Alexander Alusheff

Lansing State Journal

EAST LANSING - In the waning days of prohibition, Congress legalized 3.2 beer, opening up a new market for Michigan farmers.

For years they had been growing Spartan barley, a grain developed at Michigan State College in 1916, and sold it to soup makers and producers of livestock feed. After low-alcohol beer became legal, maltsters from Chicago, St. Louis and Milwaukee discovered it made a good malt for beer too, according to a 1933 article in the Detroit Free Press.

Spartan barley would be widely grown across the U.S. It enjoyed a 30-year reign among farmers and maltsters before being replaced by modern varieties that originated in North Dakota, said Ashley McFarland, director of Michigan State University's Upper Peninsula Research and Extension Center in Chatham.

And then it vanished.

The state’s craft beer boom and the buy-local movement have convinced MSU researchers to return the plant to its Michigan roots.

“The whole idea of locally grown barley to make your brew is resonating very well with the microbrew industry,” said Russell Freed, MSU professor emeritus and international agronomist. “That’s what’s sparking the revival.”

Reviving a Spartan

In the past 10 years, Michigan has grown from 80 breweries and brew pubs to 280. By the end of the year that number is expected to surpass 300.

The surge in breweries and their desire to source products locally have brought the malting houses back to Michigan. The first was Michigan Malt House, which opened in 2006 in Shepherd, south of Mount Pleasant. There are now four in operation in the state with nine more on the way.

And all of them need thousands of bushels of Michigan malting barley each year.

When Pilot Malt house opened in 2013, it processed 30 tons of malted barley a year. Today, it processes 120, all produced by Michigan farmers, and sends it to breweries in Michigan, Florida and Virginia.

And that’s just the barley it accepts.

“Our rejection rate is 50 percent,” said maltster Ryan Hamilton. “Half the barley has sprouted before it gets submitted to us. Once it’s sprouted, it’s not suitable for malting.”

It’s a big problem with the two major malting varieties grown in Michigan - Pinnacle and Conlon. Both originated in North Dakota and are conditioned for hot, dry climates. Not Michigan’s wet and humid climate. If the barley gets wet when it’s shipped out, half of it will likely get thrown out.

McFarland and her team have been searching for a better barley to use since 2013 to remedy that problem.

In 2014, they heard about Spartan barley from local farmers and set out to acquire pure seeds. However, it no longer existed in Michigan.

Birth of a Spartan

In 1916, MSU plant breeder Frank Spragg crossbred Michigan Black Barbless and Michigan Two-Row barley to create Spartan.

It was first used in the pearling industry, which prepared the grain for soups and stews. Then maltsters across the country got their hands on it, steeping, germinating and roasting it so it could be used in the brewing and distilling process for beer and whiskey.

By 1933, roughly 30,000 farmers were growing Spartan barley in the state. It was popular for its disease resistance, early harvest and high yield of kernels.

By the 1960s, with barley varieties better suited to malting on the market, it was falling into decline.

By then, however, barley production across the state was in a downward spiral thanks to the rise in popularity of corn and soybeans among farmers and the decline of the malting industry, McFarland said. There was a brief resurgence in the 1980s before production tanked again.

“Stroh’s Brewing Company closed (in Detroit) in 1985,” McFarland said. “There was a sharp decline after that. There was less capacity to process barley so it didn’t make sense to grow it.”

Michigan barley production peaked around 1930 with roughly 300,000 acres grown. In 2015, the National Agriculture Statistics Service estimated around 11,000 acres planted, with only 1,000 harvested for malting in Michigan. The rest goes to feed livestock.

(Story continues below chart)

The gene bank

The only place the MSU researcher could find Spartan barley was locked away in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s gene bank in Utah.

Freed, a former plant breeder at MSU’s main campus, used his contacts at the USDA to get 5 grams of seeds and grew 80 plants in the greenhouse behind the Plant and Soil Sciences Building off Bogue Street.

He shipped the seeds from those plants to the extension center in Chatham where the researchers grew them on a 30-by-30-foot plot in the spring of 2015 to further increase the seed numbers, McFarland said. They were then sent to a farm in Arizona and grown over the winter for another seed increase and are now grown on an acre at MSU’s Kellogg Biological Station in Hickory Corners, northwest of Battle Creek.

The next challenge is to make sure the barley has the proper protein levels to be malted, McFarland said. The ideal protein level for good malting barley is between 9 and 12 percent. Levels that are too high leave too little sugar available for fermentation, affecting the alcohol content. Levels that are too low affect the flavor and color. Last year, a preliminary test showed Spartan measured at 17 percent.

It’s not a major issue, McFarland said, but one that will require a closer eye on the nitrogen levels in the soil where Spartan is grown. When it’s retested this summer, McFarland said results should be more promising.

“The fact that it was grown in such a large area back in the 1940s and 1950s (for malting) would indicate that it can still be malted and produce beer,” Freed said.

An all-Michigan beer

When Spartan barley is ready, maltsters are interested.

"Spartan is more adaptable to Michigan weather because it grew here" and it's less likely to sprout early, said Larry Judge, who plans to open Mitten State Malt in Okemos this fall. "As an MSU grad myself, it would be cool to malt Spartan barley. I'm all about local food."

Judge, a veterinary consultant to the dairy industry, still has to install the kiln in the 2,200-square-foot warehouse space he rents behind the Sherwin Williams near Grand River Avenue and Marsh Road. When it's operational, he'll be malting four tons of Conlon barley in his first few months, but plans on getting Spartan as soon as possible.

Because Spartan is 100 years old, it will have less yield than modern varieties, which have been bred to produce more kernels, Hamilton said. It can, however, be crossbred with other modern varieties and pass down its more valuable genetic traits such as its disease resistance, he added.

Pilot Malt House plans to malt some Spartan barley this year, Hamilton said. It will be sent to Holland, to New Holland Brewing’s Pub on 8th, where head brewer Steve Berthel intends to make a pilsner out of it, for starters.

"When I heard about it, I said, 'Heck yeah, I'll use it.' It's an awesome story," said Berthel, whose brewery has sourced all of its ingredients from Michigan since 2013. "I've been a guinea pig for everyone in this industry."

Though it costs 20 cents extra per pound for malt made in Michigan compared to imported malt from Europe, Berthel said it's worth it. They just raise the cost of the pint at the pub by 50 cents.

"When we explain why it costs more, that it goes directly back to Michigan maltsters and farmers, how can anyone say, 'I'm not going to buy that'?"

Freed said he thinks Spartan can be a novelty heirloom crop to grow for the brewing industry because of its recognizable name and the fact that its originally from Michigan.

“There’s a good chance Spartan barley will have a niche,” he said. “It’s the value you get by having the name ‘Spartan.’”

A new cash crop?

When Carl Wagner told his parents in 2013 that he wanted to grow 10 acres of malting barley on the family farm in Niles, they told him he was crazy.

“They think I’m nuts,” said Wagner, adding that the last time they grew barley on the farm was two generations ago. “No one grows barley. They had a little skepticism.”

His interest in malting barley sprouted after attending the Great Lakes Hop and Barley Conference, hosted by MSU and the Michigan Brewers Guild. He sold his initial bushels to Pilot Malt House in 2013 and now grows 40 acres of Pinnacle and Conlon barley, mostly selling the seeds to other farmers.

When Wagner heard about Spartan Barley from MSU extension, he wanted to start growing it.

“As a MSU alumnus, I think anything with Spartan or MSU is awesome,” the 2011 graduate said. “I’m always looking for the next opportunity.”

The average price per bushel of corn (56 pounds) has declined from $6.89 in 2013 to $3.70 in 2016, according to data from the USDA. The price per bushel of malting barley (48 pounds) has declined too, but from $6.58 in 2013 to $5.75 in 2016, according to USDA data.

(Story continues below chart)

For that reason, some farmers like Wagner are looking to diversify what they grow to make more profits. Malting barley sells for nearly twice as much as feed barley.

“You got to be willing to change and find new things,” Wagner said. “It’s working out.”

Freed said corn and soybeans will always be the top crop in Michigan, but growing Spartan barley will help “make them some half decent money.”

The appeal of beer made from locally grown grain, he said, "is the thing that will drive this effort.”

Contact Alexander Alusheff at (517) 388-5973 or aalusheff@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexalusheff.