Medellin, Colombia, welcomed a team of eight Latin American craft brewers, a U.S. barley farmer and a master brewer for technical workshops and market assessment activities earlier this month, all intended to help the brewers understand more about the advantages of U.S. barley malt.

The workshops, sponsored by the U.S. Grains Council (USGC), included representatives from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Colombia who were trained in brewing materials and quality assurance, visited two local craft beer companies and were able to tour Colombia’s largest liquor manufacturing company.

Dr. Paul Sadosky, a brewing materials and flavor technologies manager with MillerCoors, trained the team in quality properties of U.S. barley malt usage in American and European beer styles.

“Depending on the training background, we have noted regional preferences for U.S. or European barley malt,” said Luis Bustamante, USGC marketing specialist for the Western Hemisphere, headquartered in Colombia. “We believe increasing the Council’s presence with training activities will result in greater exports.”

The team also learned about the U.S. barley crop supply and demand outlook from Buzz Mattelin, a Montana farmer and district director for the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee. Attendees were open to the crop information and requested further explanations of export logistics.

“This mission was a great opportunity to learn about grains from the U.S. perspective, and we are thinking of using U.S. barley malt from now on as our base malt,” said Juan Salazar, CEO of Apostol beer company in Colombia.

While demand for U.S. barley malt for craft brewing is in early stages, Colombian companies have expansion projects that will double imports of U.S. barley malt in the next two years. Costa Rica’s Treinta y Cinco Cerveceria has moved to a new factory three times larger than its old facility, and the Dominican Republic’s AFM Group is building its first brewing facility, where they are exclusive distributors of U.S. barley malt for the country.

The program in Colombia is part of a full agenda of USGC programs in the Western Hemisphere region to promote U.S. barley, sorghum and corn. Others include two trade schools held locally, the coming corn harvest quality roll out, reverse trade missions and teams attending the coming Export Exchange conference.

For pictures of this mission, please click here.