Tommy Kelley, a brewer at Free State Brewing Company, works to remove more than 1,000 pounds of spent grains from the mash tun during the brewing process on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017. Free State is involved with and will eventually be testing a variety of malt barley that can be grown in the lower great plains.

Having a pint of beer at Free State Brewery, with a view of gleaming fermentation vessels, may seem as local a brew as one can get. But a new project aims to do better than that.

Free State Brewing Company founder Chuck Magerl is part of a multifaceted team — made up of agricultural researchers, geneticists and field testers — who are working to find a variety of winter malt barley that can be grown by farmers in the region.

Malt barley is a main component of the brewing process, and Magerl will be a liaison between the agricultural side of the project and brewers. Magerl will also be creating test brews, and, should the project succeed, he said it would make a difference for regional craft brewers.

“Brewing is taking agriculture to the people, ultimately,” Magerl said. “And to have that connection in being able to provide people with of a sense of, ‘OK, yes, the heart of this beer has come out of the soil in Gove County, Kansas.’ It’s just something that is a real sense of connection.”

Kelley displays a handful of barley miles into grist on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017 at Free State Brewing Company.

Historically, farmers in the lower Great Plains have not cultivated the crop, and that means local brewers like Magerl have to not only look out of state, but sometimes out of the country to get the malt barley they need to supply their operations.

Magerl said that Free State has a couple of major distributors, with the bulk of the barley coming from the northern part of the U.S., Canada, England and Germany.

The project is funded by a $35,000 grant, “Building a Winter Malting Barley Market for the Great Plains.” The grant was awarded this year by the Brewers Association, and can be renewed annually. The grant for the Great Plains is one of four grants related to winter barley development that the Brewers Association awarded for 2017, according to Chris Swersey, a supply chain specialist with the association.

“We believe strongly that winter barley is a very important factor in keeping barley competitive with other crops,” Swersey said via email.

The Great Plains project is a collaboration between agriculture researchers based in universities throughout the region, including University of Nebraska, Kansas State University and Oklahoma State University. Other organizations involved include the Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Scottsbluff, Neb., and the United States Department of Agriculture.

Stephen Baenziger, University of Nebraska professor of agronomy and horticulture, is one of the main researchers that will be working to develop barley suitable for the climate of the Great Plains, especially the cold winters his state is accustomed to. Baenziger said the need to expand the range of barley is growing in importance as some regions that have traditionally cultivated the crop have been suffering from a disease called Fusarium head blight.

Baenziger said the Great Plains region is less susceptible to the disease, and the goal is to develop a new market to meet the growing demand of craft brewers.

“The craft brewing industry is really revolutionizing how small grains are used,” Baenziger said. “…If we can get barley, that’s value added to our growers, it’s value added to the craft brewers. It’s a win for the economic development all up and down the food chain.”

In addition to the economic advantages, Baenziger said the effort could provide more farming diversity for growers.

“So you’re not as limited to what corn’s doing or soybeans are doing, or even what wheat is doing,” he said.

Once potential winter malt barley varieties are identified, field tests will be conducted in Kansas. Guorong Zhang, an assistant professor and breeder at K-State’s Agricultural Research Center in Hays, will be planting and testing the barley. In addition to making sure the barley is able to withstand the winter, Zhang said they will be assessing yield, disease resistance and quality.

Once the barley varieties are field tested, Magerl will help in conducting test brews. The testing process is a familiar one for Magerl. Free State Brewing has been running field trials for about 10 years on numerous winter malt varieties developed in the United States and Europe.

Though he said he knows the latest project will likely be a long-term effort, its expansiveness has Magerl hopeful for what the coming years could bring for regional breweries.

“I believe there is enough of a likelihood — particularly with the research team that’s associated with this project — that there’s going to be some pretty interesting things come out of it,” Magerl said.