by PAUL CATALA
Sponsored by Visit Central Florida
Born and raised in Winter Haven, Joseph Dunham grew up with the sights, sounds, and smells of Florida’s citrus industry.
With that once-thriving industry fading amid ongoing bouts with hurricanes and greening, Dunham sought a way to preserve some of its legacy. In doing so, he placed his hopes on hops.
Dunham has incorporated a variety of citrus additives and flavorings into some of the many beers at his Grove Roots Brewing Company. Since opening his microbrewery in Winter Haven in 2016, he has found ways to incorporate citrus and other Florida agriculture products into some of his brewery’s artisan beers to celebrate the city’s connection to the citrus industry. On the Main Street Winter Haven website, Grove Roots says its mission is “to reclaim the persona of the lost citrus groves and keep the historical roots of the industry alive in Central Florida.” The brewery partners with local growers to create beers that celebrate and support the citrus industry.
Inside the Grove Roots brewery, once a 1940s-era citrus trailer building complex selected for its architecture, about 10 employees work with Dunham to produce about 1,000 barrels of beer annually, with each barrel holding 31 gallons. Of those beers, Dunham says about 20 percent is citrus-based beer. Beers are also infused with Florida agriculture, including the strawberry-based “Honey on the Double IPA,” which contains orange blossom honey; every batch of that contains 100 pounds of honey. Other beers contain coffee beans, macadamia nuts, and use fresh hops brought in from Polk County and Florida-based farms.
Among the rotating beers delivering a taste of Florida are: “Rind and Shine,” a grapefruit and tangerine wheat beer, the brewery’s flagship and biggest-selling offering; the “Seed Spitter,” a Valencia orange wheat beer; “Strawberry Curls,” containing Plant City’s Parksdale Farms’ strawberries; “Peach Blond Ale,” with peaches picked at Camellia Groves, Winter Haven; “Key Lime Pastime,” a Key lime Pilsner; “Honey on the Double,” a pale ale made with orange blossom honey; “Fresh Florida Hop IPA,” “Hibiscus Blond,” containing hibiscus from Lake Wales’ Bok Tower; and “Habanero IPA,” brewed with Florida habaneros.
Dunham, 39, is a third-generation Floridian born and raised in Winter Haven and a 2005 graduate of Winter Haven High School. He left Winter Haven for about a decade, went to college and became a project manager for an engineering-construction company in Greenville, S.C., from 2010 to 2015. In 2015, he returned to Winter Haven and within 18 months he got Grove Roots “off the ground.” Prior to Grove Roots, he had done some home brewing for about a decade and said he “built my recipe book up before getting (Grove Roots) going,” using Valencia oranges, tangerines and grapefruit.
“We wanted to put citrus in our beer and we wanted to showcase our history and background within the citrus industry. We wanted it to be a community-oriented spot and to be able to remember our heritage,” Dunham says.
That effort includes adding plenty of “adjuncts” — flavors, sugars, and fermentables – to the beers’ basic ingredients of hops, water, malt, and yeast. Additionally, Dunham incorporated the zest of oranges and tangerines, using the citrus peels to add a bright, aromatic flavor to a beer.
Now, Winter Haven’s Florida Chemical Co. Inc. has a distillery to concentrate those ingredients into essential oils to infuse into beer. For example, the “Seed Spitter” is sweetened with the zest of tangerines to make it sweeter and sharper. Dunham wrote his own recipes and worked with Florida Chemical to create the distinct tastes he was looking for.
“For beers, on the citrus side, you’re really using the zest of the beer, not really the juice inside the beer, so we’re always trying to develop new methods between blending grapefruit and Valencia orange with tangerines and other oranges to try and come up with better profiles,” says Dunham.
Dunham says currently a lot of his ingredients aren’t grown in the state, but he hopes that changes. He plans to continue to brew and sell beers incorporating Florida agriculture products and hopes to tap into more ideas in the future.
“I think a lot of us in Polk County are really proud of our heritage, so putting Florida ingredients in beer itself is just a form of giving back to the community and having people proud of our product,” he says.
By harnessing the flavors of Florida’s heritage, Grove Roots draws residents and travelers looking to experience a deeper, more rooted connection between the land, locale, and the culinary experience.
“Made in Florida with ingredients from Florida is a really cool mantra to put out there.”