Island's first malt house preparing for business

The burgeoningmovement toward locally grown and produced food continues to expand on P.E.I. with the construction of the Island's first malt house.

IainMacInnesandKarineGallant are renovating ahistoric building in Abrams Village that once served as a court house into a maltingfacility.The malting process turns raw grains into malt andthe end result can be used for brewing beer.

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Though malting has always interested them, they saw a need on the Island and decided to act.

MacInnes said they were inspired after "realizing there was actually a void here for breweries to have all of their product coming from a local area."

"If a local brewery is going to use local hops that's great, but their malt product still has to be shipped in," he said on CBC's Mainstreet.

Getting Started

MacInnes and Gallant won a Dragon's Den-like contest hosted byRseau de dveloppement conomique et d'employabilit (RDE), a national francophone economic development council.

MacInnes said the win gave themconfidence intheir idea and made them believe it could be a success.

"It was the first, that we felt this project would fly," he said."It really gave us a lot of wind beneath the wings, to get this project rolling."

The contest victory also gave the pair $10,000 to get their idea off the ground. MacInnes said they will probably spend more than $60,000 on the whole project, though they will also be eligible for a $30,000 rebate from the province through the Growing Forward 2 Program.

Keeping it local

Trials on the malt are planned for March, using a facility in New Brunswick that can test the quality of the product so that they can perfect the process at the Abrams Village malt house.

He has also spoken with several breweries in Nova Scotia as well as Upstreet Craft Brewing and Barnone Brewery and Hop Farmabout providing them with malt, and has received promising feedback about keeping the supply chain local.

"This is going to be a really interesting thing for the region I think," MacInnes said.

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