Barley Beer Varieties

Barley Beer Varieties

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Dr. Patrick Hayes, head of OSU's barley breeding program works with a number of craft breweries in an attempt to develop new varieties. There's a lot of interest in what we spend most of our time doing which is developing malting barley varieties with hulls and that is because the hull plays an important role in the filtration during the brewing process. Typically these naked parleys are only thought of for food use. This is kind of a new thing. You would have to manipulate your brewing process a little. There is a couple of ways that they can explore some filtration opportunities but the most straightforward use of it would be to make a Hefeweizen that didn't have any wheat in it. It wouldn't be a Hefeweizen anymore, it would be like a Hefegersten or something like that. Instead of having a wheat malt in their along with the barley, you would have in all barley malt and therefore it would be compliant with the German purity law. If no wheat were there, then would it be gluten-free? There wouldn't be any wheat gluten present but you could not sell it as a gluten free product because barley has proteins that are similar to those present in wheat and will cause pain and suffering in a celiac.
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