creating the perfect product for the Riggs family to grow on their sesquicentennial farm.
The family farm was established by his great-great-grandparents, who were German immigrants, in 1874.
Now, nearly 150 years later, Matt Riggs says it is wild to think that if he could go back in time, he could speak to his farm’s founding father, Frederick Mohr, in his native tongue. “I could speak to my great-great-grandfather about this corn grown down the road because I married a German girl, learned German, and went to Germany to learn how to brew beer. ”
“We are excited to showcase a product that is the result of more than a century of crop sciences innovation from the College of ACES at this year’s Celebrate Food and Ag events,” said Adam Davis, crop sciences department head. “It represents legacy and innovation by our faculty and the Riggs family.”
Celebrate Food and Ag will kick off with a College of ACES tailgate (tickets required) held from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in Lot 31 — a new location this year. ACES’ presence will extend into Grange Grove, where interactive activities for all ages will be hosted by current ACES students, faculty, staff, and representatives from Illinois Extension and Illinois 4-H. More details are available in the event news release.
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