Warminster maltings ltd. Adding terroir to Your Pint

Warminster maltings ltd. Adding terroir to Your Pint

Terroir. A sense of place. Terroir is the voice of experience in agriculture, which lends integrity to its produce. Varieties of barley impart character to the malts they produce, but so do the peculiarities of the soils in which they are grown. The British Isles is a kaleidoscope of different soil types, and each one, together with a respected malting barley variety, can influence the character of your beer. The Icknield Way is one of Britain s oldest highways, stretching from Dorset s Jurassic coast to The Wash, and it was established well before the Romans arrived. The name is Celto-British in derivation, and may be named after the Iceni tribe. Today, it remains as a clearly defined path, and it follows the direction of a single soil type to which it lends it s name the Icknield Series. The Icknield Series. Britain s best soil for growing superior malting barley. The Icknield Series soil type first breaks out on the East Yorkshire/ Lincolnshire coast, then plunges down through Norfolk and Suffolk, heading for the Thames Valley. Here it splits, trickling both across the top, and the bottom of the South Downs, at the same time generously spilling across Hampshire and Wiltshire on its way down to the Dorset coast. This is a light, free working soil where barley crops can be easily established in late September (winter varieties) or very early in the spring (February/early March). The topsoil is sufficiently pervious to limit fertility, ensuring low nitrogen grain, and the chalk subsoil maintains sufficient moisture from the winter rains to sustain crop establishment throughout the warm dry springs. This ensures optimum establishment for yield, and a growth pattern that maintains ahead of the seasonal curve, ensuring an early harvest when the days remain hot, long, and dry. Cambridge The Icknield Series Seahenge The Icknield Series is quite the best soil type within the UK for malting barley production. Swindon Oxford Ware London Warminster Andover Guildford Salisbury Winchester Canterbury

The Icknield Barleys. Superior barleys from farms on the Icknield Series. The Icknield malts. Exceptional malts derived from the Icknield barleys. Today, much of the malting capacity of England sits on, or immediately adjacent to the Icknield soil type, and Warminster Maltings represents the industry s most westerly engagement. This is no coincidence, 150 years ago maltsters, and brewers, recognised that the character of the barleys, and malts, produced from these soils was superior to any other! Maris Otter barley, in particular, is predominantly, though not exclusively, grown on the Icknield Series, and historically, Warminster Maltings has sourced most of its barleys from farms spread across and around Salisbury Plain (Icknield Series). But today we have the ability to contractually procure barleys from right across the whole expanse of the Icknield soils, and we do this because it provides us with a meteorological hedge against any extremities of weather, which invariably manifest themselves as an east-west divide. So it was, back in the 19th century, the special character of the malts produced at Warminster, gave rise to the town being dubbed one of the malting capitals of the British Isles. In order to attract trade, hostelries spread right across the south-west, particularly inns situated on the coach roads, would display a plaque Warminster Malt. Icknield malts form the backbone of our portfolio. However, by the mid 20th century, industrialisation of farming, malting and brewing, which was driven by the economies of scale, conveniently chose to believe that all malts were the same, regardless of provenance, as technology overcame trust. But the re-establishment of craft breweries has once again focused on the importance of the finer elements of malts as the prime raw material. Variety, terroir, harvesting and storage protocols as well as the method of malt production, are all exercising the minds of those brewers who are not only setting out to brew better beers than their competitors, but also seeking to underscore their promotional message to their customers. We source Icknield barleys from right across the country.

Warminster Maltings Ltd. A traditional Icknield maltings. Our Victorian floor maltings is described as of the Ware design Ware, the market town in Hertfordshire, on the other side of the country, close to the halfway point of the Icknield Path. At Warminster, we still abide by the malting protocols of our 19th century ancestors, whose slower, more gentle processing, by hand, is widely acknowledged to give rise to more pronounced flavours in the finished malts. It is the compound effect of the individual peculiarities separately derived from the Icknield soil, the variety of barley, and the floor malting process that eventually all combine to contribute a unique character to beer. Maris Otter. The archetypical Icknield Malt. Bred by Dr GDH Bell at the Plant Breeding Institute at Cambridge (on the Icknield Way), this barley was bred for the Icknield Series soil type. An autumn sown variety, preferably before the end of September, this barley depends on easy working soils that can be easily cultivated at that time of the year. It then matures early and ripens by the middle of July, when the sun is still high in the sky, ensuring the best harvest opportunity. 50 years barley 1965~2015 Maris Otter is the true Icknield malt, grown right across the whole spectrum of the soil type, from the east Yorkshire coast, to large swathes of crop in west Norfolk, and then all the way down to Dorset. The Malting Process at warminster Based on original photographs, 1950. So if you believe in the peculiarities of Terroir and Icknield malts, why not talk to: chris.garratt@warminster-malt.co.uk

warminster maltings ltd. 39 pound street. warminster. wiltshire BA12 8NN telephone: 01985 212014 chris.garratt@warminster-malt.co.uk www. warminster-malt.co.uk ICKNIELD MALTS.