Behind the Brew: How Molson Coors Produces Top Quality Beer with Top Quality Barley

From Miller Molson Coors &  Nick Kindelsperger:

✓ For nearly 80 years, Molson Coors’ Barley Program has been dedicated to providing a consistent supply of the best barley available 
✓ Our agronomists work with 600+ growers to help pursue new opportunities, strategize for harvest and navigate a busy, complex growing season  
✓ To ensure quality barley for our brewers, the team samples every delivery truck – between 16,000 and 19,000 trucks full of barley every year  

Behind the Brew is a column where Molson Coors employees explain in their own words what’s new in their department and how it’s driving the company forward. Wade Malchow is the senior manager of Molson Coors’ innovative barley program.  

Without barley, there is no beer. And it’s the job of Molson Coors’ Barley Program team – about 40 of us – to make sure our company has a consistent supply of top-quality barley. That way, whenever someone sips one of our beers, we know it’ll have the great taste they expect.  

Barley doesn’t just grow overnight. Overseeing this process requires a skilled team, and we are lucky to have an incredible group of agronomists and grain elevator staff who make it happen.  

While we’re not out there planting the barley or running the combines (machinery for harvesting grain crops), we’re deeply involved in all aspects of the growing and storage process.  

The challenge? Every season brings something new, whether that’s weather, innovation or otherwise. The reward? Our jobs are ever-evolving, and we get to work with amazing growers to bring our beer to life from the very beginning. 

It’s not easy. Barley is complicated to grow and to store. Trust me, there are plenty of easier crops to grow! But thanks to our incredible team of experts, new technology and constant collaboration with our growers, we’re able to provide a consistent supply of high-quality barley – that you all end up being able to enjoy.  

Mapping all the barley 
Each year we work with around 600+ growers in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado and Canada, advising on all aspects of their harvest strategy, including the specific variety of Moravian two-row barley, the amount of water needed and when to harvest. 

So how do you keep track of barley in 600 different places? We map it.  

Our team works with tech and software that maps all of our growers’ fields. Throughout the growing season, we can measure plant health across the growers’ fields and compare that with satellite weather data and farm practices.  
This allows us to identify problems ahead of time. If a grower has a developing problem, we consult on how to minimize the issue and still have a good result. We make irrigation recommendations about whether the grower should apply a little more or a little less water. Interestingly, we’re often able to decrease water usage as well because of this process. 

While technology is crucial to our success, we also believe in the importance of getting out to the fields to see the crop for ourselves. That means our team travels a lot. Our agronomists will each travel 30,000 to 45,000 miles a year just to get it right. 

Summer barley has a surprisingly short season, spending only about four months in the fields. During the time from planting to harvest, it’s fast and furious. Our team is out in the country almost every day, driving to growers in one area and then getting back in the truck and seeing growers in a different area. We like to say that if you can see a dozen farms a day, that’s pretty good. 

Once it gets closer to harvest time, we help growers with their strategies. Some years are uneventful, with a bountiful crop and no issues. But other years provide challenges from Mother Nature. Regardless, we’re always there to be partners and to help make the best of any situation.  

Sampling, storing and shipping quality barley  
Every year, between 16,000 and 19,000 trucks full of barley arrive at our 5 grain elevators, and we sample every single one of them. 

We look at over 30 different attributes, from grain size to protein content. We also scan for multiple diseases and broken or immature kernels.  

The barley that passes the test is stored in our grain elevators, which we keep as dry and cool as possible. Along with keeping the grain from sprouting, the cold also helps us deal with any pests and eliminates the need for pesticides. All you need is cold air. 

But that’s not always easy. Imagine a football field-sized building full of barley stacked up to 45 feet high. To keep track, we feed data into our software so we can see a three-dimensional temperature map of our stored grain. If a spot gets a little too warm, we run enormous fans in that zone. Other times, we physically pull the barley out to run air through the rest of the pile to cool it off. Again, it’s a mix of technology coupled with the human touch. 
When the barley is ready to ship, our grain elevator team is ready to hit the ground running, loading about 4,000 rail cars of malt barley per year to the malt house. Safety is our number one priority, and when we have rail cars to ship, we get it done the right way.  

Prepping for Barley Christmas 
In the rodeo world, they talk about July 4th being “Cowboy Christmas,” because that’s when the cowboys run around and hit two or three rodeos in one weekend. Well, right now is our Barley Christmas, too. It’s a lot of work. But it’s all worth it when the result of all our hard work is rewarded with quality barley.  

Because our growers are at the heart of what we create, we like to pause briefly and celebrate them with our annual Barley Days. This year, we’re thanking the growers of Montana for their dedication to their craft. It’s truly a team effort in the end. 

Each one of our domestically produced beers uses barley tested and approved by us. So after a long day’s work (ok, months of work), what better way to enjoy the fruits of our labor than by enjoying a high-quality Molson Coors beer? 

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