October is winter barley sowing time in Belgium. Between winter and spring barley, next summer's grain size and protein are already being decided in the field.
On the plateaus of the Condroz, seed drills are working every dry window between two showers. October is winter barley sowing time in Belgium: grain that goes into the ground this week will emerge before the frosts, sit through winter in slow motion and be harvested in early July. Its cousin, spring barley, is still waiting in the seed bags — it won't be sown until February or March. Between those two calendars, a good share of what the maltster will take in next summer, and of what the brewer will find in the mash tun, is being decided right now.
Two barleys, two calendars
Winter barley settles in before the cold. Sown from October to early November, it builds its roots in autumn, tillers before the first frosts and gets going early in the season. The payoff: it partly escapes the dry spells of May and June, and clears the fields by early July, when the combines start on winter barley well before the wheat.
Spring barley plays a shorter score. Sown in February or March and harvested in August, it completes its cycle in six months. It is a sprint: less time to put down roots, but also fewer chances to pick up autumn and winter diseases. Historically, this is the classic malting barley — the great majority of malt produced in Europe comes from two-row spring varieties.
Why maltsters have a soft spot for spring
It starts with protein. For brewing malt, you want grain at roughly 9.5 to 11.5% protein. Below that, the yeast runs short of nitrogen during fermentation; above it, the brewer gains haze in the glass and loses extract in the mash tun. Spring barley, with its short cycle, naturally stores less nitrogen in the grain — especially when grain filling isn't cut short by a heatwave.
Grain size matters just as much. A homogeneous lot, where the kernels stay on the 2.5 mm screen, steeps and germinates evenly: that is the condition for clean malting, with every kernel moving at the same pace through the drum. Two-row spring barleys give round, regular kernels. Six-row winter barleys — widely grown in Belgium for animal feed — carry their grain packed tight on the ear: smaller, more angular, less even.
Winter barley is gaining ground anyway
The climate is reshuffling the deck. Dry springs keep coming, and barley sown in March that sees no rain in April gets off to a poor start, tillers little and finishes with thin grain. Winter barley, already rooted deep by then, takes it better. Breeders have caught on: winter varieties bred for brewing, two-row and six-row alike, have earned their place in maltings across the continent, and the Walloon research stations follow them closely in their variety trials.
In organic farming, winter has one more argument. A crop already established in spring covers the soil and outpaces the weeds — precious when you weed with a tine harrow rather than a sprayer. On the other side of the ledger, you need a variety that stands up to disease without fungicides, and you accept that the nitrogen the soil releases in spring sometimes pushes protein a touch high for brewing. The choice is never free: it is weighed field by field.
What sowing already decides in your glass
The variety sets the ceiling. Germination energy, dormancy behaviour, the future friability of the malt: much of it is written into the genetics of the grain falling from the drill. The maltster can steer steeping and germination with care, but no one ever turned feed barley into pils malt.
Seed rate and sowing date shape the grain. Sow too dense and the kernels come out small, slipping through the screen; sow too late and grain filling gets squeezed. A farmer sowing for the maltings is already thinking in extract and screen fractions, even while counting in grains per square metre.
Rotation sets up the protein. Malting barley placed after sugar beet or a cereal, which leave little nitrogen behind, has every chance of landing in the target range. After a ploughed-up ley or a legume, nitrogen is plentiful and protein climbs — fine for feed barley, risky for brewing. In organic farming, where nitrogen comes from the soil rather than the bag, reading the rotation is the first quality tool there is.
And in Dinant?
Our first malting campaign starts in November, with organic Belgian barley harvested this summer: grain from the founder's own farm, Demeter-certified, and from a Belgian cooperative of organic growers. The drills you pass on the road right now are already preparing the 2027 harvest — the lots that will go through our five-tonne drum a year from now. At the scale of a malthouse, you are always thinking one season ahead.
To be honest: for the palest malts, spring still has the edge. A fine two-row spring barley, low in protein and well sized, remains the benchmark for pils malt. But a supply chain that rests on a single sowing calendar bets its whole harvest on a single run of weather. For a brewer who wants organic Belgian malt, having both barleys in the ground is the best insurance against a failed summer.
If you find yourself in the Meuse valley this autumn, stop by Dinant: the malthouse stands a stone's throw from the fields that feed it, and the team is always glad to talk sowing, varieties and grain size with anyone who brews, bakes or farms. You can also simply write to us via mad.be.