Barley

Barley

Robin Appel Ltd is one of the leading companies involved in the procurement and supply of malting barley. We have tremendous dialogue and access to more markets than any other merchant which allows us to place barleys into the most advantageous market. Although the malting barley market has been increasingly commoditised over the last few years as brewing companies have become bigger and bigger there are still plenty of opportunities to create different bespoke options to different homes especially in the light of every harvest being so different.

One of the unique attributes we have is that we are not tied into any particular markets and therefore we have access to many homes in both domestic and export markets allowing us to pick through barleys and put the right bulks into the right homes.

We pride ourselves on the level of sampling and testing we employ and have a fully equipped, TASCC accredited laboratory at Waltham Chase, we also use satellite labs to ensure accuracy. This system allows us to minimise problems on intake and has placed us very competitively within the supplier league tables of our maltster customers.

Our portfolio runs from Maris Otter, Flagon & Craft winter barley through to Planet & Laureate spring barley.

We hold meetings throughout the year and host visits to maltings, breweries and distilleries on a regular basis. The more growers understand about the requirements of their brewing, malting and distilling customers the better and likewise with end users understanding more about the production challenges that farmers face.

Winter Barley

Winter barley is a bit of a Cinderella crop as it lacks the financial clout of a big crop of spring barley but does provide some essential advantages with regard to harvest spread, the establishment of OSR, not to mention straw values.

We grow a large volume of well-established winter barleys of both feed and malting types and can discuss the suitability of each variety to your farm/rotational situations.

Spring Barley

With the area of spring barley predicted to increase each year the breeding of spring barleys has intensified over the last few years with a host of new varieties coming forward. The days of a variety like Tipple or Optic hanging around for many years have long gone, we will see varieties come and go much more quickly as advances are made in terms of yield and agronomics. There is a drive now to produce ‘dual purpose’ varieties which are suitable for both brewing & distilling and these look set to dominate the markets in the coming years as the demand for distilling barley continues to increase.

We grow and process a large number of spring barley varieties and with such good contacts in the malting, brewing and distilling industries we have great insight into the new varieties coming through and their potential level of uptake.