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Malt Barley
Malt barley is all about taste – and that taste is mainly used to flavour beer and spirits. Malt extract is also used around the world in many foods (from cookies and cakes to beverages and baby foods) to enhance flavour, colour, fermentation and aroma as well as improve texture and shelf-life and enrich nutritional content.
Malt or malted barley is made from malting barley; the former being the processed grain and the latter being the unprocessed grain.
Malting barley is a demanding crop. It requires a combination of precise production, harvest conditions and storage (see list below). If all of these can be achieved and the grain meets maltsters strict quality specifications, malting barley can command premium prices – and it can be processed into malted barley.
The Brewing and Malting Barley Research Institute says high quality malting barley should have the following characteristics:
- Pure lot of an acceptable variety
- Germination of 95 per cent or higher (three-day test)
- Protein content of 11 to 12.5 per cent (dry basis)
- Moisture content of 13.5 per cent maximum
- Plump kernels of uniform size
- Fully mature
- No signs of pre-harvest germination
- Free of DON from Fusarium head blight
- Free from disease
- Free from frost damage
- Not weathered or deeply stained
- Less than five per cent peeled and broken kernels
- Free from heat damage
- Free of insects, admixtures, ergot, treated seeds, smut and odour
- Free of chemical residues.
Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development estimates that malting barley varieties account for about 80 per cent of the total barley grown in the province. But only about 20 per cent of the malting barley grown is accepted for malting.
That results in an annual crop of about one million tonnes of accepted malting barley crop. Some 750,000 tonnes are used domestically transformed into malt and the remainder is exported as barley for malt purposes. The main customers for Alberta malting barley and malt are China, the United States, South Africa, Colombia, Japan and Mexico.
Malting barley that does not meet maltsters specifications by no means wasted – it is used as livestock feed.
Malting barley is an important crop, both to Alberta’s barley sector and Alberta’s agricultural industry. To improve malt barley production, varieties, quality and yield, the Alberta Barley Commission supports a number of research projects.
For more information, visit Malting Barley at Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development’s website.
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