WILLOW LAKE, S.D. — A South Dakota businessman wants to see if barley tea, a popular potable in Japan for centuries, could catch on with Americans.
Pitchers of iced barley tea are a summertime staple in Japanese homes. Americans simply haven't been exposed to the beverage, said Tim Walter, who thinks barley tea could take off in a Western culture — much like green tea and chai have.
"We're hoping this could be a craze in the U.S.," said Walter, founder of Dakota Farms International Ltd.
Walter's company, based in the town of Willow Lake, has been producing barley tea bags for a Japanese company since February 2005. He entered the Japanese market as a soybean farmer.
Most of the grain used in Japanese barley tea is grown by farmers there or imported from Canada, but it's the same type of barley grown in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota, said Cary Sifferath, Japan Senior Director of the U.S. Grains Council.
Sifferath said nearly every soft drink company in Japan bottles barley tea for sale in vending machines and convenience stores. The drink has a unique flavor, and he's not sure how Americans would take to it.
"Even Coca Cola-Japan has its own barley tea product," Sifferath said by telephone from his Tokyo office. "If they thought there was a (U.S.) market for it, they would probably be trying to go after it."
Walter said he served barley tea both cold and hot during last year's Food Marketing Institute show in Chicago.
"We've had real good responses, so we feel quite confident that this is a product that could go," he said.
Dakota Farms' process begins with organically grown barley. Workers roast the grains as if they were coffee beans, grind them and send the tea to an automated machine that packs bags slightly larger than a business card. Each tea bag yields 1 liter.
The product, which tastes a bit like coffee, is fine just as it is, Walter said, but those looking for a sweeter flavor can add honey or table sugar.
"It has a clean taste. You don't have to put any sugar in it," he said.
Just over half of the nearly 320 million bushels of barley produced in the U.S. each year goes for animal feed and about 44 percent is used to produce malt, an important ingredient in beer, according to the National Barley Foods Council.
Only 2 percent is used in food products, but that number could grow because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the council's claim that barley can reduce the risk of coronary disease, said Mary Palmer Sullivan, the council's executive director.
The FDA earlier this year ruled that barley contains beta glucan, a fiber-type complex sugar that can help lower cholesterol, she said.
Walter said he thinks U.S. consumers will latch on to a drink that is naturally caffeine free, high in fiber and contains antioxidants.
"We haven't tested to confirm how much beta glucan remains in the barley after roasting, but that's an angle we're approaching," he said. "But even without that, there's other benefits."
As Dakota Farms continues to produce 800 cases a week of barley tea for its Japanese customer, Walter is planning more market tests as he prepares to debut his product domestically within the next couple of months.
Walter knows it's difficult for small companies to get new products into large supermarket chains, but he said every retailer is still looking for something new and exciting.
"Ten or 15 years ago, nobody knew what chai was," he said. "These things can happen."