The Oregon State University barley variety Full Pint grows in an experimental plot in Summerville.(Pat Hayes/Oregon State University)

Barley may be the new hops, if research by Oregon State University yields the potential for brewers that a recent study suggests.

A research team found that barley itself, and where it’s grown, can impart unique flavors to beer, from floral and fruity to toffee and toasted. Typically, malted barley plays a supporting role in brewing. Unlike hops, varieties of which give brewers a wide palate to choose from, only a narrow selection of barley varieties are used in brewing. That could change during brewing trials using malts of the OSU varieties.

Pat Hayes, one of the study authors and an OSU barley breeder in Corvallis, compared barley in brewing to tomatoes in sauce. Ordinary tomatoes are a consistent if not very flavorful product, but heirloom tomatoes deliver a wider variety of colors and tastes.

“The chemical profile, the processing profile wouldn’t be the same as a variety used to make commercial tomato sauce,” Hayes said.

In its study, OSU combined two varieties of barley, one it created years ago called Full Pint and another developed in Britain called Golden Promise.

Golden Promise produces significantly higher fruity, floral and grassy flavors, according to the report, “Effects of Barley Variety and Growing Environment on Beer Flavor,” published recently in the Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists. Full Pint is higher in malty, toffee and toasted flavors.

Cross-breeding the two resulted in several hundred breeding lines of genetically different seed stock, which were grown in test plots in Corvallis, Lebanon and at the Klann family farm outside Madras.

Rahr Malting Co., of Minnesota, produced about 200 grams each of malt from selected varieties made for the study. Malting involves soaking and heating the barley so its starch can ferment during the brewing process, which produces sugars that later become alcohol.

New Glarus Brewing in Wisconsin used a nanobrewing system to produce a single bottle of beer from each malt, about 150 beers. The beers were then put in front of a panel for sensory testing.

“The confirmation of flavor differences between the nano-brews made from Golden Promise, Full Pint and CDC Copeland (a third variety used for comparison) malts provides crucial evidence that barley variety can contribute significantly to beer flavor,” according to the report.

That observation upends accepted wisdom among brewers that the malting process, not the barley itself, imparts some flavor characteristics to beer. Like a work of art, malted barley is the canvas on which the beer is produced, while hops and other ingredients are the paint, said Veronica Vega, brewmaster at Deschutes Brewery for new product development.

The idea of making beer based on the flavor characteristics of barley, the way hops are used, is still a theory, one that Vega and Deschutes Brewery will put to the test in January, she said. The brewery, working with OSU, plans to brew light pale ales in its new pilot brewing system with three varieties from the study and then put the beers before a tasting panel, Vega said.

“I wouldn’t say that we’re personally interested in it to find the next big consumer market,” she said Tuesday. “It could also inform decision-making in the future, in the supply chain. You could request certain varieties, where now you’re relying on a maltster to select a variety. More information is power.”

Seth Klann in Madras is undertaking similar trials in a public-private partnership using five OSU varieties, he said. He grew cross-bred varieties for the OSU study on a small plot of his family’s irrigated acreage.

“The problem in North America is we’ve been breeding (barley) for better and better yields, better disease resistance and more extract in the malt house,” he said. “We’ve bred all the flavor out of barley. We’ve hit the malting equivalent of white flour. That’s the exact opposite of what we do at our place. We’re breeding heirloom varieties into mainstream varieties.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, 
jditzler@bendbulletin.com