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Barley for beer has cash, timing assets

Malt barley brings a higher price than barley for feed.

MILLS RIVER — Amid all the talk of six-row versus two-row barley, husks per pound and extraction rates, Asheville malt maker Brent Manning uttered the most important line of the day.


"We always kind of joke in Asheville that it can't be local enough," Manning said. "We're seeing a demand for specialized products that can point to a given farm or a given farmer."
The middleman between the barley grower and the brewer, Manning the maltster was among 30 craft brewers, farmers, scientists and extension agents who attended a barley field day last week sponsored by N.C. State University and the Cooperative Extension Service.
Brent Manning talks about buying barley for Riverbend Malt House in Asheville.Brent Manning talks about buying barley for Riverbend Malt House in Asheville.A partner in the Riverbend Malt House in Asheville, Manning said he was looking for more growers like Jason Davis, who planted 12 acres of barley last October. The barley tour visited Davis's North River Farms to see his barley crop and also a test plot containing 23 different varieties the NCSU specialists planted.
"The nice thing about growing barley in Western North Carolina is there are very few diseases that hit barley out here," said Dr. David Marshall, a wheat breeder for 33 years, head of the Plant Science Research Unit in Raleigh and a professor of plant pathology at N.C. State.
Farmers would like to reach a yield of 100 bushels per acre; Marshall estimated that Davis's crop might produce 70 bushels an acre this year.
"Barley for malt is going to be higher maintenance than barley for feed," Davis said. "It's also going to be more fragile than a wheat crop as far as spraying for fungicide."
What he likes about malt barley is the higher price and the way the growing cycle fits with crop rotation. Harvesting barley a week or two earlier than winter wheat, farmers can follow the grain with a summer crop.
"It works well in our land management in crop rotation," Davis said.
If handling is a more delicate process, the payoff is a higher price.
"Barley has primarily been a feed market crop, and to shift into what we call a malting quality crop is a big value add for our local farmers," said Manning, whose company converts the barley to malt and sells it to craft brewers. "It's a premium at market per bushel compared to your feed market prices. If they grow a high quality barley that meets the specifications of the maltster or the malt house they're going to get a premium price per bushel relative to selling that barley in the feed market. I would say potentially almost double."
Can local barley perform at the level required by Sierra Nevada, the new big boy on the block? It already has.
"Our biggest order to date has been from Sierra Nevada," he said. "So our malt is featured as part of a beer that is coming out as part of the Beer Camp Across America 12-pack that's coming out this July."
The beer camp is a Sierra Nevada cross-country tour that culminates with the grand opening of the Mills River brewery on Aug. 2.
"There are a number of collaborators in that 12-pack, one of which is the Asheville Beer Alliance. The beer recipe that they developed featured a large amount of Riverbend pale malt so we delivered 20,000 pounds to Sierra Nevada's Mills River facility, and they wanted more," Manning said. "We just couldn't fill the order in the time frame available."
Craft brewers had primarily used two-row barley grown out west.
BarleyMainMolly Hamilton explains the barley crop in an experimental plot in Mills River."The knock against six-row barley was there was too much husk per pound and it had a dry astringent grainy flavor," Manning said.
The good news for local growers is that the Blue Ridge mountain land can grow quality barley and Riverbend is eager to buy.
"Our goal is to source 100 percent of our raw materials in North Carolina," Manning said. "We're at about 70 percent right now, and a lot of that this year had to do with last year's dismal harvest with small grains affected by rain that swamped the crop.
"For that premium price we are demanding a premium product. It's grown a certain way, it's cleaned a certain way, it's handled a certain way from the time it leaves the field. This is not just piled in a barn for animal feed. This is treated as a food-grain commodity from the time it's harvested."
Henderson County Extension Director Marvin Owings said the field looked good.
"When are we going to have a taste test?" he asked.
Davis will harvest the Mills River barley next month. Manning will turn the barley into malt for Asheville's booming craft beer industry.
"Maybe by late July or August we'll have something for you," he said, "and we can all get together and drink some beer."
That brought a grin to a lot of faces that turned to gaze out at the field of thoroughbred barley and ponder that flavor in a bottle.