Characterization, qualification and comparison of irrigated Barleys cultivated in the Cerrado for brewing malt production: Part 2

Abstract

Brazil imports about 60% of all malt used for beer production, which is carried out throughout the national territory. Aiming to meet the growing demand, reduce the country's dependence on foreign malt, and also reduce logistics costs, the malting industries and genetic improvement companies began to focus on adapting Barley to the Brazilian cerrado. Aiming at the application of these Barleys in the malting process, studies are needed for the development of cultivars with adequate malting quality, which are adapted to the region and which still have productive potential. In this work, the objective was to characterize and qualify ten cultivars of Barleys produced in two places in the Cerrado: Perdizes-MG and in the region surrounding Brasília-DF. The Barleys were grown in 2017 and their characteristics were established from the analysis of Moisture content, classification, pre-germinated, weight of a thousand grains, germination power (PG), germination energy (EG), sensitivity to water (S.A.), germination index (GI), β-glucans and protein content. The processing was carried out and the products were submitted to classification analyses, Moisture content, friability, Diastatic power (PD), congress must, saccharification time, extract, pH, viscosity, β-glucans, soluble nitrogen, FAN and content protein (PT). The latter was one of the most relevant characters for the qualification of the materials, as it exhibited highly significant differences between the values, with variations from 12.81% to 17.73%, revealing the interference of the environment in the expression of these genotypes. The malts produced did not meet the Pilsen-type malt specifications, but have characteristics of special malts, such as: soluble TP between 3.2% and 6.5%, PG reaching borderline values of 304 WK and extract contents consistent with this class, with values between 74.5% and 79.4% -which promote sensory changes for the beer. Finally, it is concluded that field research must continue, as the promising results of this work indicate that with more development time, several Barley genotypes will be adapted to the region, thus expanding the national production of malt and beer.