You may have read my recent post on trying to track down a supply of Optic Malt following the demise of Hop & Grape. This led me to contact Thomas Fawcett - Maltsters and Malt Roasters in Castleford, who very kindly sent me the following information and with permission to repeat here on the forum:
Optic was a very successful spring-sown malting barley variety. It grew well for farmers, and made good malt. It was available for much longer that the normal period that barley varieties are usually grown for, and as such it ended up being sold as a “named” variety. When it became superceded 4-5 years ago by higher-yielding varieties farmers stopped growing it. Unfortunately it was not replaced by one new dominant variety, but a constantly changing selection (eg. Propino, Irina, Westminster, Odyssey, Tankard, Planet, Concerto, etc), which are being sold under the more generic name of “Spring Pale Ale Malt”.
So basically if you go for Spring Malt it is whatever is the best Spring variety (or combination of varieties) available in any one particular year.
Thanks due to Stephen at Thomas Fawcett & Sons Ltd for clearing that up for me.
Spring Malt
Re: Spring Malt
Interesting and well done for putting the effort into finding that out