Beer cans draw attention to Sharon Springs farmer



By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

SHARON SPRINGS -- Fame -- but not much fortune -- has fallen Bill Mai's way.

Thanks to a single line -- printed on a beer can of all things considering Mai doesn't event drink -- the Sharon Springs farmer has been the talk of the town at liquor stores and taverns.

"That little line is the biggest thing that has happened in the history of this farm," son Carl said of the line of type printed on cans of Halcyon unfiltered wheat beer, brewed by Tallgrass Brewing Co., Manhattan.

That line simply reads: "Our thanks to Bill Mai, the wheat farmer from Wallace County, Kansas, that grows our wheat!"

Mai is a farmer in the second smallest county in the state, raising wheat and corn.

It's the wheat -- identity preserved white wheat at that -- bringing Mai his little slice of fame, and all of it coming from only a small slice of what he harvests each year.

Ever humble, Mai instead credits his notoriety to Farmer Direct Foods, a producer-owned cooperative based in Atchison that champions the use of white wheat.

"They market a lot in King Arthur Flour," Mai said of where some of the wheat goes. King Arthur, coincidentally, can be purchased at Dillon's.

What's unique about wheat marketed through Farmer Direct Foods is the identity-preserved capability it maintains.

"King Arthur can trace that to a particular field," Mai said of individual lots of wheat milled for its white wheat flour.

While not as plentiful, white wheat is considered to be sweeter than regular hard red winter wheat generally used in baking or the occasional wheat beer.

"They found it had a more desirable outcome in their brewing process," Mai said of Tallgrass.

But they didn't need a lot of wheat to brew the beer, with Mai shipping them just 50 bags of white wheat directly from the farm. He's uncertain how much beer was made from those 50 bags, but the beer is distributed across the state, including in Hays and Sharon Springs.

The decision to try Mai's wheat came when Farmer Direct approached Tallgrass and provided a couple bags of white wheat to test.

Even though his wheat is now the toast of the town, Mai barely knows what it tastes like.

He's not a beer drinker, and the only way he agreed to taste it was to make sure someone else was around who would finish it. But it was only a sip.

But others know all about it.

A Discovery Kansas group toured the farm, and they got cans of beer -- 38 of the 72 that were sent his way.

"We just wanted them to have a souvenir," he said.

The comments haven't stopped there.

"We've gotten a number of good comments back," he said. "We've gotten comments from Texas and Iowa."

And locally.

"We've had a lot of fun with it," Mai said. "They had it here in town at one point -- I guess. I don't know if that was the one sold out by evening."