Growing barley and finding the right seed, right strain, and right beer to make with

[Lozootmaniac]

Me and my wife are shooting around the idea of farming personally. She wants to make bread. I want to make beer. Wheat is definitely going to be a grain at this farm. I want to raise cattle but I plan on stuffing them with meat steer feed like corn and oat chop with mollases. I could use the other acre for barley.

Could i rotate these two every year?

The wife actually likes wheat beer, but I fear she likes bread more than beer and will quickly deplete the supply of wheat.

So the barley will be for beer but where do you get enough seed for 2 row barley strains? I want like 100 lbs of seedable 2 row. Or more.

Is this something I could get in a group buy for spring?

Is this crop something I could sell to a group buy when I harvest? (I haven't really participated with group buys or the for sale section of the forums)

EDIT: other HBT links for growing barley

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/growing-barley-wheat-home-115557/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f92/homegrown-barley-410106/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f92/100-homegrown-287146/

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Ever hear of a co-op?

Seed in bulk is what they do.

 

[Lozootmaniac]

Thanks for the helpful info. Found a nearby co op seed supplier that will do 100 lbs of robust barley seed and 100lbs Glenn wheat seed for 215$ delivered.

Here's the place. It's about 5 acres and and has a barn.

 

[Lozootmaniac]

Coming from a farm, and having a job in the agriculture industry, I will try to throw some numbers at you. Malting barley (before malting) usually weighs 48 lbs/bu. In commercial farming, barley will yeild up to 70 bu/acre (Canadian weather, not irrigated). Let's cut that down a bit, say 45bu/acre, which would be fairly easy to achieve. 48lbs/bu x 45 bu/acre = 2160 lbs of barley from 1 acre. Now there will be clean out and sizing for plump and thins. Use a high number here (10%), you are still left with 1950 lbs of barley from the acre plot. There will be a weight loss from the malting activity, not sure of the exact number here, but let's use 10% (high end), you still have 1750lbs of malted barley.
Now this is assuming that the quality is there for what you harvested to be malt. Just because you seed a registered malt variety does not mean that you are harvesting malt barley. The weather and any diseases will get you that.

Quality Requirements
The Brewing and Malting Barley Research Institute says a good malting barley will have the following characteristics:

Pure lot of an acceptable variety
High per cent germination and vigorous growth 95% or over (3 day test)
Fully mature
Free from disease
Free from frost damage
Not weathered or deeply stained
Less than 5% peeled and broken kernels
Free from heat damage
13.5% moisture or lower is desirable
Not artificially dried
No desiccants
Free of primary insects, large oil bearing seeds, ergot, treated seeds, smut and odour
Plump kernels of uniform size
Low to moderate protein content - 10.5% to 13% dry basis

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f92/homegrown-barley-410106/
this guy laid it out and said I would get a ton per 80 lbs seed invested if I account for his math. I could get more if I do it right. Making it in 500 ft rows will help and lodging shouldn't be a problem due to constant wind. The grade of the area (about 10%) will help keep the bottoms strong and prevent disease by letting water runoff.

If I pull it off I could have healthy seed for myself or others to harvest (for beer and bread) and just save 100 lbs for reseeding to make it happen again before winter so I can have the fall 2014 haul for seeding the rest of the property later.

Spending 1$/lb for seed and getting 200 lbs of malt able barley seems smarter than just getting a brew at 1$/lb

 

[Jmarsh544]

This is awesome... Are you giving up careers to make this happen? I would love to do this. Have you looked into malting methods at all.

 

[Lozootmaniac]

This is awesome... Are you giving up careers to make this happen? I would love to do this. Have you looked into malting methods at all.

No I plan on putting about 500$ into this and doing it all by hand with my wife, daughter, and my in laws. The neighbor is a dairy farmer and plans to help me plow this fall, I'm just going to sow rows 6 inches apart 500ft long. That's about
6000 seeds or half a pound per row. Or a million plants per acre.

 

[JDGator]

Well if you go through will all of this let me start by saying i hate you and its because i'm jealous. I would love to farm for a ton of reasons but i just dont have the time.

Good luck in your venture!!

 

[shoreman]

This is awesome in the fullest sense.

You might want to contact Valley Malt in western MA, they have been giving talks about this subject and also have a homebrew grain CSA - I would join if I was closer..

Look them up and keep us updated.

 

[Lozootmaniac]

I am definitely going to have a chat with an old neighbor of mine that farmed over 100 acres all of his life, he will have some wisdom, and I want to take a malting barley seminar, it costs like 50$ at the chamber of commerce every August.

I don't have time either, that's why I'm getting bread lovers and cattle raisers in on it. If you do have time, read this, it gives you the knowledge to control the grain quality while harvesting drying and storing. It's very empowering. Also check out lurker19's blog from 2011. I gotta know what happened after the lodging disaster.

 

[Lozootmaniac]

I'm going to plant in April 2014. So I have until then to prep soil, measure and correct ph and make a stick wall to stop animals. I'm trying to get a mower ATM to mow the crap that's growing around the area. After that ill just need to nudge the soil chemistry and get used to the land for awhile before I get an idea how I'm going to do this. There used to be a grainery by that barn I'm probably going to rebuild that before winter. Lots of work but I don't have much else to do besides work and take care of my kids.

I farmed a similar amount of land before and there were cows that depended on the land for food and shelter. It will be easier to watch grains and watch out for animals and pest without the added worry of a cow getting out or wrecking a fence you'll spend the rest of a weekend fixing.

Edited my first post to show some of the other threads I found on HBT about homegrown barley.

 

[Lozootmaniac]

update, i got permission to use more land. the squares are where im able to plant. the red triangle is off limits

im probably going to do oats in the green area for cover crop.

Update 2, went to the site today and cleared 1000 sq ft of dwarve sumacs. The soil was very rich, I spent a lot of time ripping out roots and stuff. A lot of work to do, and not enough time. The in laws want me to get all of the sumacs if I can. It's a hunt and there all over the area I was awarded yesterday. Now I know why they wanted me to farm it so bad. But I'm getting 6 to 10 ft sticks out of it. Lodging won't take me down as I won't let it. I'll make rows of these sticks to help siphon water over the hill I'm on. Good run off plus aerial siphoning to reduce erosion, the water will run on the bottoms of these. It's kinda going to be like a Chinese rice field without the flooding, or Chinese. Although I like the history of sake. Very interesting.

 

[Lozootmaniac]

Update. I'm not sure if anyone is aware, but clear cutting by hand is one of the most difficult projects ever. I got a small grove cleared so far. Going to use a chainsaw next time I go out but today I took some pics so everyone could see what I'm dealing with.

 

[Lozootmaniac]

Here's the patch I cleared so far. Anyone have a suggestion on how to terminate staghorn sumacs, a non poisonous hybrid of poison sumac.

Btw I decided I'm going to buy my seeds from johnnyseeds.com. They also have a nitrogen rich cover crop that has several different types of grain and some peas, which replace enough nitrogen, when plowed in, to aid in fertilizing my barley. Another point I want to make is I'm going to go natural for this project. No hybrids, no GMO seeds, only true 2 row malting barley that is open pollinated. I'm probably going to pollinate my perimeter of barley and wheat by hand to get a more uniform product. I'm going to sell most of it to a local farmer for feed too. And no fertilizer that wasn't green plant matter at some point.