Cedar Isle Farm
Update: Jan. 3 the I.P.A. is clarifying! Brew day was Nov 28 2016. My new years resolution is to be more patient.
I recently took a trip out to the Cedar Isle Farm in Agassiz B.C. to drop off some beer I made with the hulless barley they grew last summer. They were nice enough to give me 25 lbs. of CDC McGwire barley to play with – thanks again guys! The owners Diane and Jim farm 100 acres, 20 of which are dedicated to grain. They grow wheat, hulless oats, rye and now barley.
The farm is also organic and sell their grain using the Community Supported Agriculture model. You pay a membership fee which entitles you to a share of the season’s harvest. They also sell their grain to a local bakery called the Bread Affair which is used in their “100 mile” loaf. I’m looking forward to paying them a visit during the summer!
CDC McGwire is not ideal for malting due to it’s high beta glucan content. It’s more for general eating purposes. There are better hulless barley’s which were specifically bred for malting like CDC Explus or Taylor 6 but they’re not used in the industry probably due to the fact that they’re harder to work with – hulless barley sticks to everything. Not a big deal when you’re malting at home. I also read that this variety is very low in protein so I figured I’d skip the protein rest and add a beta glucan rest. Unfortunately this was a mistake as you can see in the video, the beer turned out pretty cloudy. The first batch of malt was also a pilsner malt which was undermodified so it was a bit of an amateur mistake on my part not to include the protein rest.
Yes, we do get snow on the west coast.
The first beer was a Belgian Golden Strong ale which as the name implies comes in at 8% but it’s not boozy or hot. You wouldn’t know it’s as strong as it is based on the flavour. For this beer I also made a dextrin malt. The second beer is an I.P.A. and it’s full of galaxy and citra hops. I also made a kind of munich malt from a pale malt which tastes remarkably like brown toast with honey. The flavour of this malt was masked by the hops but I’ll post more on this idea later.
Brewing Beer The Hard Way 