Bill Ladish
Cargill Malt, Specialty Products Group

In a previous article we discussed the drop in acres planted to Harrington in Canada during the mid- to late-1990s and afterwards, after a long and distinguished reign in international commerce. The declines were driven by the comparatively improved agronomics of newer lines of crops which compete with malting barley for acreage in Canada, and by the improved agronomics of newer 2-row malting barley varieties released in order to keep malting barley competitive with these other crops.

The newer 2-row malting barley varieties are primarily Metcalfe, Kendall, Stratus, and Copeland. Metcalfe, the apparent winner in the derby to replace Harrington acreage, was discussed previously. Stratus has not been successful in the marketplace as compared to Metcalfe and Kendall. Copeland is newer and will be discussed in a third article. In this article we focus on Kendall.

Kendall was developed at the Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon by Dr. Bryan Harvey. It was registered in Canada in 1995. Its parentage is Manley/SM85221.

The agronomic yield of Kendall is about 108% of that of Harrington. This improvement is driven largely by better disease resistance and lodging resistance. Both Metcalfe and Kendall are superior to Harrington in resistance to net blotch and stem rust. However, Kendall has resistance to loose smut and other smuts equivalent to that of Harrington, whereas Metcalfe has improved resistance.

Comparisons of malt analytical data across varieties have to be done with great care. Typically maltsters have to work with a variety for a while to optimize processing conditions. When that is completed, different varieties tend to be selected for different major customers and processed differently. So, while great amounts of data are available, there is only limited data available when all varieties are processed under thoughtful generic conditions in an attempt to quantify differences across varieties. The writer is aware of only two such studies. One was done internally at Prairie Malt Ltd (PML) in Biggar, Saskatchewan with brewing at the Great Western brewpub in Saskatoon using 1999 crop barley. The other is an extensive study done by our former colleague Dr. Yueshu Li and his colleague Aleksandar Egi at the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre in Winnipeg. They used barley from the 1999, 2000, and 2001 crops. This latter study has been published. Li & Egi: “New Canadian Malting Barley Varieties and Their Malting and Brewing Characteristics,” Master Brewers Technical Quarterly, volume 41, number 2, (2004) pages 104-110.

In discussing Metcalfe previously we used PML data. Here we present the pilot-scale data of Li & Egi. In general, the important data relationships are similar to those observed at PML.

	Metcalfe	Kendall	Harrington
Friability, %	89.7	93.0	84.5
Extract, fine, dry, %	80.7	81.1	79.9
F-C Extract, dry, %	0.5	0.7	1.4
Total Protein, dry, %	12.5	12.2	12.4
Soluble Protein, dry, %	5.2	5.2	5.3
S/T (Kolbach Index), %	42.3	42.4	42.6
a-Amylase, DU	66.0	59.0	58.2
Diastatic Power, ASBC	159	157	137
B-Glucan, ppm	82	74	164
Wort Viscosity, cP	1.46	1.46	1.50
Wort Color, ASBC	2.24	2.10	2.13
Free Amino Nitrogen, mg/L	203	193	223

The data represent the average analysis of at least eight batches. Note that the level of total protein and S/T are similar for all three varieties. For Kendall: