growing barley

[RickyLopez]

My family has some land in mexico..... I was thinking it would be cool to grow some barley....I go down theree and spend summers...and thought it would be ccool to brew.

Does anyone have experience??? They've told me that people have grown barley in the area before.... but I'm not sure if its the same strainthat would make beer? Are seeds available online??????

 

[cmybeer]

I've heard you can find seeds online and that you need a lot of space to even make it somewhat worth your while. You also need to do you're own malting which is time consuming and difficult on a home scale without proper equipment. There is a beersmith podcast on malting where someone from Breiss talks about it and it sounded like way too much work to me and even then you are not sure what kind of product you are really going to get. It might be neat on a small scale if you have the time and space and desire to do so but you likely will not end up with the quality you are used to.

If you can I say go for it, just don't get your hopes up too high

 

[HopKeller]

I grew up on a farm in KS. My dad occasionally sewed barley, for market - not brewing of course. The crop has the same basic needs as wheat, though, you'd need to plant quite a bit to have any kind of yield. What kind of equipment do you have access to (tractor, planter, etc)?