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Grain Research Directories

Eight grains, one method: each page below maps who is working on that grain as a brewing ingredient — institutions, researchers, projects, funders, industry, organizations, and literature — so that anyone entering the field can see where the work lives.

Every directory follows the same rules: brief, factual, dated entries, each linking to a primary source; documented relationships between entries; and honest accounting of where a field's coverage runs out. Coverage is US-centered by design, with international anchors where the science is foundational. Three rules matter most to a reader:

  • Described, never endorsed. A listing is a map reference, not a recommendation.
  • Public information only. Relationships between entries are documented only when a primary source shows them; these pages carry no contact details and nothing from private correspondence.
  • Entries are added on merit once verified — never to pad a count. Run a program, lab, project, or company we should list? Tell us about it.

The eight grains, and the shape of each field​

No two of these maps look alike — and the differences are the most useful thing the family shows:

  • Sorghum — the deepest science in the family: decades of malting research, federal labs, and international funders — and no US brewing-grade supply chain to match it. The flagship page, and the standard the others are held to.
  • Millet — the inversion of sorghum: real commercial malting and real breweries using it today, with a thinner scientific base underneath.
  • Rice — enormous research infrastructure and economics, with its life as a gluten-free base malt still young.
  • Buckwheat — a complete but largely dormant malting corpus, and the family's clearest example of a private company funding the science it needed.
  • Corn — the most-researched crop on earth, a century inside American lager, the legal backbone of bourbon — and almost no malt research at all. The page maps the brewing sliver and deliberately ignores the ocean.
  • Teff — a real but narrow scientific toehold, an ancient fermentation tradition, and a US commercial crop still missing its bridge to brewing.
  • Fonio — the one grain whose brewing visibility was driven by the craft beer industry rather than by cereal science; the commercial story runs ahead of the literature.
  • Quinoa & Amaranth — two pseudocereals sharing a page for an honest reason: each record is too thin to carry a directory alone, and they travel together in the literature that exists.

Cross-grain topics get their own directories beside this family — the first is Enzymes, because enzyme science touches every grain above.

Directory family established 2026-08-24 · corrections welcome — see Contact.