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Barley

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Hordeum vulgare

Barley is a chewy grain with a mild, malty sweetness. In the Northeast it matters both as a food grain and as one of the region’s main malting crops, so it sits at the overlap between porridge, bread, koji, and brewing.1

Barley is one of the oldest domesticated cereals, and food histories repeatedly describe it as a staple grain long before it became best known in the modern West as beer’s raw material.23 Even so, its brewing life matters here: University of Maine runs separate trial work for malting barley and hulless barley, which neatly reflects the crop’s two Northeast identities, one aimed at malt quality and one at direct food use.1 Their 2019 and 2020 reports also show how much of the Maine barley conversation is now organized around two-row and six-row malting lines, with hulless feed or food types sitting alongside them rather than disappearing into the background.45

Barley’s texture comes partly from beta-glucans and pentosans in the grain walls, not just from starch. Those compounds help cooked barley feel springy and substantial, and they also make barley flour thirsty compared with wheat flour.3 Most food barley is hulled and then pearled to some degree, which smooths the grain but also strips away some bran, germ, and flavor.3

Malting pushes the grain in another direction. Germination builds enzymes and softens the kernel; kilning then locks in a chosen balance of enzymatic power, sweetness, color, and roast character.6 That is why the same ingredient can turn up here as the substrate for Koji (Pearled Barley), as the base of Toasted Barley Kombucha, or as part of a deeply savory ferment like Barley Soy Miso.

Footnotes

  1. University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Spring Barley Variety Trials,” accessed July 19, 2026. ↩ ↩2

  2. John Vaughan and Catherine Geissler, The New Oxford Book of Food Plants, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 6 (PDF p. 41). ↩

  3. Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, rev. ed. (Scribner, 2004), PDF p. 483. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Spring Malting Barley Variety Trial 2019 Results,” PDF p. 1, accessed July 19, 2026, https://extension.umaine.edu/grains-oilseeds/resource/2019-malting-barley-variety-trial-results/. ↩

  5. University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Spring Malting Barley Variety Trial 2020 Results,” PDF p. 1, accessed July 19, 2026, https://extension.umaine.edu/grains-oilseeds/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2021/11/BarleyVT2020Report.pdf. ↩

  6. Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, rev. ed. (Scribner, 2004), PDF p. 758. ↩

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