Rolling With The Changes
Spring is arriving here, and that means it’s planting season for us at Black Frost. This spring, however, things are looking a bit different than in years past.
After a summer of what seemed like never-ending rainfall, it quickly turned into drought. So much so that we were unable to plant our wheat and rye, which are both typically planted in mid to late September. While there is nothing we can do about the rye (we'll have to source rye from a different farm this year), we did find a variety of spring wheat. We worked with our friend Jochum Wiersma from the University of Minnesota again to identify spring wheat varieties that would work well in our area and had characteristics that would lend themselves well to use in distilling. We settled on a variety called MN-Torgy. This hard red spring wheat variety scored high marks from a baking quality perspective and yields well in our area. We were able to take advantage of a brief warm-up in the weather this past week and planted 20 acres of wheat, which should be enough wheat for one year’s worth of distilling.
In addition to the wheat, we also planted 30 acres of barley, which we use to make our American Single Malt whiskey, as well as a little bit in our Bourbon. Up until this year, we had been using a 2-row variety of barley called Pinnacle. That particular variety had sort of reached the end of its life cycle, as newer, better varieties had taken its place.
We were exploring our options on what variety to plant next (ironically, one on the short list is called Explorer) when we learned about something new coming out of the University of Minnesota's barley breeding program- so new that it doesn't even have a name yet. It's a naked 6-row variety of barley, something that is quite unique. For some quick historical context, the University of Minnesota was one of the leading institutions in 6-row barley breeding in the United States for over 100 years. Then, seemingly overnight, the brewing industry, which is the primary user of malted barley, switched its preference to 2-row malted barley. That, combined with barley acreage moving further west and north, essentially left a century's worth of research in the dust. But all was not lost.
Barley breeding and research are still being done at the University of Minnesota, and they have recently developed a unique type of naked 6-row barley. The reason it is called naked barley is that the husk of the seed falls off, similar to wheat or rye, whereas with regular barley, the husk stays intact. This is particularly important for brewers who need that husk during the brewing process to help with filtration.
In distilling, though, particularly in the American style, where you ferment on the grain, whether the grain has a husk or not doesn't really matter. We make our American Single Malt whiskey the on-grain way, and having the husks in the fermenter does lend itself to a more tannic distillate. These tannins fade over time in the barrel, but we had always wondered what it would be like to be able to make an on-grain, American Single Malt with no husk. When we heard that this new variety was available, we jumped on the opportunity and did a trial this past fall with what little bit of malted barley was available.
Let’s just say we were impressed- it was everything we hoped it would be. It fermented beautifully, and the distillate had a velvety soft mouthfeel that we typically get during our wheat distillations, but with all the sweet, malty characteristics of barley.
We're excited to switch to this new type of barley and, with 30 acres planted, to be the first ones to bring this new variety into the distilling world.
