Barley, malt and the field it came from
Where the grain comes from
Beer is mostly barley, and almost nobody records which barley. This archive can tell you who owns a brewery, when it opened and what happened when it closed — and for all but a handful of records, it cannot tell you what was in the mash or who grew it.
This is a gap, and it is stated on purpose
7 records out of 5,257. There is no barley variety field in this archive, no pedigree, no malthouse, no crop year — because we would rather design that layer with the people who breed and malt the grain than invent one and correct thousands of records later. If you know where a brewery's malt comes from, that is exactly the sort of thing the archive wants sent to it.
Estate — they grow it themselves
The brewery farms the barley it brews with, on its own land. The shortest possible supply chain, and the rarest.
- Ballykilcavan Brewing Co.
Ballykilcavan farm, Co. Laois
Grows its own barley and brews on site. Underlying record is from the Ireland compendium and not independently verified.
Stradbally, Co. Laois, Ireland
- Farmery Estate Brewery
Farmery estate, Manitoba
Grows and harvests its own barley and hops on the prairie.
Neepawa, Manitoba, Canada
- Hawkstone
Diddly Squat Farm, Chadlington, Oxfordshire
Barley grown on the farm; brewed under contract at Cotswold Brewing Company.
Bourton-on-the-Water, United Kingdom
- MacKinnon Brothers Brewing Co.
MacKinnon family farm, Bath, Ontario
Farm-grown hops, wheat and barley.
Bath, Ontario, Canada
- Microbrasserie La Chouape
Own fields, Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec
Brews organic beer on its own grain. Underlying record is from the Quebec compendium and not independently verified.
Saint-Félicien, Quebec, Canada
Regional — grown and malted nearby
Not their own field, but their own region. The distinction matters: one is farming, the other is buying well.
What this should become
A brewery record that connects to its beers, its owners, and then further back still: the barley variety behind the malt, who malted it, the hop variety and who bred it, the yeast strain and where it came from. Follow a pint back to a field and a plant-breeding programme.
None of that exists here yet. It is written down so that the version which does get built can be checked against what was promised — and because the researchers who could help design it are more likely to answer a clear gap than a finished-looking page. How the archive decides what to publish.