Ryan Bare
Ryan Bare was born on December 14, 1973 and raised near Emmetsburg, Iowa. He grew up in a farming family and later helped operate the family farm for several years. The experience gave him a direct connection to the work, land, and multigenerational continuity that eventually became the foundation of Century Farms Distillery.
As a young man, Bare attended Iowa State University. There he met Amanda, and they began to date. She was also an Iowa native, and a prospective mechanical engineer. After graduation, the two married and moved to Texas to begin their professional careers. Ryan entered the oil-refining industry, while Amanda applied her engineering education at NASA. The couple remained in Texas for approximately 15 years, building vocations far removed from commercial whiskey but grounded in the technical disciplines of process design, production, and problem-solving.
In 2011, Ryan and Amanda returned to Iowa to be nearer their families. Ryan accepted a position at Valero Renewable Fuels near Hartley, where he worked in ethanol production and learned the industrial process of converting corn into alcohol. That ethanol was for fuel rather than consumption, but the work gave him practical experience with fermentation, plant operations, and the transformation of Iowa’s principal crop into a higher-value product. But his career eventually took him back to the oil industry, where a rotational schedule—14 days at work followed by 14 days away—gave him extended periods at home; he used that free time to experiment with small-scale distilling. He assembled his first equipment from hardware-store components and began working in the family garage, gradually approaching whiskey as both an engineer and a farm-raised Iowan. The project developed over approximately five years as Ryan refined his recipes and Amanda helped turn an absorbing hobby into a viable business plan. By then, Ryan had accumulated more than two decades of experience designing, operating, and maintaining other people’s production plants; the distillery offered him the opportunity to design and operate one of his own.
In 2017, the Bares purchased a group of buildings along U.S. Highway 71 on the north side of Spencer, Iowa. The property had once housed, ironically, an International Harvester dealership. Ryan, Amanda, three generations of the Bare family, and numerous others helped transform it into Century Farms Distillery. Ryan designed and manufactured the distilling system rather than purchasing a conventional turnkey installation, creating a 16-head still that could be adjusted with considerable precision. The tasting room opened for tours and samples in 2019, the same year the Bares filled their first whiskey barrel and began selling vodka while their aged spirits matured.
Century Farms was created around a clear agricultural idea: keep each participating farm’s corn separate and produce whiskey whose identity remains tied to the family that grew the grain. Farmers deliver roughly 40 to 50 bushels of corn. The distillery purchases the grain at market price, processes it as an individual lot, and ultimately gives the participating family the opportunity to purchase bottles carrying its own customized label. A QR code on the bottle links to information about the farm, including its location and family history. The original emphasis was on corn from Iowa Century and Heritage Farms—properties held continuously by the same family for at least 100 years—but the concept expanded to include other producers. Grain from farms that have not yet reached century status can appear under the Prairie States name. By 2023, participating corn had arrived from Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota, and 72 farms had taken part in the program. The arrangement gives families a tangible record of their land: bottles made from their own harvest and, after aging, an empty 53-gallon barrel that can remain with the family.
The 40-50 bushels of corn can produce about 1,000 bottles. The liquid reaches a barrel within roughly a week, but maturation generally requires two years, with the exact period determined by the intended whiskey. Participating families typically commit to 60 bottles, may purchase more for gifts or commemorations, and allow Century Farms to market the balance. Every bottle is filled, capped, labeled, and inspected by hand, preserving the small-batch character of an operation built to maintain the identity of each farm’s grain.
Century Farms began selling barrel-aged whiskey in September 2020. Its expanding range came to include corn whiskey, bourbon, unaged whiskey, and farm-specific single-barrel releases. Bourbons produced from McCauley and Walker Farms corn each received gold medals in the Major League Spirits Association’s 2023 competition. Ryan also developed visitor programs that placed production at the center of the experience, including in-depth Thief’s Tours, barrel tastings, and limited Barrel Pick Tours in which participants select a barrel and help bottle and label the whiskey.
Ryan and Amanda Bare built Century Farms Distillery by joining two parts of their lives that had previously seemed separate: professional engineering and Iowa agriculture. Ryan’s custom production system turns corn into whiskey, but the Bares’ larger achievement is the preservation of identity from field to bottle. Each farm remains visible, each batch remains traceable, and each label carries a family’s name rather than allowing the source of the grain to disappear inside a blended supply chain.
Sources:
Century Farms Distillery official website , cfdistillery.com
Farm News, “Corn to Whiskey”, Darcy Dougherty Maulsby, January 27, 2023, farm-news.com
Successful Farming, “Corn to Heirloom Whiskey”, Jodi Henke, April 18, 2022, agriculture.com
Travel Iowa, “Get Behind the Scenes at Century Farms Distillery”, traveliowa.com
Trilix, “Century Farms Distillery: Bottling ‘Local’”,trilix.com
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
