The darling ‘rains’ of May…not good for pub gardens, or beer sales, perhaps, but, this year, the rains in may have been a godsend to the growers of malting barley, explains Robin Appel, managing director of Warminster Maltings.

For many of us, the on/off rain showers have persisted since last September, and certainly as far as farmers are concerned, this year, they seriously got in the way of fieldwork in the critical Spring months of February, March and April. 

The perfect ‘window’ for planting Spring barley is mid February to mid March, but this last time around that opportunity never came. 

Instead, new crop plantings were delayed well into April, colloquially referred to as “cuckoo barley”, with many farmers less than happy about the seedbed conditions into which they were forced to sow. 

At the end of April, when I asked barley growers what they considered were the prospects for their crops, universally their response was: “we need rain throughout May, otherwise the crops will never establish!” 

Well, the gods have clearly been on the farmers side, because they got the rain. Now they just want the sun!

We would imagine asking for the sun is less of a tall order these days, extreme interpretations of climate change suggesting that we will all eventually be shrivelled up by it. 

But, there is a school of thought, that as far us the U.K. is concerned, we might have got this wrong. Really, we are an island out in the Atlantic, famous for our Maritime Climate. 

There are very few official designations of these – U.K., Denmark, a strip along the Belgian coast, New Zealand, and a small province on the west coast of Canada. 

That’s it, and that is why our malting barley is revered all over the world, it is all down to our very special and unique climate. 

But this alternative “school of thought” worries that, due to climate change, the U.K. might be about to become a whole lot more Maritime! In other words, it is never going to stop raining!

However, the far more popular view, and farming opportunists, favour the Mediterranean outcome, hence the enormous expansion of viticulture across the south of England, and typically, that heavily distorted headline that recently appeared on my BBC News app. 

“Scientists help save the British pint!” This was all about an initiative in Kent to breed new drought resistant varieties of hops.

That hop growers and brewers are concerned about a drier U.K. climate is not something I want to argue with. 

I have been observing how, over the passed 10-15 years, the Eastern counties of Britain, particularly East Anglia, have been getting drier, which has certainly been impacting the barley crop. 

It must be all of 12 years ago, driving along the north Norfolk coast, I first observed Spring barley crops being irrigated, in May! No “darling rains” that year.

But, I am not aware that barley breeders are over exercising their minds about drought resistance, so far. I am probably wrong, but, if I am not, they are quite right not to get overly concerned yet. Because there is a much simpler answer than that chosen by the hop industry: malting barley production across our countryside just needs to migrate west.

Forever, East Anglia has been observed as the ‘bread basket’ of Britain, and certainly, for the most part, the brewing industry favoured it’s malting barley production over other regions. 

That is why, today, much of the U.K. malting industry is concentrated all along the eastern seaboard of England, from Witham in Essex to Berwick-on-Tweed in Northumberland. All perfectly situated for barley production on it’s doorstep. But for how much longer?

I would imagine that when Dr Bell first introduced his Maris Otter barley to the farming and brewing public, back in 1965, that he foresaw production being concentrated in those favoured areas for winter barley crops – East Kent, the Tendring Hundred in Essex, and West Norfolk. 

I very much doubt that Cornwall ever entered his mind. But for the last 20 years or so, Cornish grown Maris Otter has just been getting better and better! 

Of course, you do not have to travel that far. Generally speaking, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset, all predominantly the perfect chalk based soils of the Icknield Series, all enjoy more annual rainfall than East Anglia. But there is no malting capacity down here, so, much of it gets shipped to Antwerp!

But that might all be about to change. There is another 300,000 tonnes of malting capacity coming on stream in Scotland, for the whisky industry. 

This is where the weather, every year, is more Marine than Maritime. Scotland is bound to be viewing the English barley crop to make up some, if not most, of that capacity. So brewers beware, not just “the darling rains in May”, but look out for the distillers!