100% homegrown

[rekoob]

That's awesome! Home grown homebrew...

 

[jojox]

Cool thread everyone, I just joined here to ask questions about hops.

We are growing malting barley in the Mid-Atlantic region, this will be our third planting this fall. It's been difficult to find the right varieties to resist the higher humidity and in particular the prolific rains we've had in the spring. The first year (2012 planting, 2013 harvest) the barley was sprouting on the field after heavy/late rains, and the whole crop was ruined.

Someone was from Maryland - we have a farmer there growing for us and he did very well this year.

It's all winter barley here, there are thousands of acres of winter barley grown in PA, but it's all for feed, minus whatever we planted which was a drop in the bucket. The good news is there are well adapted varieties but the bad news is that no one screened these crops for malting characteristics during development and commercialization. They are often lacking in terms of having strong dormancy and small kernel sizes. We are working with many varieties on a small scale, and there are lots of trial data available from Penn State, Ohio State, and several other academic agricultural programs nearby.

Good luck everyone with their barley endeavors!

 

[drummstikk]

In a year or two, I should be able to do an "estate beer," all grown and processed from my property. Woot!

Cheers!

--Misha

Awesome! That's the dream!

 

[drummstikk]

The good news is there are well adapted varieties but the bad news is that no one screened these crops for malting characteristics during development and commercialization.

If I understand, you're growing feed barley to use as malting barley? This might be an uphill battle.

The only real result I had from my experiment was that Conlon, even though adapted for the Upper Midwest, would grow just fine in California. You might find that the Midwest malting barleys do well in MD as well.

If my choices were to start with a Mid-Atlantic silage barley and turn it into a Mid-Atlantic malting barley, or to start with a Midwest malting barley and turn it into a Mid-Atlantic malting barley, I would definitely chose the latter.

Sorry to hear about the losses! You could hedge your crop by planting half with a winter barley like Maris Otter in the late Fall, then the other half with a spring barley like -- well, like almost all the rest of them.

SO jealous of you land-owners! Writing from my 3rd-floor apartment in the SF Bay Area...

 

[Farside]

Doing a bit of digging...
Sprague Farm grows spring malting barley (conlon) in your neck of the woods and makes their own beer.

From this video, it seems they plant the first week of May. In your climate, I would experiment planting later, after the heavy rains. You might get clobbered with fall rain near harvest, but it's worth a try.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyN_XlH5Wh4[/ame]

Anyway, I'd recommend getting hold of Brian and pick his brains. When it comes to crazy activities like this, folks will talk your ear off given half a chance

[email protected]

 

[CitizenCane]

Harvest and cleanup finally complete. This year’s yields: Bavarian, 5.4 lbs; Otis, 4.4 lbs; Kitzing, 11.0 lbs; Poppenheim, 2.2 lbs; Moravian, 21.4 lbs; and Chevalier, 23.4 lbs. Not as much as I had hoped but enough to continue next year. I also have a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing I was able to keep several rabbits and a couple deer well nourished. Getting ground ready for Maris Otter and a couple acres of Turkey wheat. I also have some Turkey malting now.
I will keep you posted.

 

[CitizenCane]

Harvest and cleanup finally complete. This year’s yields: Bavarian, 5.4 lbs; Otis, 4.4 lbs; Kitzing, 11.0 lbs; Poppenheim, 2.2 lbs; Moravian, 21.4 lbs; and Chevalier, 23.4 lbs. Not as much as I had hoped but enough to continue next year. I also have a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing I was able to keep several rabbits and a couple deer well nourished. Getting ground ready for Maris Otter and a couple acres of Turkey wheat. I also have some Turkey malting now.
I will keep you posted.

edit:
oops, well just doing my part to get to 100 pages

 

[Farside]

How long did it take you to grow out that Chevalier and how much did you start with?

I started with 5 grams this spring from very old seed. I think it might take a while...

 

[CitizenCane]

How long did it take you to grow out that Chevalier and how much did you start with?

I started with 5 grams this spring from very old seed. I think it might take a while...

I started last fall with about the same amount of seed you started with. I grew out about 80 plants in the greenhouse last winter. This spring, I planted about 1000 sq ft with 450 g of seed from the greenhouse. It was too thin of a seeding rate but its what I had. I now have about 24 lbs in less than a year (but 2 growing cycles). Next spring I have a little 1/5 acre spot with its name on it.

 

[jojox]

If I understand, you're growing feed barley to use as malting barley? This might be an uphill battle.
.

Well, yes and no. There is a craft malthouse in North Carolina using Thoroughbred malt, which is not a AMBA approved variety, but they and their brewer customers seem to do just fine with it. A lot of thoroughbred is grown in PA, for example, for feed, but that doesn't mean it will necessarily go either way -depending on crop management practices it could or could not be okay for malting.


So the other side is yes, we are growing winter malting barley as well. Spring barley does not do well where we are, and - equally important - winter barley is much more beneficial to farmers as it provides a cover crop in winter and is harvested earlier in the spring, in time to plant something else. We are screening essentially all available varieties, old to new and even some experimental/coded ones being developed by breeders currently. It's all very exciting! In the back of my friends house is "the crucible" where many varieties are tried and traits of individuals are selected, seeds kept and replanted, I think after several years we'll have something unique and adapted specifically to his backyard!

The HUGE majority of malting barley is grown in Idaho, North Dakota, and Montana, and my goal is to enable every state and climate to grow their own barley and support their local economies and farmers! This takes a lot of experimentation and some targeted research but as brewers have become smaller and distributed, so should their supply chain. We are working in mid-Atlantic but are part of a larger research group that includes a large number of regions.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox. Farm on!

 

[jojox]

Doing a bit of digging...
Sprague Farm grows spring malting barley (conlon) in your neck of the woods and makes their own beer.

Thanks Farside!

Yes, I've met Joel Hunter at Sprague as part of a research group with Penn State and some others. They have a great operation going on over there, but they are in the diagonally opposite side of the state from us! I think it's actually much more difficult growing barley over there then in the South Eastern side where I am.

Anyway Joel is a really great guy and it seems like they have a ton of fun up there. That place is definitely on my list of places to visit!

 

[Farside]

I started last fall with about the same amount of seed you started with. I grew out about 80 plants in the greenhouse last winter. This spring, I planted about 1000 sq ft with 450 g of seed from the greenhouse. It was too thin of a seeding rate but its what I had. I now have about 24 lbs in less than a year (but 2 growing cycles). Next spring I have a little 1/5 acre spot with its name on it.

Wow that's quick. I wonder if that will work where I am. We get permanent snow on the ground for 5 months of the year, and I'm certainly not likely to get close to even 100 grams from this season's harvest.

As an aside, you interested in swapping some genetic material? I've been thinking that the genetic diversity from a 5 gram sample is most likely pretty narrow, and one of the reasons I'm so interested in heritage barley is maintaining the genetic lines.

 

[Farside]

The Hana harvest is in and the chevalier looks to be about a week out.

It looks like the maturity of these are going to shape up to be a nicely spaced harvesting succession.

 

[mlsuggs]

Someone was from Maryland - we have a farmer there growing for us and he did very well this year.

It's all winter barley here, there are thousands of acres of winter barley grown in PA, but it's all for feed, minus whatever we planted which was a drop in the bucket.

That would be me, from Maryland. So far, I'm happiest with the winter barleys, for production volume; Maris Otter and/or Halcyon seem quite happy here, less the terrible winter we had this year. The jury is out on the spring barley (Hana)--although the Conlon seemed to do fine. And there's the Bere, which I'm doing mostly for historical purposes; it's growing, but not as robustly as it might.

There's lots of feed barley grown hereabouts, as well; I don't know what kind. Plenty of dairies in the area to act as customers for that stuff, though.

Cheers!

--Misha

 

[Farside]

We got our first frost last night so winter is rapidly approaching. The Chevalier is still not ready for harvest, and seems like it's just sitting there doing nothing. The seed heads are fully formed but still green / yellow.

I'm wondering if the season here is too short for this variety. I've harvested some which ripened early, but the bulk of it might not make it. :-(

 

[Bobcatbrewing42]

Congratulations on your project. How about malting the barley? That seems like the most difficult part. Even the big brewers don't do that..... Are you going to test you hops for Alpha acid? It seems like you will have enormous startup costs for what you get, but I wish you well.

 

[Farside]

I did some reading after being forced to harvest my green Chevalier.

It seems like you can very easily plant barley too late but it's difficult to plant it too early.

Looking at the department of Agriculture publications, I should be sowing about 2 weeks earlier than I did. Maybe even earlier than that.

Planting early means that the barley will ripen during more favourable weather and the resulting product will be cleaner.

I noticed a lot of mine is quite weathered and some has a bit of what might be mold. It turns out that rain and frost near harvest time will do this.

So my final tally for this season was:
Hana - Sowed 12 grams, harvested 225 grams
Golden Promise - Sowed 28 grams, harvested 195 grams
Chevalier - Sowed 5 grams, harvested 26 grams

This means that next season I should be putting down a leguminous crop in preparation for the first sizeable planting in 2016! I might even malt some at the end of the 2016 season. I must say, this is very slow going...

 

[Farside]

Does anyone here screen their barley before maltng? I noticed that the commercial guys are pretty particular about their malting barley.

Roughly 60% of a malting barley crop is rejected due to things like damaged or thin husks, small grains, weathered grains, or mould / mildew.

Apparently you should run the grain over a 6/64'' (2.38 mm) perforated screen to remove the small grains. I had a look and those are mighty expensive sieves. There has to be a cheap way of making a screen...

 

[Farside]

The reason I'm thinking about this is because small grains logically result in a high husk to starch ratio in the mash tun. That means more barley will be required to hit the correct OG which isn't a huge deal. However I'm thinking about the additional tannins in the extra husks. Normally you stop sparging at a given gravity to prevent tannins from leaching out, but is tannin leaching a continuous process or a triggered one?

If tannin leaching is a continuous process then the gravity readings that determine when to stop sparging are giving the brewer an indication of when extraction of sugars no longer outweighs the tannin extracts from a cost / benefit point of view.

IF this is the case, then small grains in the mash will always result in a beer with elevated tannins, which is undesirable.

Is there any knowledgeable person who knows the answer to this?

 

[CitizenCane]

I don't worry about it BUT most of the barley I've malted has been 6 row feed barley so its normally smaller seeds with higher fiber and protein. Its hard to make heavy wort, maybe 20 or 25% more malt but I think my best batches have been made this way. I do rough it up a little and blow out as much fines as I can but I don't screen to size.

As far as the little gray spots: I planted 2 small patches of 6R last spring. One was very weedy so I tore it out and replanted to barley about July 1 just to keep the weeds from going to seed. The other was harvested in August. We had some wet weather right before harvest. It also had a few little gray splotches but other than that, looked ok. I tried malting 1 batch and it sprouted slow and molded up. Gave the rest (about 15 bu) to a buddy that has some sheep. I harvested the late planted field in October. I haven't malted any yet but it looks and smells good and is plump for feed barley. It didn't yield very well but I should have enough for at least a 100 gallon of beer.

Where in Canada are you? You should be able to grow good barley in the prairie. Wet areas can be a little tougher. You should be ok replanting it next spring but it wouldn't hurt to put a little fungicide seed treatment on it.

Looking up the page a ways, I noticed you had a question for me that I didn't get back to you about (sorry bout that). Genetic diversity in a single variety is not important or even wanted. A variety is (should be) inbred where every plant in the variety is similar to every other plant. Any plant that looks out of place should be rouged out. In this way, all plants in the field will be ready to harvest within a few days and will all be the same height, allowing for a fast, easy harvest. On a farm basis, genetic diversity is important and is achieved by planting several different varieties. With that said, if you and I split a bag of seed and grew it at two different environments for several years (say Wyoming and Canada) and then planted them side by side, they would look different. There is diversity in these old varieties and it (theoretically) is present in even a 5 gram sample. What will change when it is grown for several generations in a given environment is the gene frequency and possibly transgenerational epistasis (but I digress). Bottom line is sure, I think this can be a great forum for trading seed when people get to the point of having more than they know what to do with.

 

[Farside]

That's very interesting. So cereals are not like animals where inbreeding causes weakness...

I'm in North West Ontario. Cooler summers, more rain, and less wind than the prairies from what I can gather. Barley does grow well here. Low humidity.

 

[PapaBearJay]

That's very interesting. So cereals are not like animals where inbreeding causes weakness...

I'm in North West Ontario. Cooler summers, more rain, and less wind than the prairies from what I can gather. Barley does grow well here. Low humidity.

No, it does. Severely so, but some plant species handle it much easier than others but generally inbreeding depression is apparent after several generations and out-crossing will introduce new genetic backgrounds into the mix to keep the populations from depleting all variation present.

 

[Farside]

I'm wondering about the possibility of growing barley indoors with fluorescent lights assisting growth.

Has anyone tried this? I know people grow barley indoors for juicing but I haven't heard of it seeding.

 

[jojox]

Does anyone here screen their barley before maltng? I noticed that the commercial guys are pretty particular about their malting barley.

Roughly 60% of a malting barley crop is rejected due to things like damaged or thin husks, small grains, weathered grains, or mould / mildew.

Apparently you should run the grain over a 6/64'' (2.38 mm) perforated screen to remove the small grains. I had a look and those are mighty expensive sieves. There has to be a cheap way of making a screen...

Yes, it is most useful to sort the seeds by size. That said, I wouldn't think it is critical at your scale. In general those tiny, thin seeds have lower germination rates and contribute very little extract to your batch.

 

[jojox]

I'm wondering about the possibility of growing barley indoors with fluorescent lights assisting growth.

Has anyone tried this? I know people grow barley indoors for juicing but I haven't heard of it seeding.

You mean starting germination indoors, and planting outside after the seeds have sprouted? Or growing a crop indoors? My very assumption-laden calculations say for a 5 gallon batch of beer, you need about 100 square feet of barley, maybe 200 square feet - for maybe 9-18 pounds of malt.

The cost seems staggering. But I would imagine if you want to spend the time and money, you could do it. Maybe hydroponic barley? Maybe a greenhouse is the way to go?

It just goes to show you the scale of these large malting operations. One batch of malt at the largest producers (400T batches) consumes 200-300 acres of barley. Maybe more depending on the efficiency and grain cleaning criteria.

 

[CitizenCane]

No, it does. Severely so, but some plant species handle it much easier than others but generally inbreeding depression is apparent after several generations and out-crossing will introduce new genetic backgrounds into the mix to keep the populations from depleting all variation present.

Actually, self pollinated crops, like wheat, barley, oats, soybeans,show very little, if any inbreeding depression. They also show very little hybrid vigor. Hybrid wheat cultivars show only about 10 or 15% hybrid vigor, not enough of a yield increase to pay for the added cost of seed production except in very high yielding environments. Normally cross pollinated crops, like corn, sorghum, sunflowers, show a large amount of inbreeding depression and a large amount of hybrid vigor when these inbrebs are crossed. However, there is still a still a small amount of expressed genetic diversity in a field of a hybrid crop. Every plant is nearly genetically identical to every other plant in the field. If one plant gets sick from a given disease, chances are 99.44% of the rest are also susceptible to that disease.

With small grains, like wheat and barley, a released variety is the progeny of 7 or more self pollinations, making it roughly 98.5% inbred (homozygous at 98.5% of the loci). Even in a field situation, barley will only out cross at a rate of 2 or 3% so a 100 year old variety has already self pollinated a lot of times. The lack of genetic variability in a given variety allows for the use of modern equipment, rapid harvests, and other management practices that allow for maximizing yields at lower or consistent input levels. Genetic diversity is maintained by planting many different varieties over a region. Right or wrong, this is modern agriculture.

 

[PapaBearJay]

Actually, self pollinated crops, like wheat, barley, oats, soybeans,show very little, if any inbreeding depression. They also show very little hybrid vigor. Hybrid wheat cultivars show only about 10 or 15% hybrid vigor, not enough of a yield increase to pay for the added cost of seed production except in very high yielding environments. Normally cross pollinated crops, like corn, sorghum, sunflowers, show a large amount of inbreeding depression and a large amount of hybrid vigor when these inbrebs are crossed. However, there is still a still a small amount of expressed genetic diversity in a field of a hybrid crop. Every plant is nearly genetically identical to every other plant in the field. If one plant gets sick from a given disease, chances are 99.44% of the rest are also susceptible to that disease.

With small grains, like wheat and barley, a released variety is the progeny of 7 or more self pollinations, making it roughly 98.5% inbred (homozygous at 98.5% of the loci). Even in a field situation, barley will only out cross at a rate of 2 or 3% so a 100 year old variety has already self pollinated a lot of times. The lack of genetic variability in a given variety allows for the use of modern equipment, rapid harvests, and other management practices that allow for maximizing yields at lower or consistent input levels. Genetic diversity is maintained by planting many different varieties over a region. Right or wrong, this is modern agriculture.

Many self-pollinated crops, do in fact show inbreeding depression but in many breeding programs, the selection indices are formed based on the dominant and additive gene action which means those varieties being released are usually superior because they contain the "good" genes.

One reason hybrid seed-production is not used in grain crops is because of the inefficiencies of crossing between parents as compared to corn or sorghum.

Yes, diversity is maintained by planting different varieties with different backgrounds but the average size of the plant genome in agricultural crops is between 1.7 - 2.5 Gb. The average size gene is 1.5 Kb. That means that even at 98.5% homozygosity there are 2.55 Mb of genomic material that is variable and can be distributed across the genome in different regions. That creates a lot of potential for variability and it shouldn't just be assumed that the variability within a variety is exhausted.

Take the Illinois Field Corn experiment that has existed for over 100 years. This long-term selection experiment has demonstrated many things, but most of all that the response to selection over a century has not reduced the variation present within these different populations which are self-pollinated, not cross-pollinated.

 

[Farside]

You mean starting germination indoors, and planting outside after the seeds have sprouted? Or growing a crop indoors? My very assumption-laden calculations say for a 5 gallon batch of beer, you need about 100 square feet of barley, maybe 200 square feet - for maybe 9-18 pounds of malt.

The cost seems staggering. But I would imagine if you want to spend the time and money, you could do it. Maybe hydroponic barley? Maybe a greenhouse is the way to go?

It just goes to show you the scale of these large malting operations. One batch of malt at the largest producers (400T batches) consumes 200-300 acres of barley. Maybe more depending on the efficiency and grain cleaning criteria.

No, I was meaning just a pot. I'm looking for ways to accelerate the grow out time from a 5 gram starting quantity. If I can grow indoors in the winter, then I can get 2 crops a year in the beginning.

 

[Beer4ce]

Due to birds and other animals, my harvest last year was pretty modest. I planted all of it last week to maximize this years batch. Germination rate was 100% on the 20 or so grains I tested. I hope to have enough to brew up a batch entirely from my own malts this summer. The area I'm working with is about 100m^2 or 1000ft^2

 

[Farside]

While waiting for the ground to thaw, I decided to get ready for an experiment of sorts...

This season I will be continuing growing out the spring barley samples I got from the gene bank. The barley variety I got last season was chevalier and it produced 30 grams of seed. So this year I'm placing this seed onto seed tape so that I know exactly what the planting density is, and reduce some of my planting work when the spring eventually comes.

Here is a photo of my seed tape, made from two ply toilet paper and corn starch glue. I separated the toilet paper ply and placed glue dots every 2 inches so that each square contained 8 seeds, which I pressed gently into the glue dots. I then replaced the previously removed ply over the top so that the seeds are sandwiched between the plys.