AUSTRALIAN agribusiness giant Elders is quietly confident its new barley variety Alestar will become a firm favourite with Australian brewers.
Alestar is currently undergoing malt evaluation with Barley Australia and has progressed to stage 2 of the accreditation process with further batches of the variety about to be malted to take it one step closer to gaining full malt accreditation
The variety has been grown extensively throughout Australia and the Elders teams has said it has demonstrated a very good agronomic package for disease, yield and quality and is a very competitive option for growers of malt barley.
Elders seed manager Chris Willis has faith in the variety's ability to become a significant malting variety in Australia, for a number of reasons.
"Alestar is agronomically a very good barley and the feedback we are getting from maltsters and brewers is that Alestar has a very good quality malt and it is very consistent in the malting process," said Mr Willis.
"Coopers Brewery have malted a trial batch of Alestar and believe it is showing excellent attributes to make it an excellent domestic malt for brewers."
Coopers have acknowledged that they would like to conduct further malts runs this coming harvest and would be willing to purchase up to 2,000 tonnes of Malt 1 quality barley for malting in 2021 season.
Doug Stewart maltings manager at Coopers believed Alestar could be well suited to the Australian craft brewing market due to its brewing style and catchy name since craft brewers predominantly brew ales.
The world's largest maltster, Boortmalt, which recently purchased the Cargill Malting operations, including five Australian malting plants, also wants further evaluate Alestar next season.
It has agreed to take up to 3000 tonnes of Alestar Malt 1 to process at both their Port Adelaide and Sydney (Minto) malting plants this coming harvest.
Boortmalt regional technical manager Ashley McIntyre said the quality attributes required in a malt depend on the brewer's brewing processes and styles of beer.
Export markets, particularly Asia, include starch adjuncts, such as rice in their recipes, so traditionally prefer a malt with a high enzyme content in the form of diastatic power to convert the starch into sugar.
"As a trial variety, Alestar has shown moderate levels of diastatic power which is more suitable for the domestic market due to the use of different adjuncts," says Mr McIntyre.
"Boortmalt also believe that Alestar has the potential to suit some export markets as well. Further commercial trials will enable us to ascertain its full capability."
Armidale, NSW, based craft brewing company, The Welders Dog Brewery, now uses Alestar as one of their preferred base malts.
They are sourcing single harvest single origin Alestar because it has shown to be very consistent in its malting characteristics and quality.
Their Alestar is grown at Wee Waa in northern NSW on the Piper Family farm, 'Auburn'.
The Pipers started growing Alestar when it was released as a new variety three years ago.
Agronomically, Corie Piper said it had been a consistent performer, even allowing for the record dry seasons in recent years.
"Alestar handles a dry finish better than other varieties we were growing.
"It consistently has low screenings and good retention and test weight," Mr Piper said.
"We malted a batch for The Welders Dog Brewery and the feedback was very positive to the point where they have opted to use Alestar as their main malt."
Elders said Alestar seed was still available in all states.