- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, the MSU Extension Service, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, The Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(lively music) - You are tuned to "Montana Ag Live" originating tonight from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over the Montana public I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology.

I'm honored to be your host this evening.

We have an interesting panel night.

We're gonna address a topic that an awful lot of Montanans are interested in.

But in addition to that, I just wanna make a couple of little announcements.

Number one, we're welcoming a new sponsor, Northern Pulse Growers.

We've worked with them for years here at Montana State University and also at North Dakota State University.

It's a great group, so we thank you for joining our program here this evening.

And we are featuring women in agriculture this spring.

And as a result, we have another excellent program featuring a guest who has done a lot for the state of Montana.

And we'll get to that in a minute.

Before we do that, let me introduce the panel.

Way to my left is Uta Mckelvy, she has a plant pathologist here at Montana state University.

So if you have any questions relative to diseases tonight, hey, it's an excellent opportunity to get on that phone and ask the questions.

Our guest tonight, and I'm honored to have her here, is Hannah Turner.

Hannah is director of the Barley, Malt & Brewing Lab here at Montana State University.

We've had a Barley Breeding Program here for years; but in about 2015, we expanded that program to include malting and brewing.

And it's excellent program.

If you have any questions about beer, barley, or malt tonight, hey, we'll have the answer.

Tim.

Tim Seipel is always here whenever we ask him.

Tim is a weed scientist.

We enjoy his presence here.

And Tim, if you have any words of wisdom relative to weed control, hey, tonight you can give 'em out.

And of course, Abi Seed.

Abby is the extension horticulturalist here at MSU.

Any horticultural questions tonight, float 'em in and we'll get to 'em the best we can.

Answering the phones tonight is Cheryl Bennet here in the studio; and remotely is Judge Bruce Lobel, and he'll take your questions remotely.

So with that, Hannah, I'm glad you're here.

Tell us a little bit about what you do in the barley Malt, Malt & Brewing Lab.

It's a fascinating topic to me.

- Yeah, so it's a really fun job.

We get to work with folks all over the state and beyond.

Primarily we focus on supporting the Barley Breeding Program for Montana, so it means that we're testing lines as early as we can; looking at end product quality, so that's malt quality; but it's also forage, food and feed; so we test all aspects agronomically.

And then malt in the lab, we produce a certificate of analysis for each line out of the Barley Breeding Program, so that's looking at all kinds of analytics that are important for a maltster or a brewer.

And then we also are now brewing in the lab as well.

So we've found that the hands-on aspect of malting was really important for understanding of how those lines looked as end product, and so we now are applying that to our brewing as well.

Brewing has its own kind of language that goes to it.

And the more that we can experience that makes us better able to converse with brewers but also look directly at how those malt lines will perform as a malt and as a beverage.

- Yeah, that's interesting.

I know 20 years ago, we may have had two or three, what were called micro breweries back then, now they're called craft breweries.

And I understand we're well over 100 craft breweries in the state.

Do you test and provide malt advice to all these breweries or a lot of them?

- So, yeah, there's about 100 breweries in the state.

We're at third per capita across the nation, so we like our beer here in Montana.

We work with a lot of the malsters around the state, providing them with certificate of analysis, which helps them feed into their program and making sure that their process is going to the highest quality that they can achieve.

But that information also goes out to the brewers.

It's kind of an interesting thing.

If you look at the history of malting and brewing, originally, the maltster and the brewer were the same person; it was all one process.

We've come to a modern day state where a maltster takes one leg of it and then the brewer takes the next.

And so the information that we provide out of our lab is kind of the midpoint.

We're providing data that the maltster uses to improve their process on the back end of it, but then it also goes forward to the brewer and helps them understand how that product is gonna work in their process.

So, yeah, we work with brewers all over the state.

We welcome questions, we welcome tours.

We want brewers to have as much hands-on understanding of the malting process and the data that's gonna go into their brewery, and help them be successful.

- Good.

Next time you have a tasting test, let me know, right?

- Yeah.

- I would stop by- - You're welcome anytime.

- Okay.

Uta, this question came in this evening.

This person says their long care company wanted to take all their leaves up this spring and charge them for doing so.

Is that necessary or could they just leave them on the ground to rot away?

- Well, I don't think that'll make for very pretty looking lawn.

- [Jack] No.

- I think I would probably... Well, I don't know if I would pay someone to do that or if I would just do it myself.

But I think raking up the leaves will probably be a good idea.

I mean, dead plant matter attracts a lot of pathogens or just organisms that compost that and could potentially attack your lawn as well.

And so I think raking up the leaves would be helpful.

- I think they should do it in the fall, but I agree entirely.

Fall sanitation, it prevents a lot of diseases in trees and bushes, and so forth.

Here's a question that comes in every year.

And if you grow radishes or try to grow radishes, carrots, few other crops, potatoes, you have a flea beetle problem, especially in radishes.

Any suggestions?

- Yeah.

This is a very common question.

One of the things that I tell people is to get rid of some of the wheaty vegetation around your gardens.

And if you have some leaf matter on the base of your gardens or anything like that, get rid of that 'cause they're gonna be over wintering in those areas.

Usually they're gonna go for the tallest plants in a garden bed.

They love egg plants, radishes.

But you can use insecticides like pyrethrins, certain permethrins.

And if you have persistent problems, you might wanna try a little bit of a rotation to see if you can't reset the system a little bit.

- You know, I love radishes.

And in the old days we had a product that used to work pretty well called diazinon.

It's no longer produced, it was never taken off the market.

But I'm also noticing more and more that I'm having problems with flea beetles on cucurbits, cabbage, Brussels sprouts.

And is there anything you really do there to prevent them from damaging the leaves?

- Yeah.

So for something like that, especially for plants where you're gonna eat the foliage, I like to use floating row covers.

That's just a mechanical control where you can cover them up, and use that in a way to capture the timing right so that the flea beetles aren't attacking the leaves in those critical times.

Seedlings are also especially susceptible to flea beetles.

- While we're on flea beetles, they get into radishes and they burrow in a little bit and it turns a little bit brown.

Do you need to cut that out or could you just eat that and maybe enjoy a little extra protein with the radishes?

- I'm always one for encouraging people to enjoy a little bit of extra protein, but it's difficult to convince them to do that.

- Okay.

I agree with you there.

- I have a question, Abi.

I was wondering, because you suggest rotation, so what are garden crops that flea beetles don't like and would be suitable?

- So that's a tough question, 'cause if you're taking...

Most of the ones that they really like are things like carrots, cabbages sometimes, egg plants, radishes, so I wouldn't grow those types of common targeted plants in the same site year after year.

So try and mix it up usually.

And some people will also use trap crops.

So if you really like your radishes, plant eggplant or something like that that they're gonna go to instead.

Yeah.

- So make a decision.

You don't like eggplant, just sacrifice it.

- Yeah.

Make your decision.

Exactly.

- Got it.

Got it.

- Whichever ones you like more.

- There are some producers in the state who do out as a canola management strategy, they plant a trap crop for the flea beetles hoping that they don't move further into their canola.

- Yeah, a very good point.

Tim, while we have you, it's an interesting follow up to last week.

Jane talked about a new herbicide for downy brome.

This person wants to know if animals like elk and deer pass seeds through their intestinal system, and can they spread weed seeds that way?

- Yeah, actually.

So seeds can go through the guts of animals, and there's lots of examples of it out there.

Definitely deer and elk out.

People have done experiments where they've collected manure from deer and elk, and they've taken 'em into the greenhouse and they let 'em germinate.

And there's actually a pretty good diversity of weeds or sometimes beneficial, desired native plants in there.

So they definitely do pass through.

Another thing that shows up occasionally is geese who've been grazing canola seed that's fallen out of the heads, and it's usually Roundup Ready, and then those geese fly somewhere else and they poop out the canola.

And a producer tries to go in and manage it with glyphosate, Roundup, and it doesn't kill the canola and it can actually be problematic sometimes.

- It's interesting.

I can remember way back when, where, here in the valley, people were spraying Tordon on some noxious weeds, and the deer would feed and bed down in there.

And during the evening they'd travel into the alfalfa fields, urinate in the alfalfa fields, and you'd have big dead spots.

So a lot of things can pass to animals like that.

- Yeah, there's a few of those herbicides that- - Interesting.

From Florence: Caller wants to grow hops.

They're wondering if they could be successful doing that there, and what to do with it after growing.

And they wanna know who processes it.

So I'll turn that over to the Barley Lab.

- So we actually do do a fair amount of testing for hops as well.

Hops are an interesting thing, that they only grow in certain parallels, and Montana happens to fall in one of those places.

So you can successfully grow hops here.

We actually have quite a few commercial growers coming up around the state that are growing hop now.

If you grow your hops, we've had folks send them, send them to us and we can test your alpha and your beta levels for you and kind of give you an idea of where that would fall.

And, yeah, it's great for home brewing, doing some fresh hop beers.

- Is MSU still have a hop variety program going on or is that gone?

- There wasn't really a full blown program.

There was some dabbling in it at one point.

Unfortunately that's not something that's I would love to see it come back, but- - Yeah, and we are growing some hops here in the valley; and quite successfully.

- Yeah, definitely.

Some good- - [Uta] What are alpha beta values?

- So a brewer's gonna use primarily its alpha acids.

We test for alpha acids and beta, but that's largely gonna tell a brewer how much bittering aspect from this particular hop.

There's hops that are both bittering and then there's hops that are aroma, there's some that can kind of play both roles.

But typically a bittering hop is something that's gonna make those IBUs in your beer.

- How do you measure those, the IBUs?

It's always fascinated me.

I see 50, 72, so forth and so on.

How is that measured?

- So all of the methods that we use out of the lab are curated by a group called the American Society of Brewing Chemists.

IBUs, it's with a spectrophotometer; there's some reagents involved in that, but basically it's a color change spectrophotometer type reaction that we measure.

There's some debate amongst it.

You can directly measure it, but there's also some perceived bittering that can happen.

And so depending on which brewer you'll speak with, some will go directly by what the lab method is and some will be... they'll put more weight into their own perceived kind of assessment of it.

- Okay.

I'm not gonna go in there.

- It gets complicated.

- I'll save that for later on.

This person from Missoula would like to know who supports the lab.

Is it the charges for your testing?

- So largely we gotta throw a thanks out to Montana Wheat and Barley, that's gonna be our major source of funding.

We are 100% grant funded.

And so Montana Wheat and Barley; American Malting Barley Association, AMBA.

We also get some funding through the Brewers Association, both locally and nationally, And then as well for the lab, for the services that we do, we do have a fee for that; and that goes into getting more equipment, supporting some of our students and our assistants.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Abi, this person has seen white asparagus in the store, and it's always quite expensive.

They would like to know, can they get white varieties or what makes it white?

- Making it white, you're just trying to prevent the chlorophyll from reacting to the sunlight.

So as soon as you start to see those asparagus buds pop up in the soil, you can do a few things.

One, you can mound up the soil around it as it grows so it is not exposed to that sunlight; or can also put something down as a cover, like a PVC pipe with a lid, but you're gonna have to be precise as to where you position it right on top of the asparagus.

But it's just regular asparagus that's been deprived of sunlight as it grows.

- My question, I won't spend the money for white asparagus, does it taste different than green asparagus?

- I personally don't notice.

What about you guys?

Do you notice a big difference in flavor?

- Yes.

- Very much so.

- It's more like sweet, I think.

- I think it has less of a chlorophyll taste to it.

(group laughing) And it's milder.

I think it's milder.

- And so, A, I wanna know where that store is 'cause I have been craving white asparagus for years now 'cause that's what we eat in Germany.

Green is fine, but I want the white one.

And it's expensive 'cause you need to be skilled to harvest it when you can't see it.

So you're like cutting it underground, so- - There are probably a couple new stores arriving here in Bozeman that are known for specialty foods.

And I won't mention who they are, but I'm sure you'll be able to find white asparagus in those stores.

Myself, if it's not pickled, I'm not sure it's worth- - I'm with you, Jack.

I like the pickled asparagus.

So for those of you who don't know, there's actually a whole seed in Germany in the spring that's just called asparagus time.

And Germans eat a lot of asparagus: pickled, white.

But usually they use sand typically to re-mound.

So producing asparagus when you have a really sandy soil is quite a bit easier than doing it on some of our hard clays.

That's my feeling, at least.

- Okay.

Now I've learned a lot about white asparagus.

- [Uta] And I gotta go.

It's about asparagus time.

(all laughing) - Question from Facebook.

And this is for Tim, since you were up a minute ago.

This person uses a lot of herbicides, and one he's referring to in this particular case is Sharpen.

But he wants to know if the various herbicides that people use in the state affect the soil biology.

And that's a good question.

- Yeah, that's a really interesting question.

We talk a lot about soil health in Montana; there's a big initiative.

And we talk a lot about using no till or using tillage as our main tool of weed control.

And when we use a no till cropping system, we you generally rely on herbicides to kill those weeds.

And so a lot of people have asked, "Well, what happens to the soil microbiota when you apply a herbicide?"

And it depends on what herbicide it is and what biological process that affects.

But things like Sharpen or sulfentrazone, or things like that, probably have a relatively small effect on the microbiome.

They're applied just to the surface.

They may go down a little bit it into the soil and be incorporated, but actually most herbicides are consumed or broken down by microbes.

So they may have some small effect on the microbiome of that soil, but at the same time those herbicides are broken down by living microbes in the soil.

So it's a hard question to answer, but probably not too big of an effect for something like Sharpen or sulfentrazone.

- Is there any specific herbicide now or previously that did affect the soil microbiology - There are things that can affect the soil microbiome.

It's probably...

Things like paraquat are just very toxic, so they probably affect nearly any living organism they come in contact with.

Glyphosate has a pathway that is...

In some bacteria, the way glyphosate works, some bacteria are sensitive to it, some bacteria are not sensitive to it actually.

So it's a complicated question.

- Well, I realize that.

And I don't know if there's a lot of research going into that area right now, but it sounds fascinating.

- There is research out there, but it's sometimes contradictory.

No real clear picture on exactly how it works.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Hannah, from Missoula, this person would like to know what is the biggest problem facing small Montana craft breweries and also local growers of barley.

- I'd say industry as a whole, just environment.

Last year we had a pretty rough year, it was hot and it was dry.

A lot of barley ended up going for feed or not being used for malt, and so that definitely puts pressure on maltsters to have that incoming resource for themselves.

I think craft maltsters are in a place where they're a bit more stable; in some cases they're their own growers, they're able to save seed from previous years.

So I know maltsters in the state, that they're not gonna use any of their past year's barley harvest and rely on prior to this past year.

As the Barley Breeding Program, we're working to support that.

Jamie who is our breeder, Jamie Sherman is our barley breeder at Montana state, from very early on she's been focused on looking for varieties that are drought tolerant, trying to address that, specifically breeding for dry land.

So Buzz barley is the variety that we most recently released, and that is intended for being stable across multiple different environments, having stable plumps, so good plump kernels that are coming off of it, low protein.

And we saw Buzz did pretty well this last season.

Yields were dinged, but I think that's pretty true for any variety that was grown this past season; but for the most part it maintained quality.

And we're actually starting to see it become more prevalent, used across Montana but even states beyond.

We're seeing folks in Minnesota, Arizona, Washington, all wanting to work with Buzz because it did do fairly well last year.

- And we've got some Buzz barley here.

So if you make malt out of it, can you use different processes to get different types of malt or different flavors of malt?

And if so, you might explain what's sitting in front of you.

I honestly or generally like the bottles with more liquid in them.

(group laughing) That's still interesting.

So explain what we have here.

- Yeah, so definitely.

So typically if you go into a home brew shop and you're gonna purchase various malts, depending on what type of beer you wanna make, you're are gonna pick different malts to make up your grist bill.

Primarily it's gonna be a base malt, that's something that's been killed in a very low, slow, gentle way, and that preserves the enzymes; that's important for converting starch into sugars for the fermentation.

But then just like cooking, you're gonna kind of add some spices in.

So you're gonna get some darker, maybe Vienna, Munich, chocolate, caramel; these are malts that are named after the kilning process.

And a lot of that is what temperature, what moisture's in the grain when you go into the kiln?

And that creates various colors and flavors.

So the three samples that I brought today, they're all Buzz barley.

We grew them out of our program and malted them within the lab.

And so we've got three different varieties.

One that is a base malt, that low, slow, with enzymes preserved.

And then we have two different variations of a caramel malt that are gonna have more color and flavor to them.

So they're food products.

And if you guys would like to try some, maybe we'll are the two extremes.

So I'll let Uta start with one side, so that's our base.

It's gonna be a little bit cleaner, more grainy, more biscuit kind of flavor to it.

And then the second one is a caramel: It's gonna be darker, it's gonna taste more like a caramel, maybe a little bit more like molasses or brown sugar.

- So how do you arrive at this state?

What do you do to malt kernel barley?

- So malting is basically three kind of phases.

We're taking an agricultural product that we've harvested out of the field.

It's very hard.

If you imagine a barley kernel and you try and chew it out of the field, you might break a tooth on it.

But the malting process, we're taking the internal structures of that grain and breaking it down into something that's fryable and has starch available for the brewer.

The way that we do that is three phases, roughly.

So we're tricking the grain into germination.

The first phase is gonna be steeping, typically that's about two days where we put it underwater, drain the water off and let it rest underwater, let it rest, and that's allowing the seed to imbibe moisture, that tricks it kind of into: "It's spring rain conditions, it's time to start germinating."

The second phase is germination.

We're just allowing...

Typically it's three to five or six days where the grain is doing its natural thing.

It's breaking down all the cell walls and protein that's locking up all the starches inside.

After a period of about four to six days, we then go into a kiln.

And then depending on if we go to high temperatures or low temperatures, we'll start to create these different types of malt that come out of it.

But essentially the whole point of that is that a barley seed, it's got a lunch packed, it's intended by nature that it's gonna go off and start a new plant, and it's an energy source that's with that.

Through the malting process, we break down the structures that are blocking off that energy source, kiln to kind of pause all the reactions that we've started through germination.

And after it's kilned, it's a very stable product, we dry it down to about four or 6% moisture.

That can then go to a brewer where they're gonna, first thing, mill it up, add water and bring it back up to temperature.

That's gonna allow all of those enzymatic processes that we started in germination, we paused it with kilning; once we get to the brewery, all of those things are gonna start right back up and we're gonna start breaking starches into sugar so that the brewer can use that for fermentation.

- I'm amazed with the difference in taste, number one.

And number two is you put a little salt with those and give a bottle of the liquid, and it'd make a great snack.

It really would.

- And doesn't this taste like Ovomaltine?

- It does.

It really does.

I'm Impressed.

- The caramel one.

Yeah.

- All right.

Thanks, Hannah.

Quick question then we'll move on to a couple other ones here.

This person would like to know how far does the lab reach outside of Montana, and how far does Montana barley and malt go outside of our state?

- So we work with maltsters that are all over the country, we even work with those that are outside of the country.

Craft malt is at an interesting place.

Craft brewing has seen quite a rise, and we're starting to see craft malt fall in behind that.

But with that, there's not a lot of facilities to be able to send your malt to get quality analytics, so we've got maltsters all over the state.

And a lot of the world is looking to the U.S. because craft malt is really taking a hold here.

So we've got maltsters all over the world that actually send samples to us.

As far as barley going out of the state, we do have a number of groups that... We grow really good barley here, and so they're bringing malts into some of the larger commercial malt houses, and that goes all over.

- Nothing against North Dakota and Idaho, but the best barley in the United States is grown right here in Montana.

- I would agree.

- So that's my opinion.

Abi, question from Bozeman here.

They say it's been hot and dry, the lawns are starting to green up, should they start watering them now or wait?

- I would say yes.

It has been really warm lately, and it's been pretty dry.

There isn't very much snow cover here.

And this would apply to anywhere where you don't have snow cover and if temperatures have consistently in the highs, I would say water once or twice a month, usually when it's a sunny day in mid morning time so it has enough time to get to the roots.

But, yes, it's pretty dry so your grass is gonna struggle.

And my grass is greening up already, so I would add some water.

- But not fertilizer yet.

- Yes, no.

Don't fertilize yet.

- Don't fertile until May unless you really wanna a mow a lot, and that's not my best... - No.

- No.

Okay.

I have a question, two of 'em here.

One from Red Lodge about patches in their turf.

and I'll get to that one with Uta in a minute.

But another question that came in after our last comment is: "What makes Montana barley so good?"

- We've got some great farmers here.

We've also got great soil, great conditions for growing it.

Yeah.

- I think our cooler nights and relatively warm dry days really makes for high quality barley.

- Yeah.

And there's also something to be said.

Tribute to the farmers.

Growing malting barley is a really specific thing.

There's lots of end quality parameters that they have to make to make that malting grade.

So it has to be within a range of protein.

Protein's the big one, but plumps, disease pressure, all of those things; it has to be really premium to make that malting grade.

And our farmers here are really good at hitting that.

- They are.

There's no doubt about it.

I agree with you.

And it's really tricky to use the right amount of nitrogen fertilizer to keep that protein level low enough but get the yields high enough to be profitable.

Uta, there was a question here from Red Lodge.

And I think I know what this is.

This person's just said the snow cover came off and they got all kinds of white and gray patches around their yard.

What is it and what do they need to do?

- Yeah.

Well that sounds like snow mold.

It's a very common thing you observe in the spring.

I notice it on my lawn as well as the last bits of snow are melting away.

So it's a fungus that grows on grass or lawn under snow cover, and as that snow cover recedes it just is exposed.

And as the lawn is drying up so is the fungus.

So it's not really something that I would say is a big concern, like there's no fungicide application that's required.

Oftentimes the snow mold occurs when you have a lot of dead turf, plant matter, under the snow.

So you wanna make sure in the fall to really mow your lawn far as long as it's growing to avoid having these like long grass blades that are then dying.

So really the thing to prevent that is you have to do that in the fall.

But it's nothing really...

I mean, it doesn't look pretty.

it looks a bit icky, but it'll go away.

You could rake it up right now and get rid of that dead grass matter and then it should be fine.

- I've seen less of it this year here in Bozeman, but in the snowy areas like Red Lodge where you have a longer snow cover.

It does look trashy, but you're right.

That recovers pretty rapidly.

Comment from Ballantine.

And this is an interesting comment.

And I don't have a good answer.

This caller says they have never seen your program but their poultry specialist and would like to see one.

And I know MSU does not have a poultry specialist.

And this is a call for all vets out there, he has also noted that he has not found a vet who accepts chickens as new patients in Yellowstone County.

So if you've got a vet out there in Yellowstone County that wants to work with chickens, you've got a potential client here.

Abi, question came in last week, we have one this evening.

I suspect it's the same caller, we didn't get to it last week.

Can they still prune their apple tree?

- Yeah, I think you're cutting it a little bit close now, but I would say it's still fine to prune.

The best time to prune apple trees is when they're dormant, which usually in most of Montana's December all the way through the end of March.

So I would go ahead and still prune, if you're interested in doing that.

- Okay.

Thank you.

And that's almost all trees right now.

- [Abi] Yeah.

Pretty much.

- Dormant pruning is the thing to do.

- [Abi] Yes.

- Once they start leafing out- - The only exception would be those spring flowering ornamentals, you wanna wait till after they're done flowering to prune those.

- And that includes lilac?

- Lilacs.

Exactly.

- Okay.

Got it.

Tim, from Reed Point.

And we covered some of this last week.

We'll hit it again.

This person would like to get on top of controlling their noxious and obnoxious weeds.

They wanna know when they start greening up and how early can they use herbicides to control some of these weeds?

- I've noticed that the last few days, there's a lot of weeds sprouting around Bozeman.

Prostrate knotweed has really come up in matte form, especially around my driveway the last few days.

Bulbous bluegrass is another one, I think it's one of the first weeds to really green up in the spring.

Yes.

If you wanna go out and spray some of those weeds; when they're small, this time of year, it's a really good time to get after 'em.

The cheatgrass, it's growing rapidly, you'll get good control.

And also the bulbous bluegrass, it's a good time to spray that one.

I get a lot of questions from that in the Yellowstone valley in that direction.

And I think now's a good time.

And the native bunch grasses or some of the desirable perennial grasses really haven't greened up as much as some of those winter annual weedy grasses have, so now is a good time.

- Okay.

Thank you.

I agree.

Hannah, are you... Not specifically you but the Barley Breeding Program, are you looking at specific varieties to enhance the craft malt industry in the state?

- Yeah.

So a big focus for our program is looking at flavor, and that's a lot of what craft breweries are after.

We're asking questions like: "Does variety matter?"

I talked about the malting process and how the kiln really puts a lot of the aspect of flavor.

If you go to that home brew store and you're looking for a biscuit or a chocolate malt, those are names that are really specifically about how the kilning process went.

It has nothing to do with variety.

And even now if you purchase a malt, a lot of times you can't...

It's not listed what the variety is.

But for many agricultural crops, you think of variety as having a big impact on it.

If you think of something like apples, the difference between a Macintosh and a Pink Lady; there's textural differences, there's flavor dis differences.

And so we believe that, to a degree, that can be really important for malt as well.

So we have quite a few projects that are looking at heirloom lines and the nuance of how this variety performs in different types of malting regimes, and how that interplay works towards a particular product.

- I've gotta relate a little story from when I used to work for a living, and I was invited to be a speaker at a major brewer's field days in North Central Montana.

And one of the other speakers on the program was a master brewer outta San Jose, California.

And one of the farmers in the audience said and asked the question, "Are you worried about all these microbreweries that are coming?"

And the master brewer said, "I was just at the American Beer Festival a couple weeks earlier, and I tasted 72 different micro breweries and only two were drinkable."

Now things have changed.

And even the major brewers are interested in the craft brewers and buying companies like this.

And a lot of that has to do with projects like your lab is doing.

You're creating different tastes for different people, and I love that.

I think it's a neat industry to be in right now, so good job.

Moving on to Uta.

This question came in from Great Falls.

They would like to know, with grain prices significantly up, and they are up considerably, will more fungicides be used to protect the yield potential of both spring and winter wheat?

Any thought on that?

- Well, I don't wanna say that I really fully understand the growers' decision process.

So from a plant pathologist perspective, I would advise to apply a fungicide when it is needed, so when there is disease pressure that I think so far, the forecast for this year is still looking very dry so I wouldn't be too concerned...

If you're in dryland production, I wouldn't be very concerned about foliar diseases that would require fungicide application.

But what are growers gonna do?

I do not know that.

And they all have to make their calculations to see if it benefits.

And I think every grower knows that, fungicide application has to give you yield benefits that at least compensates for the cost of that application.

And that's an equation that they can probably better do than I.

- Is there a shortage of fungicide in the same way that there are global and national shortages in herbicides?

- I haven't heard anything, but that's not to say that it doesn't exist.

- And on that note, when I used to work with barley, both malt barley and feed barley, there's a fair amount of fungicides used to control diseases, leaf diseases in barley.

Does that affect the malting quality at all?

- We're lucky in Montana that we have pretty low disease pressure compared to other parts of the country.

But, yeah, it's definitely a concern.

There's all kinds of aspects that a grower is thinking of when they're trying to meet that quality from malting barley.

- Okay.

This question came in last week, and the caller said, "The bitterroot is the state flower."

And they would like to know how you get bitterroot seed or plants.

Any suggestions there, Abi?

- I don't know where you would get them from other than contact local nurseries or But if you have a friend that has some bitterroot, they produce these offsets; and so you just take a piece of that.

They're a succulents, so you take a piece of that vegetation and you can start your new plant using those offsets.

They're a really pretty looking plant.

They're pink and white, and can grow in some pretty harsh conditions.

- Is it hard to maintain it flowering?

We've done research out at the Red Bluff Sheep Ranch, it was after a fire in 2012; and it burned off the grass cover but all the perennial grass survived.

But what came back afterwards was a huge flush of bitterroot, after the fire, and especially under dead burned out Sage brush, actually.

It was really beautiful.

- Interesting.

I didn't know that.

Speaking of state flowers, I'm gonna ask Hannah, I know there's a state cocktail.

And a lot of people don't realize that.

Is there a state beer?

- Not that I know specifically, but I think we should look into that.

- [Uta] There would probably be a fierce competition for that one.

- Yeah.

I mean, maybe Scotch ale- - It'd be kind of fun.

- That's pretty known for Montana.

- So was the state cocktail?

- It's called the Ditch.

- What's that?

- And a Ditch is two ounces of whiskey and two ounces of water over ice.

And it is the state cocktail.

- It sounds appropriate.

- I learned that many years ago when I had to ask, "What's a Ditch?"

So it is honestly the state drink.

From Great Galls, this caller would like to know if the malt added to milkshakes and malted milk balls comes from the same type of plant.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So it would be kind of similar process to brewing.

You'd mill up your malted barley, mix it with water, get that extraction process to get the sugars out of it.

Then essentially they just dehydrate that.

So you could get like malt extracts or malt powders that people could use in different cooking applications.

But malted milk balls are definitely an straight off of malted barley.

- It's a staple of anyone under 12 years old.

- I still really enjoy a malted milk ball.

- I enjoyed them.

I still do, for that matter.

Tim, this caller would like to know what the new product is that they can use on cheatgrass.

- The new product that they can use on cheatgrass.

I'm pretty sure they're referring to a herbicide that's called Rejuvra, and the active ingredient is indaziflam.

And you can use it on cheatgrass.

It's quite an expensive product.

And you apply it to the surface sometime in the summer to the early fall, and it actually prevents any germination of seeds for three to four years.

And so if you use it and you have perennial grasses that are already established, it won't harm them and they'll continue to grow; but no new seeds, as they germinate they're killed by indaziflam.

So if you don't have a good stand of grass or you're looking to replant something, you can't really use it for that purpose, But you can use it on a range, you can use it on alfalfa, certain pastures, to really prevent seed germination of cheatgrass for a few years.

- Speaking of cheatgrass, I'm gonna bring this.

We asked earlier, a caller asked about transmission of seeds through the intestinal tract.

I have noticed in some areas that historically did not have elk and did not have much downy brome now have a lot of wintering elk and a lot of downy brome, or cheatgrass if you wanna call it that.

Is that transmitted by their hooves or intestinally?

- I think it can be done both ways, actually.

It'll make it through the... And tend to key in onto it in this early... Well, maybe this year 'cause the snow cover hasn't been so heavy.

But they usually go into those south facing slopes, and that's really where the cheatgrass likes to grow and germinate.

'Cause it'll grow in January, February, March, even under snow cover, with just a few degrees above freezing.

And so that's where the animals really key on into it.

I think it's probably both.

It's being brought in on hooves and mud and things like that, but it's also going through digestive tracts.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Comment about the malted barley that we had here.

This caller says, "The kernels in the glass jars just look like plain old barley."

It is, but it's what's happened to it.

- And so a lot of times, especially with a base malt, that it doesn't gain a lot of that obvious color.

Really, the only way to tell is to bite it.

And if it's tough like a barley kernel, it's gonna maintain that hard texture.

But you can definitely tell...

It's called fryable.

Once something has gone through the malting process, it crushes more easily under our own teeth; or going to a brewer, they're gonna mill it in it, and it's easier on the mill because that grain, the internal structures have been broken down.

So oftentimes chewing it is gonna be the easiest way to tell the difference.

- Okay.

All right.

I think we do have a photo of barley that we might bring up here in a little bit.

Yeah, there it is.

That's what it looks like.

- [Hannah] Yeah.

So that's some malting barley in the process of germination.

It's pretty much right at the end of that germination process.

You can see the rootlets have started to grow there, that's gonna head on into the kiln.

In the kilning, we're gonna dry it down to about 4 to 6% moisture, which makes those rootlets really dry and brittle, and then just a mechanical process will clean them up and you'll get back to that kernel that really just looks like a barley kernel.

- [Jack] They taste great.

In fact, I may have to take some because I haven't had dinner.

- [Hannah] The first time I tried malted barley, I wondered why they didn't sell it at the movie theater.

- I agree.

- That's what I was wondering.

- [Jack] Yeah.

It's really tasty.

- So there's two-row, four row, and six-row barley?

Which barley is used in which processes?

- So primarily when you're talking about barley, you're talking about six-row and two-row.

The way that you can tell the difference between them is if you look from the top of the barley down, the way the seed structure.

On a two-row, you've just got two sets of kernels; where on a six-row, you're gonna have extra kernels there, so it kind of looks more like a floret.

Primarily malting barley, we're talking about two-row.

Brewers tend to like it better because with that spacing on there, you get plumper kernels and they tend to be more consistent in shape and size.

The six-row kernels are a little bit more packed in there, and so you tend to get two sets that are a little bit larger and then the others are a bit smaller.

So six-row is gonna tend to have a little bit more protein; and then with that size difference, it's gonna mill a little bit less consistently.

So typically when we talk about malting barley, we're talking about two-row.

- On that note, we have a caller from Bozeman who would like to know whether the big brewing companies buy a lot of malt barley in Montana.

And they would also like to know what's the difference between malt barley and feed barley, regular barley?

- For sure, the big brewers are definitely getting a lot of barley out of Montana.

We're one of the largest in the country, so for sure.

The majority of beer, still, in the U.S. is coming outta some of those large brewers and so they're very dependent on barley out of Montana.

And then what was the second part of that question?

- [Jack] Difference between malt and regular barley.

- So as a breeding program, we've got lots of different end uses that we're focused on: that can be malt barley, food barley, feed barley.

And so there's different quality parameters we want for each.

Feed barley, we're looking at more nutrition for animals: things like palatability, what kind of aspects are digestible or not.

A really good example would be just the difference between malt barley and food barley.

There's something called beta-glucan, which if you see in some of those cereal commercials will talk about beta-glucan or fiber; that's something that we, as people, we want that fiber aspect.

But in the brewing world, we'll actually go for low beta-glucan as opposed to the food world where we're looking for high fiber.

In malting barley, we want low beta-glucan; that's the cell walls that we're trying to break down during malting.

If we don't break that down, once it gets to the brewery, it can cause things like viscosity issues, filtration issues.

So we'll breed for different things.

In malt barley, we want low beta-glucan.

In food barley, we want high beta-glucan.

- Question I have.

I like a fried egg once in a while.

And when I grew up in the Midwest; if you cracked an egg and fried it, it was yellow.

You do that here in Montana, it's at best a pale yellow color.

One is fed with corn, the other is fed with barley.

Is there anything you could...

I mean, they taste the same and the quality's probably the same.

Anything you could do to barley to make them little yellower in the yolk of the egg?

- Oh, we'd have to get some of those chickens in here and start doing some research testing on that.

I don't know the answer to that now.

- We need a poultry specialist here now.

- Jack, I will say our chicken food bag, they add marigold extract into the chicken food to make the egg yolk yellower.

- I did not know that.

That's interesting.

Okay.

From Scobey.

This is a question that came in during the week, emailed to me.

And this person would really like to know, do they need a seed treatment for spring weed?

Uta, that's all yours.

- Right.

Well, I think there are different trains So the way I look at seed treatments, I view it as an insurance.

Like when something bad happens to you, boy, are you glad you have that insurance; but oftentimes you wonder if it's worth investing in it when things look fine.

So a seed treatment protects your seed and young seedling early in plant development.

And so there are these early season diseases that can attack your seedlings, so the seedling blights and early season root rots; they're typically more common in what years, so I think the decision maybe also depends on: What is your production practice?

What was the crop before?

What history do you have in that field?

Maybe you have a history of certain root rots, and then I would definitely recommend a seed treatment.

Maybe you don't and maybe it's really dry and it wouldn't be necessary, although then I... You know what?

I think a seed treatment's worthwhile.

It's like a fairly low cost investment and really helps your crop have a good start into the season.

It's not an all season protection or an all season guarantee, but I think you get a good bang for that buck of seed treatment that you invest.

So I think it's a good idea.

- It's cheap insurance.

For the amount of money you put in for a seed treatment, it really pays.

I've always promoted that.

This is an interesting question.

Abi, from Belt.

The caller has a 10 year old apple tree that a deer broke the litter or the trunk at about three feet from the ground.

Is there anything they can do other than chainsaw?

- I mean, I think I would like to look at the tree.

So if this person wants to send me an email, I would like to look at it.

But if it is that drastic and if it is broken, it would be difficult, probably, to keep it alive.

Three feet from the ground, I'd say it's unlikely.

for that to survive.

- I think you'd be better off starting over.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, definitely.

And while we're on the apples, from the Hi-Line, "Are apple trees or other fruit trees in general a good choice for shelter belts, especially a water isn't readily available?

- We do have a really good publication about shelter belt trees.

I don't know if it's on our bookstore website or not.

But again, if, if this person wants to send me an email, I can send them that.

But we have a good amount of information.

But usually I'd say shelter belt trees are ones where you don't need to add too much water, you're not worrying too much about adding too many inputs.

- Okay.

Sounds good.

From Missoula, its more of a comment.

The caller called in with flea beetle tips.

This is one I have not heard of.

Suggests placing yellow plastic plates with soapy water in gardens, beetles are attracted to yellow plates and drown.

It's worth a try.

- Might as well try it.

- I've not heard of that one.

Question that came in, Facebook.

What other research areas does the Barley Lab cover?

- So like I said, we're breeding for lots of different aspects and use of barley.

And so we've got food, feed, forage; the flavor aspects, we're also working with.

But we have a number of students that do all types of different research projects that can include...

So one student's working with protein and how that breaks down into different flavor aspects.

He's also working on some pre-harvest sprouting and speed of hydration.

So in the malting process, we're trying to get moisture into the grain so that those structures can break down.

The more quickly we can get moisture throughout the grain, the faster that malting process will go; so he's looking at speed of hydration.

We've got a student that's just started, but looking at xathomonas and aspects, trying to understand that better as far as pressure in Montana.

So all kinds of different projects we're working with.

Food is an area that is newer for us, but we're starting to look at functionality aspects of what we can do with barley and how that can make good food products.

- Okay.

Comment from Bill in Belgrade.

He would like to volunteer or apply for your taste testing panel.

- Give me an email.

We'd love to have you up to the lab.

- On that note, do you actually have taste testing of the brewing process, the beer?

- So as a group, we just had our whole Barley Team, which... With our grad students, myself, our field lab manager, our quality lab.. our assistant, we had a group of about eight or 10 of us that did... We started off with some sensory training.

So we go through and, as a group, taste specific things that could be potential malt flavors, so things like Graham cracker, or caramel, or butterscotch; and as a group, try and train together as to, "This is really specifically what butterscotch is compared to this is toffee."

And so after we went through that process, we did do some taste testing on beers that we brewed for the Brewers Association.

And in that project, we had two different varieties that we kilned to three different levels.

And then we were curious that once it gets to the level of the beer, do we taste differences based on what the variety is and how does the nuance of kiln play into that?

- Do you do anything with some of these fruit beer?

I'm not a fruit beer fan, the strawberry malts and stuff like that.

No.

That's for breakfast.

(all laugh) But anyway, do you do anything with the fruit flavors that people are incorporating into a lot of the beers today?

- Not specifically the fruit aspect.

But an interesting thing about malting barley is that pretty much any beer out there is gonna have some level of malt barley in it.

We say no barley no beer for a couple reasons.

There's a hole on barley which is really important to the brewer and their filtration process in the brewing.

Barley's also very high in enzymes, which means that it's got enough to convert its own starch into sugar, but it will also convert sugars from other sources; so that could be fruits, that could be adjunct grains.

But pretty well most beers out there are gonna have that agriculture product of malt barley in it.

- I appreciate that.

Folks, we're coming to the end of an interesting program.

I learned a lot about malt barley tonight.

And Hannah, I thank you for being here.

- [Hannah] Absolutely.

- The rest of the panel, as always, I appreciate your time in the evening.

Next week, folks, we're gonna have Cassidy Martin from Montana Wheat and Barley Committee.

It'd be an interesting program, another woman actively involved with agriculture.

Have a great week.

See you next week.

Good night and stay safe.

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