It's malting time for top P.E.I.-grown barley picks, destined for craft beer industry

A multi-year research project to look at what barley varieties will thrive on P.E.I. for use by the craft beer industry is about to move into the next phase.

Research scientist Aaron Mills and the team at Agriculture and Agri-food Canada have been experimenting with growing different varieties of the crop for about eight years. Now some of that product will be malted for the first time.

Malting is the process of steeping, germinating and drying barley or other grains to convert them into a substance that can be used in brewing or making malt vinegar or malted milk. 

"We're evaluating varieties from other places, and then seeing how well they work here in P.E.I. agronomically for farmers," he said. "And then we're taking the ones that work well for farmers [and] we're looking at the other qualitative aspects, to see which ones make good beer.

"Basically, what we're trying to do is just evaluate the good ones and then scale them up so that farmers on the East Coast can grow them and brewers on the East Coast can brew with them."

The barley varieties being grown in Harrington, P.E.I., range from varieties that were tested and grown in the province 100 years ago to those acquired much more recently from seed banks overseas. 

"We've got French varieties, Russian varieties … there was a period of time when Belgian monks were doing a lot of brewing, so you know there's varieties from those parts of the world, and a large number of varieties from the UK," Mills said.

"What's old is new again."

Checking all the boxes

Mills said barley is a crop that prefers a Mediterranean-like climate — with hot, arid conditions — and this year's crop had to be harvested on Monday before more wet weather came.

"The barley will actually sprout while it's still in the field if it gets moisture later in the season, so we're looking for varieties that are a little bit more resistant to that," he said.

"If you get that moisture on a hot day in the field, the enzymes will start to kick in and it'll start to convert in the field and then you can't really malt it."

We fully expect to see different unique and novel characteristics of them when we go to malt them.— John Webster, Shoreline Malting

Harvesting at the right time plays into quality, which is something John Webster of Shoreline Malting in Summerside looks for when selecting product.

He says for malting purposes, barley must be within a certain protein range, be free of fungal disease and have a very high germination rate.

"Malting is really about growing. You're growing the barley again to create the enzymes that are used in brewing or distilling," he said.

"It's really a very high-quality, high-spec crop that we're looking for."

Webster has been working closely with Mills and the folks at Agricultural and Agri-food Canada to ensure the barley being grown is hitting those targets. With recent grant money, Shoreline will now start to experiment with malting the barley that's been grown in Harrington. 

It's something that they hope will eventually create more flavour profile options for brewers in the region.

"Because they're heritage lines and they've been collected from all over, they are completely different from what's commonly available in Canada," Webster said. 

"And because their genetic background and makeup is different, we fully expect to see different unique and novel characteristics of them when we go to malt them."

Webster said the nano-malting will be done in a lab at first, and then eventually expanded within their production facility.

"That's going to allow us to do basically flavour and sensory testing on it to be able to isolate just what the unique characteristics of these are," Webster said.

"We're hoping to find a couple that check the boxes … they've got the agronomy, they've got the ease of malting, they've got unique flavour characteristics, and those are what's going to lead us to be able to move forward with market development."