Beer drinkers might be surprised to know how much work goes into deciding what ingredients to use when making a bottle of brew.
“Whether you like these types of very light flavoured beers or not, the technical challenge involved in producing them is enormous,” said Erin Armstrong, director of research and Development for Canterra Seeds.
She told a meeting held during Agri-Trend’s 2009 Farm Forum Event in Saskatoon Nov. 18 that the flavour of a beer depends largely on the type of malting barley that’s used.
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“One of the key criteria … in the barley that’s being selected is variety.”
She said different varieties of barley react differently to the malting process, and how they react determines their quality.
The malting process has three steps: steeping, germination and kilning.
“Every variety is going to react differently to those processes … so variety is critical,” Armstrong said.
It is important that varieties going into a malt plant are not mixed, she added.
Malting plants and breweries look at a different aspects of a barley variety when deciding which they will select.
“As a processor, as a brewer, they are very, very specific in terms of the quality of malt that they want going in to produce their products,” she said.
The most important criteria are the variety, how it germinates in a malting plant and the amount of protein it contains.
The varieties a malting plant can choose from depend on their sourcing method: open market production, contract production or the most recent option, close-loop identity-preserved production. In this case, a malting plant will have complete control over a particular variety.
It will specify exactly how much barley it needs grown, where it wants it grown, the companies that will handle it and where the malt goes.
