Between the July harvest and the first malting in October, malting barley rests. Dormancy, storage and grain tests: what happens during those waiting weeks.
Take a barley corn harvested in July in the hills above the Meuse and put it on a germination bed: odds are, nothing happens. No rootlets, no shoot — a grain fast asleep. Brewers ask us about this all the time: "the harvest came in during the summer, so why wait until mid-October to start malting?" The answer comes down to one word every maltster learns to respect: dormancy.
Dormancy is the grain being sensible
Freshly harvested barley refuses to germinate, and that's a good thing. Out in the field, this stubbornness protects it: without dormancy, one wet August week would be enough to make the grains sprout while still on the ear, and the crop would be lost. Nature built in a physiological lock that stops the embryo from starting, even when water and warmth are on offer.
For the maltster, that lock is a temporary problem. Malting is nothing more than controlled germination: you steep the grain, let it germinate for a few days, then stop everything in the kiln. A dormant grain doesn't germinate, or germinates unevenly — and uneven germination means patchy modification and a malt that's hard work in the brewhouse. So you let time do its job: a few weeks to a few months of dry rest, and dormancy lifts on its own.
There is also water sensitivity. Some lots, even out of dormancy, germinate poorly when they get too much water at once: the film of liquid around the corn cuts off oxygen and the embryo suffocates. This sensitivity also fades with storage time. July barley malted in October behaves nothing like the same barley malted in August.
What the silo has to deliver
A resting grain is not a forgotten grain. Barley goes into storage alive, and it has to stay that way: its embryo will do all the work during germination. The first rule is moisture. Above roughly 14.5% water content, the grain respires too much, heats up, and invites mould. Malting barley is stored dry, ventilated and cool — every degree you shave off extends its germinative capacity.
The second rule is cleanliness. Insects and broken corns are the quiet enemies of any silo. Under organic rules there's no treating stored grain: everything rests on ventilation, cooling and watchfulness. It's unglamorous weekly work — a temperature probe pushed into the heap, and a nose alert to the first hint of mustiness.
The tests that make the call
Before a lot gets malted, it has to prove itself. The central test is germinative capacity: out of a hundred corns set to germinate, how many get going? Below 95%, a lot has no business on a germination bed — dead corns don't turn into malt, they turn into problems. We also measure germinative energy, which is really a measure of speed: a good lot germinates decisively in three days rather than dragging itself out over five.
Protein tells you about the summer. For brewing you generally want barley between 9.5 and 11.5% protein. Too little, and the malt will be short on enzymes and on nitrogen for the yeast; too much, and the beer risks haze while the extract yield drops. A hot, dry summer pushes protein up; a rainy one dilutes it. Every barley vintage has its own character, exactly like a grape harvest.
Screening, finally, tells you about evenness. You sieve: the corns held back above 2.5 mm carry the most starch and give the best yields. A well-screened lot steeps and germinates evenly; a mixed lot gives you over-modified corns sitting next to corns that have barely woken up. For a maltster working with a single 5-tonne drum, that evenness isn't a luxury — it's the condition for clean malt.
Why our first campaign starts in mid-October
Our calendar follows the grain's. The Belgian malting barley of the 2026 harvest has been in since summer — from the founder's own Demeter-certified farm and from the growers of the Belgian organic cooperative we work with. By mid-October, dormancy has lifted, water sensitivity has faded, the analyses are done: the grain is ready, and the first steep can begin in Dinant.
The rhythm will be that of a workshop, not a factory. One 5-tonne drum, where the grain germinates and is then kilned without ever leaving the vessel, roughly one batch a week. The kilning heat will come from biomass, delivered as hot water, backed by renewable electricity — no fossil fuels anywhere in the circuit. Every batch will keep a field name and a vintage, so a brewer in Namur or Maastricht can know exactly which plot is in their sack of pils malt.
When patience isn't an option
Let's be honest: this calendar doesn't suit everyone. A brewer who empties their malt silo in September can't wait for our first batch. The big maltings, with their buffer stocks and harvests from several origins running back to back, offer an availability that a craft operation simply doesn't — and for an urgent need or a large volume, that's where to turn, no hard feelings. Local organic malt is a choice you make with the seasons and a bit of foresight: you reserve your lot the way you'd reserve a share of a harvest, accepting that the grain sets the tempo.
That tempo is half the pleasure of the thing: knowing that the malt for a spring 2027 beer is asleep today in a silo somewhere between Dinant and the farms that supply us. If you'd like to see what barley biding its time looks like, or simply talk screening sizes and protein levels with the malthouse team, come by Dinant or get in touch via mad.be — the door is open well before the first steep.