By Alice McFarlane

Malting barley production the focus of meetings in Saskatoon

Mar 11, 2022 | 3:00 PM

MELFORT, Sask. – The Canadian Malt Barley Technical Centre (CMBTC) is offering an in person course March 16 and 17 in Saskatoon.

The event will include an overview of the Canadian malting barley value chain, a review of global barley, malt, and brewing statistics.

CMBTC executive Director Peter Watts will be one of the presenters. He said there is a huge demand for malt barley with tight stocks in Canada and globally.

“According to the USDA, the world is at the lowest barley stocks since 1983 and the drought in Canada this past year obviously didn’t help,” Watts said. “We’ve had very strong demand for barley from China in the last couple of years as a feedstock, and that’s really been an important factor in global trade and supporting prices.”

The one country with a good barley crop is Australia. There production reached record levels at 13.7 million tonnes according to their agriculture ministry.

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Even with strong production numbers it will do little to help with the short supply, according to Watts.

“That’s only one country and now with the outbreak of war, supplies in the Black Sea region coming out of Ukraine and Russia are questionable, and that’s added significant premium to the market over the past just few weeks,” Watts said.

The Malt Academy this week will also have some hands-on sessions. There will be theoretical and practical knowledge of malting technology and processing, an understanding of malting barley selection criteria, quality evaluation, malt analysis, and specialty malts.

Watts said there will be brewing presentations that will give producers a chance to get their hands dirty.

“We’ll bring germination plates so we can count the germination energy in malting barley just to give them a sense of what end users look at when they’re doing their quality evaluations, and then we’re actually going to do a tasting,” Watts said. “We’ll look at different beer styles and the types of malt that go into those different beer styles so that’ll be an opportunity for everyone to socialize and enjoy one of their favourite types of beer.”

The event is sponsored by the Saskatchewan Barley Development Commission (SaskBarley). The course is free for all registered barley producers.

More information can be found on the SaskBarley website.

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @farmnewsNOW