After piping in on another thread around here about a smoked barleywine, and listening to a recent podcast about smoked beers I got to thinking about barley and malting.
I live in an area where a lot of barley is grown, and as far as I can tell it is only harvested once a year. So if this is true for everywhere then ALL of the barley is harvested in the fall and then stored for the rest of the year. Meaning a beer brewed in the summer will have 9 month old barley versus one brewed in the winter with freshly harvested barley.
Now the question goes to malting. I imagine a malting facility would be working year-round, but I wonder how often certain varieties of malt are made throughout the year. Do some of the big maltsters make enough crystal 120 or smoked malt in one batch to last for a long time?
Not sure if anyone has spent some time around a malting facility, but I guess I am just curious.