Focus Session - New Horizons in Barley Research

Description: Malt will always be one of the most important raw materials in brewing due to it's contribution to brewing and fermentation efficiency. The malting process begins with the selection of suitable grains and with suitable quality. While traditional grains of barley and wheat remain the major grains in the brewing industry, there are growing interests in the value of other grains, especially if these are gluten-free or how they have more value in on-farm production.
In this session, we will have experts presents on new science of our traditional malting and the grains used, but also the value of considering some alternative grains and they value they bring to our malting, brewing and distilling industries.

Relevance: The relevance of this session applies directly to the conference theme of "Evolving in a New environmental". Taken literally, the challenging growing environments for our grains, and how the agriculture industry, malting and brewing industries can remain sustainable and profitable, then a deeper understanding how grain and malt chemistry is even becoming more important.

Brewing Summit 2025 Theme: For over 100 years, there have been efforts to consistently improve grain quality for the malting, brewing and distilling industries. These efforts always seem to remain outside the scope of industry expectations as the industry is too conservative to take on new methods or the additional new data doesn't fit within the framework of old methods. Two frontiers challenge the grain used as the raw material, in essence, a more inconsistent climate and malt methods that don't necessarily conform to modern brewing. The focus session of "Malt and barley: emerging research" will allow researcher to present the latest data in addressing how the old understanding of barley and grain quality needs to evolve to consider more relevant grain quality.