Riverbend Malt House is developing alongside the craft malt community, which means that education about everything from small grain production to final products – and everything in between— is critical. We’re committed to providing resources that help our craft brewing and artisanal distilling partners craft the highest quality beers and spirits.
This is your hub for grain research and sensory information, with best practices for marketing your ingredients to boot.
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Learning Aboot Malt…..
Brian checks out a fresh batch of 2-row malt
Greetings from Winnipeg! Brent and I just completed our second week of malt training at the Canadian Malt Barley Technical Centre. Our typical day starts with 3-4 hours of lecture in the morning, followed by “hands-on” work in the malt house or lab in the afternoon. The lectures have covered everything from the biochemistry of malting to world market conditions. These lectures have been presented by a variety of staff members who have decades of experience in the field of large-scale malting and brewing operations.
In addition to the lectures, CMBTC has also performed a comprehensive malt analysis on several samples we brought from North Carolina. While I won’t bore you with the specifics, the take home message is encouraging….our 6-row barley is comparable to commercially available varieties!
Whats next you ask?….We’ve got 1 more week of training where we tie the finished malt to brewing process. This will give us the tools we need to work with our clients to produce high-quality craft beer. We will also tour a large commercial malt house that produces 90,000 tons of malt a year!
After that we’ll be back in Asheville to resume construction at the malt house. Maybe we can get together for pint, eh? (Sorry, couldn’t resist using the other Canadian language joke)
Hitting The “Ground” Running….
The development of local food systems is essential to creating a durable and sustainable economy in our region … A recent article in Grist Magazine highlights one of our key partners, Carolina Ground (aka NC Organic Bread Flour Project), who is forging their own food system for organically grown wheat in our state. They also do a little name dropping on our behalf. Check it out here.
Research Trials Begin … In New Zealand?
Pinnacle barley grown in a research plot in Raleigh, NC
How did our barley get to New Zealand you ask? Turns out their climate is very similar to North Carolina’s, but their seasons are opposite ours since they are in the southern hemisphere. These conditions have set the stage for an exciting partnership between the two countries to develop new varieties of small grains at an accelerated pace.
Here’s how it works … Dr. Marshall’s team spent the winter cross-breeding 6-row and 2-row varieties. During this first year the Thoroughbred 6-row variety was crossed with a 2-row variety called Pinnacle(1). Seeds from the exercise were then shipped to New Zealand, where they were planted earlier this month. Once they mature in early October, the best examples will be harvested, cleaned and sent back to Dr. Marshall’s lab. They will then be entered into the on-going small grain trials conducted across North Carolina. As a result, we will have conducted 2 generations of trials within a 12 month period. What does this mean for local beer? … the short answer is that we will be 2 steps closer to developing a 2-row malting quality winter barley for the southeast. However, several years of additional trials will still be conducted before any one variety is released for commercial production.
Check back with us for updates on the international variety trials, we will try to post some photos of the New Zealand trials later this year.
Pinnacle was recently developed by North Dakota State University in an effort to expand the geographic range of malting quality barley production into the Great Lakes region. It has already been utilized by large-scale craft breweries such as Bell’s.