Coopers raises a glass to local barley growers.
In a boost to the domestic malting barley industry, Australia’s largest locally-owned brewer Coopers Brewery has opened a new $65 million malting plant at its South Australian headquarters.
The plant is considered to be the most technically advanced in the world and will create demand for about 65,000 to 70,000 tonnes of malting barley a year.
“Our preference is to use South Australian barley because we know local growers produce some of the best malting barley in the world,” Maltings Manager at Coopers Brewery, Dr Doug Stewart, said.
“We are currently malting the 2016/17 barley crop and quality has been fantastic – the plumpest grain I’ve ever seen.
“We will look to source barley from around the northern Yorke Peninsula, Mid North, Murraylands and Mid Mallee areas wherever possible.”
At full capacity, the plant will produce about 54,000 tonnes of malt a year – 17,000 tonnes of which will be used by Coopers and the balance, sold to a range of domestic and export customers.
Dr Stewart said the quality was assured through the Viterra storage system, with full traceability back to the grower to enrich the product’s backstory.
“We operate a single-origin program for the craft brewing industry, where we nominate the storage site the grain comes from and put that on our packaging.
Consumers want to see and understand the origin of our ingredients and this has been really successful for us,” Dr Stewart said.
Commander and Scope were the key varieties being used at the moment, with the potential to move towards Compass and Spartacus pending malting accreditation.
“Compass in particular yields like feed varieties but with malting characteristics, which is fantastic for growers. This was the vision for barley about 10 to 15 years ago,” he said.
“We’ve malted some Compass and made beer with it so we know it can work. We are very much committed to trialling new varieties for the good of the industry.”
The malting plant is the largest single investment in Coopers’ 155 year history, spanning six generations.
Dr Stewart said the plant’s water usage, process control and automation makes it the most advanced malt house in the world.
“The water used in production comes from saline aquifers beneath the brewery, which is desalinated on site. There is 7km of pipeline running from the plant to Barker Inlet for the brine stream,” he said.
“We also have three refrigeration compressors which help keep the grain at a steady temperature of 17°C.
The refrigeration process was given a real test during the recent extreme heat, but it worked exactly how we designed it so that was really pleasing.”
As Australia’s largest and oldest family-owned brewery, Coopers runs two packaging lines producing 60,000 bottles an hour, with exports heading all over the world. The company also sells DIY beer packs for budding home brewers.
The malting plant marks a return to the maltings business for Coopers, which sold its previous shareholdings in Adelaide Maltings between 1988 to 2002 to help reduce debt.
Dr Stewart said the intention was to always get back into malting again at some stage.
“Like brewing, it’s a technical pursuit, and Coopers is very good at that. It also allows us to work further up the supply chain and gives us more control over the quality of the end product,” he said.
“The malting plant took about two years of planning and two years of construction. It truly is a magnificent facility.
“We hope growers will continue to include malting barley in their crop rotations and be part of the Coopers’ Australian made and Australian owned story.”