Ontario craft beer is taking a huge step forward, by taking a 100-year step backward.

Here, a storied, century-old Canadian heritage barley variety called OAC 21 is being reintroduced, especially for the craft beer market.

OAC stands for Ontario Agricultural College. The number 21 refers to this barley’s row number in the research plot cultivated in 1903 in Guelph, by Canadian crop breeding icon Charles Zavitz.

OAC 21 is ideal for small, specialized batches of craft beer, and for Ontario’s particularly humid climate that roughs up cereal crops like barley.

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“This is the first step toward revitalizing and re-establishing a viable malting barley production and processing industry in Ontario and Eastern Canada,” says University of Guelph plant breeder Duane Falk, who has been pivotal to OAC 21’s reintroduction.

Here’s what’s happening: as competition heats up, craft beer breweries are working harder to distinguish themselves and their products. Beer names have become clever and hip (see poll). And truly local ingredients — water, yeast, hops and malted barley — are in high demand.

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Brewers get even more excited about ingredients from heritage varieties. These are heirloom cultivars that faded into the sunset, usually because plant breeders like Falk developed better varieties (Falk himself has developed 51 different varieties).

But back in the day, these varieties had something unique that made them stand out.

For example, as plant breeder Zavitz discovered in the early 1900s, OAC 21 was more resistant than other barleys to nasty leaf and root diseases like powdery mildew, leaf rust, net blotch, spot blotch and root rot.

These qualities allowed it to produce better quality grain than other barleys in its day.

So, Zavitz selected it for further development. And after considerable testing, OAC 21 was made available to farmers in 1910.

It turns out Zavitz picked a winner. Within two years, 98 per cent of Ontario farmers were growing it.

For the next 40 years, OAC 21 became the industry standard across Canada for barley used for beer production, called malting barley.

Eventually, time caught up with it, like it does with many plant varieties (they typically have a lifespan of about 10 years). The country’s population and beer intake was growing, and more productive varieties were needed to satisfy beer giants’ increasing need for volume.

Now fast forward to 2017. Today’s craft beer brewers aren’t giants, and don’t have the same needs for volume. Their relatively small batches use only a fraction of the barley used by big companies. As a result, they are quite happy with lower-yielding malting barley that grows well here and resists diseases. Even better if it’s a heritage variety, like OAC 21.

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This spring, a field of OAC 21 is being grown in dry, warm and sunny Alberta. That acreage is expected to provide brewers with enough OAC 21 malt to meet much of the demand in Ontario next year.

Nature’s wet blanket

Humidity creates conditions in grain like barley that are ideal for plant fungus, moulds, mildews and bacterial infections. Think about what happens in your home if humidity builds up. Stubborn fungus and mould take hold. Because of the Great Lakes, farmers’ fields in Ontario are subject to similar problems.

Craft beer is everywhere

Ontario now has a whopping 180 craft beer breweries. Another 50 are in the works. Thirty brew pubs have opened. In recent years, craft beer has been the fastest growing segment within the LCBO’s beer category, up 20–30 per cent a year. The annual economic impact in Ontario of the craft beer sector is at least $600 million.