That cup of naked oats coffee I mentioned to you earlier this year, has taken a further step forwards. We have conducted a set of roasting trials with a coffee roasting company in Lincolnshire. This was arranged with the help of Michael Squires of Dwyfor Coffee who has been a great help to us in this project. We were able to produce a variety of roasted versions from light to dark but felt that the flavours were not complex enough or exciting enough, to make a real impact on coffee drinkers. So we are going to be doing some pre - treatment of the grain to see if we can improve the flavour on roasting. So some more trials are planned for this year, with some crop in the ground now to produce larger quantities for a full scale trial run post harvest in 2006.
What was also interesting to us was how quickly people ate the samples of roasted grain saying it made a good snack – so this has led to the opening of further development strand that will see the production of some trial quantity of a clustered snack product by the end of 2006.
So two products with commercial potential are emerging from this trial crop.
“Mushroom growing – exotic mushrooms at that – will soon be a reality in Gwynedd”.
That statement we made in the last newsletter, has not changed but the intensive growing trials will now be concentrating on making two participants self sufficient by combining growing facilities with a block production facility in Gwynedd. Added to this project a further 8-10 people will be participating in a longer term growing trial on a greater range of species, based on oak log inoculation.
Farmer selection is well underway with initial meetings and discussion sessions behind us and awareness raising sessions to a real production site to be completed in the first week in December. Final selection of the triallers will then be dependant on a site assessment visit to their farms in December.
Soft Fruit production developments are moving ahead with netted bushes envisaged for next year; we might see more of the crops next year than the birds! However what was harvested was good. One of our team, Jon Stephens has completed a grower’s commercialisation manual for Soft Fruit which was presented and discussed at the last growers meeting; so that post MENTERRA anyone wishing to exploit this crop will have a comprehensive guide on how to proceed.
MENTERRAs’ life as a project is now starting to transform into its beginning as a brand name – so we can see that products bearing the MENTERRA brand will be ready to emerge from the project as it draws to a conclusion in early 2007.
Chris Price-Jones
Technology Director – BIC Innovation
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It was whilst I was sipping a cup of naked oats coffee earlier this year that I realised that we had started to take some real steps towards commercialisation of some of the trialled crops planted last year. It was some of the crop fom Bwlch Gwyn Farm, Arthog that I had conducted some fairly primitive roasting trials on, just to see what we could expect, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised.
Not anywhere near a finished product yet, but enough encouragement for us to start to set up some proper roasting trials with naked oats off the field this year. We won’t be giving “Costa Coffee” a run for their money any time soon but there is enough promise to suggest that entry into a niche sector of this market might be possible.
Further research over the last few months has moved us closer towards establishing additional trials.
Mushroom growing – exotic mushrooms at that – will soon be a reality in Gwynedd. Plans are being made to set up four trial sites at different locations in the county. Using expert mycological (“fungi growing”) assistance from an established grower and the University, we intend to establish growing rooms on a small number of farms.
The growing rooms are based on the adaptation of 20ft insulated containers. These are seen as potential second enterprise activities that are farm based, and may then lead to the formation of a marketing co-operative offering crops to some of the leading restaurants in the region and perhaps, more importantly, the UK and Europe.
This activity will involve all project partners pulling together to make this extensive trial successful. As knowledge and information becomes available, scheduled workshop sessions and on site will ensure that we are all pulling in the same direction, towards a commercially exploitable product or products !
Exotic mushrooms as food are only the first step, but a really useful one to give us real growing experience. Perhaps the really exciting prospects for the mushrooms are not in food based endeavours, but lie in us being able to extract or prepare active ingredients for use in topical creams, lotions and potions. These are the areas we are exploring to see how much real potential exists in marketing natural remedies and cosmetics based on the traditional properties claimed for some of the mushrooms here and in the rest of the world.
MENTERRA is seeing a range of potential commercial outcomes starting to emerge from some initial trials undertaken. A combination of astute targeting and a comprehensive effort by all the project partners will support the development of new products and also identify more potentially commercial ideas for farmers to exploit.
Chris Price – Jones
Technology Director – BIC Innovation |
