In 1993, The Alix Malthouse commenced operation as WestCan Malting, notably producing malt for Anheuser-Busch.

Brian Sewell’s first entrepreneurial venture was anything but what you’d expect from a teen who’d decided from day one to take up the family business. But for Army of Darkness Skateboards (AOD for short), Brian’s mobile skate shop and manufacturing company, it rolled straight out of his farming experience.

With certain pockets of Western Canada being dealt losing hands at harvest year after year, grain drying is moving from a “nice to have” to a “need to have.”

As the recent debut of a new American pale ale called South Side smash revealed, getting to the launch stage with new malt varieties involves critical choices. This beer by Edmonton’s Town Square Brewing Co. is brewed using malt produced by Red Shed Malting and is
the first commercially available beer to feature SeCan’s CDC Bow malting barley.

Barley was once a dominant crop on the Canadian Prairies, with farmers planting nearly 14 million acres of the golden grain in 1971. By 2017, however, the number fell to just under six million acres. Farmers, faced with depressed prices and slowly declining yields, have been switching to more profitable crops.