With 2025 drawing to a close Robin Appel, the director of warminster maltings, delivers some timely advice for UK brewers.

“The second worst harvest on record” is how some commentators have described the 2025 cereal harvest. Overall, perhaps, but not every farmer has experienced that outcome.

The Spring was early, and a lot of barley was planted by the end of February. This was a very favourable start, and crops established well. But the critical rains in May never came, and as the temperatures climbed in June, barleys began to suffer from the lack of moisture and penetrating heat.

The impact of this has produced a lot of thinner grain, and higher than preferred grain nitrogen content. But as I have already indicated, it is not all bad.

Barley’s favourite soil type, the Icknield Series – light loam over chalk – has probably fared best, the chalk sub soil acting like blotting paper, and sustaining the host crop despite the lack of rain. We are talking about East Yorkshire, West Norfolk and the central southern counties of Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset. That may be a useful pointer to the best malts going forward.

But any shortfall in the supply of good malting barley is being partly offset by a reduction in demand for malt. The current indigestion in the Scotch whisky market is well publicised, with many distilleries cutting back production, and some even moth balled. But this sector has been here before, and in recent memory, so it has the experience of how to handle this challenge, and hopefully re-emerge within the next couple of years. 

But beer has also taken a bit of a tumble, at least that is what the early Autumn figures are suggesting, experienced by brewers and maltsters alike. The press headlines have all been pointing to the decline in numbers visiting the pub, then highlighting Gen Z’s abdication of all forms of alcohol, and finally asserting that pubs are closing at the rate of one every day.

Worse, these trends are far from confined to this country, apparently, our near European neighbours are having a similar experience, and my agent in North America is reporting more of the same. Whatever happened to the old adage “When times are good people drink a little, when times are bad they drink a little more!”

What does this all mean for malting barley growers? With disappointingly smaller than expected heaps of barley in the barns, and ‘ex farm’ prices in the doldrums, cereal growers have been quick to exploit the open Autumn, and switch to maximising their acreage of wheat.

But, currently, the wheat market offers no safe haven either. The recent demise of our domestic bioethanol industry has already removed the thick end of one million tonnes of wheat from the home market, and we need summers like 2025 every year if we are to produce good bread milling wheat. I should add that the demand for oats is no better than that for barley.

The point I want to make is that this might be a very good time for brewers to try and engage more with barley growers. Farmers are receiving little encouragement from any quarter at the moment, and under these circumstances, many would regard the safest option for both wheat and barley production, is to just grow for outright yield, and step back from trying to produce for the premium markets.

But this would be to overlook that within our shores we have the capability of producing the finest malting barleys in the world. This is a lot about our Maritime Climate, our almost unique and perfect climate for growing barley. We then have the soil types to compliment this, and a legacy of barley breeding which fits the combination of both. Nowhere else in the world can match this, and it is what makes a lot of British beer stand out from all the rest. A unique selling point we need to hang on to.

How can brewers get more involved? Simple, learn from the past, and bring back the National Malting Barley Competition. This once annual event, sponsored by the Institute of Brewing, and disbanded in 2002, should be reinstated, and made into a high profile, prestigious event with prizes and publicity to match.

As before, merchants and maltsters would be required to procure and marshall entries from the farmers, but judges should be independent of these sectors to ensure nobody is accused of marking their own homework.   

Once upon a time, English malting barleys won gold medals at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, still held every year, in November, in Toronto. I would contend that prestigious awards of that kind reflect not only on our barleys, but on our malts and our beers as well. But let us start again where we left off, at home, and do something to raise the profile and importance of our domestic barley production. That way we might at least retain the interest and the skills of our farmers, without which our global prominence might easily be lost.