Lab's Search For The Perfect Brew Boosts Product Quality

Page first published in 2000

MADISON -- Next time you're tossing back a cold one, raise a toast to the folks in the Barley and Malt Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The quality of American beer rides on their sifting and winnowing for better barley.

The federal lab is the only place in America charged with testing the thousands of barley varieties for their fitness in malting and beer making. Their results are crucial to both farmers and beer-makers, since only a small percentage of barley varieties rise to the challenge of ending up in your next Bud Light.

"We're trying to help weed out all of the barley lines that have some kind of problem, either to the farmer or the malter," says Al Budde, who supervises malting quality analyses at the facility. "We're helping the American farmer, at least the ones growing barley, and we're helping malters and brewers identify the highest-quality ingredients."

So how much science goes into barley-breeding, malt-making and beer-brewing? Each year, the lab runs about 4,000 different lines of barley through a battery of tests, looking at every conceivable quality variable such as weight, kernel size, color, clarity of malt, protein, starch and enzyme content, among others. "We end up creating a data stack that's about 29 columns wide and 6,000 rows long. From that comes our report to industry," Budde says.

Results of the most promising lines are forwarded to the American Malting Barley Association, based in Milwaukee, which sets industry standards and recommends new barley varieties. They use the lab's data to find ideal lines for beer-making, and the barley breeders' data to find the highest-yielding and most disease-resistant strains. The AMBA represents most major breweries.

David Peterson, research leader for the lab, says the lab's small-scale malting plant can recreate conditions of even the biggest malting operations. The lab also has a nifty little five-gallon brewery, capable of turning their malts into a drinkable final product. These days, however, it's only used for experimental malt research.

Research at the lab is uncorking basic knowledge about common problems in the malting process. Peterson says that chemical and genetic analyses at the lab can shed light on problems like haziness, "gushing" or after-taste. Another scientist is studying the protein responsible for beer's foamy head.

One urgent research area is on a fungus decimating barley crops in the Red River Valley called Fusarium. The fungus produces a so-called "vomitoxin," which, if it shows up in beer, is exactly as bad as it sounds.

"Most of our research effort right now is devoted to finding lines that are resistant to this fungus, so growers can get their fields back into production," Peterson says. Fusarium is especially tough because it overwinters in the soil and can re-emerge after years of dormancy.

Peterson says the lab got its start after the 13-year period of Prohibition. Hundreds of new barley lines were bred for animal feed, but no one had any clue whether they were suitable for malting. The lab was created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and has been analyzing malt and barley ever since.

In the lab basement, the sweet smell of damp barley permeates the malting rooms. Each barley sample is weighed, counted, measured for color, given an official number and placed in plastic bottles. Since all samples are archived for up to two years, the lab houses shelves and shelves of more than 10,000 plastic containers full of malt and barley.

Malting begins in the steep tank, where the kernels are placed in stainless steel cans and left in 57-degree water to soak to 45-percent moisture. Then they are placed in a big metal drum to germinate for another five days, until rootlets are well-formed. Finally the samples are placed in a kiln that forces warm air through the kernels, drying them for preservation.

"This is not a nice, easy, one-step process," says Budde, musing at the number of odd coincidences it must have taken to "discover" beer.

Both Budde and Peterson agree that the beer industry is a conservative one. Companies are so steeped in tradition and ancient brewing standards that one would think beer recipes are etched on stone tablets.

In keeping with tradition, Peterson says the ultimate goal of good malt analysis is to avoid change. The biggest challenge to beer-makers is maintaining a consistency in their product year after year, delivering all the qualities that loyal drinkers expect even as barley varieties come and go. Knowing the exact properties of malt is the key to consistency.

The lab's staff of two-dozen scientists have varied beer-drinking tastes, with some purists opting for micro-brewed stouts while others are perfectly happy with a Miller Lite. A couple staff scientists don't drink beer at all.

As for Peterson, his research career began with oats, a crop very similar to barley, but he embraced the opportunity to work in the lab. "I certainly had an interest in beer," he says. "In beer drinking, at least."

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WRITER: Brian Mattmiller, (608) 262-9772; bsmattmi@facstaff.wisc.edu
CONTACT: David Peterson, (608) 262-4482; dmpeter4@facstaff.wisc.edu