Life is pretty good for Rex Rowles, it’s busy, but it’s good, as he combines his two favourite things to make a living – farming and beer.
Mortlock Malt produces small batch malts on the very farm it was grown (give or take the odd contract from another farmer) in Western Australia’s central wheatbelt about 200 kilometres north-east of Perth.
Rex is the fifth generation to take on the family farm, but he didn’t go straight from school onto the property, deviating into studying nursing at university.
While he completed his degree, an interest in brewing developed. He was living on a student budget and, like most students, a beer allowance was important.
“I started home brewing at uni for economic reasons, which I really enjoyed and it’s a fairly simple way of getting into brewing.”
As soon as he completed one degree, he jumped into another in brewing, wanting to take his hobby to the next level. After uni he worked in a brewery and once he took over the farm, he brought a vision to tap (yes, pun intended) into the emerging craft beer industry by growing and malting barley for breweries and distilleries.
Successfully applying for a State Government grant, Rex travelled to the United States for further study into malting and brewing, learning from the US’s much larger craft brewing industry.
“I was scrolling Gumtree one day and saw some miscellaneous stainless steel equipment and thought maybe I could make malt in that, so I bought it and started toiling away.”
Rex built a pilot plant he had working by the end of 2019, making “tiny” 150 kg batches to prove he could do it and get samples out there. They were turned into everything from stouts to lagers and even a 100 per cent malt whiskey currently being barrel aged.
It was a success, with a number of WA-based craft breweries and distilleries keen to use locally grown and malted barley, rather than importing it.
“It gave me really good feedback from brewers and distillers who were keen on the product so I decided to go to a bigger sized malthouse, which is a minimum viable size.”
By mid-2020 Rex had engaged Perth fabricators to begin building a new facility capable of malting 10 tonnes he hopes to have running by April 2022.
Fitting in the malting around the farm and three kids (one born in 2020, another in 2021) has meant a “heap of coffee and a lot of grey hair”, but the new plant will be more automated and if Australia’s burgeoning craft industry takes its lead from the US, there will be plenty of malting to be done.
“The plan is to do more contract malting as there’s people who want barley from a specific region or a specific variety.
“Craft malting is in its very early days in Australia, but the breweries focus a lot on the local craft and small business connection and the craft malting really enhances their story.
“After travelling across the US and seeing what the craft malthouses are doing over there, it’s a quality thing, there’s nothing technically wrong with the current commercial malts, but when done on a smaller scale there’s superior quality the breweries appreciate.”
Rex also sees the Australian malting industry at an advantage just because Mother Nature lends a helping hand.
“I haven’t crunched the numbers as I can’t find the data, but here in WA when we harvest our grains not much is above 10 per cent moisture, so we are not force drying any of the barley whereas in Europe and the US all the grain has to be dried before it goes into storage which is energy intensive.”
Every job has its perks and Rex certainly doesn’t mind what comes with his – the beer samples and malted barley on hand for his own brewing.
Mortlock Malt Website: https://www.facebook.com/mortlockmalt/