LCS Genie Promising For Both Farmers and Malters
LimaGrain Cereal Seeds Barley variety LCS Genie has shown great promise for both farmers and malters as LimaGrain Cereal Seeds COO Frank Curtis shares moreCurtis: “We’ve been testing it for three years now. We’d never release a variety without comprehensive testing. Two years in micro-malting trials with the AMBA — the American Malting Barley Association — and then a year of commercial trials with Great Western Malting. And the feed back, in the words of the AMBA when they wrote the description of it — This is a variety best suited to the craft brewing industry.”
That positive endorsement from the malters is good news, Curtis says that farmers will be just as impressed with this variety.
Curtis: “A barley variety has to do two things — It’s got to keep the farmer happy on its agronomic with high yields and it has to keep the malters and brewers happy with its quality. Genie does have the best of both world. One word of caution, it is a very short straw variety which is best suited to intensive production situations. It likes quite a lot of water — either irrigation or high rainfall regions. It is not well-suited to really dry conditions. But give it enough water and it can push even the best feed variety for yields. For malting, it has extremely high extracts, very low viscosity, and low beta-glucan content and a medium level of free-amino nitrogen which is exactly what the craft brewers are looking for.”