Who would believe that we were still struggling to sow some soils only 7-8 weeks ago and now harvest is upon us rather more quickly than anticipated. We are all set to go and look forward to seeing samples as they come in.
Please make note of the following:
Round Up
Use of Pre harvest Round Up on Maris Otter is strictly prohibited due to strict restrictions made by brewers regarding pesticide residues in malt. Around 50% of Maris Otter malt is exported with many overseas brewers having a zero tolerance of glyphosate residues.
Wheat Admix
Given how green the wheat will be when you cut your Maris Otter- careful use of low volume ventilation will help to ‘shrivel’ wheat grains down. If necessary please call us for further information.
If this hot weather persists through harvest please take extra care to monitor your samples as you cut them – please pay particular attention to skinned grains and half corns – especially when combining during the heat of the day. We would rather see more awns than damaged grains.
Please ensure your malting barley is cooled in store when ambient conditions allow, i.e. during the night, storage for long periods at high temperatures can adversely affect germinations.
Moisture Meters
In our view it is essential that you calibrate your moisture meters against ‘new crop’ samples to ensure your meters are reading accurately. We will have new crop barley samples in all our vans this harvest so please ensure you check your meters against these samples.
We urge you to take your own samples of your grain (especially malting barley) as it comes into store – we suggest you put sporadic samples from your intake into clearly labelled buckets/containers. This would give us and you a far more accurate picture of the quality of your grain.
We will e-mail out all results as soon as we have put them through the laboratory and all tests have been done
Please advise us as to crops being ready for sampling by e-mailing lab@robin-appel.com
We wish you every success with this year’s harvest – we have all endured a tough 12 months and hope for an easier harvest and better prices, we can assure you that opportunities and prospects for 2019 are good.
Jonathan Arnold
29th June 2018
