Well, it stopped raining long enough today for Richard, Derek & Chris to load up our new Quadram combine and head over to Fife where there was some Scots Bere ready to be harvested. A bit bedraggled after all the recent rain but it was still markedly earlier than the surrounding Laureate and it's great to get it in the barn in case it keeps on raining and the other spring barleys start sprouting in the ear. The strips are being grown for The Crafty Maltsters, who are setting up a small scale (relative to commercial maltings) maltings on their farm and plan to use their local crops to feed the plant. A great initiative and we wish them success.
The Crafty Maltsters have a wonderful location with the Lomond Hills in the background. Note how far behind the other spring barley crops are in the picture and the Scots Bere was drilled relatively late too. But, our Quadram is set up with just a 1.5m cut. Ideal for plot work but not for harvesting big fields. Mind you, that was equivalent to the standard cut of a binder.... ...
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Flavour - is it down to variety, environment or both? Here's a pretty comprehensive study that indicates that it is all three but that environment (terroir) is more important than variety. The authors do note that the diversity amongst the 4 maize hybrids that they studied is likely to be limited and certainly the allelic diversity in inbred barley lines could be much greater. I reckon that the chances of finding flavour differences due to variety are much greater if you look beyond the current accepted distilling barley varieties and we have The James Hutton Institute Flavourful seedcorn pilot project with The Scotch Whisky Research Institute to determine if we can find differences amongst varieties ranging from Scots Bere through Golden Promise to Laureate. Watch this space.
In terms of production amounts, it is interesting to see that the difference between the best variety/environment combination and the worst is 17%. That is more tan the average difference between winter and spring barley so if distilleries can tolerate such differences, then maybe they should start looking harder at winter barley (especially if August remains as wet as it has started in Scotland). ...
With the sun shining before the rain sets in, it's time to get some winter barley trials cut at The James Hutton Institute (Invergowrie, Dundee). First up is a trial of QTL segmental introgression lines to help us identify a candidate gene for a spring barley region that improves the malting quality of winter barley. Then on to a trial of IMPROMALT introgression lines from Ackermann. Some big bags from winter barley this year and the operators are getting a good workout. New Wintersteiger combine from Trials Equipment is making their job a lot easier though and the straw chopper is doing a good job. Anyone remember collecting the grain in boxes under the sieves? Plot combines have come a long way! ...
