was developed by Dr Karl Klages of the University of Idaho’s Department of Agronomy from 1936 to 1962, a pioneering barley researcher with a strong interest in ecology. He is the author of many influential papers, among them Ecological Crop Geography, in which he elaborates on the responses of a wide array of crops to their environments. Klages barley is a cross between Betzes and Domen, whereby the cross has greater diastatic power and delivers more malt extract in the brewhouse than do either of its progenitors. Dr Klages was honored for his contribution to North American barley breeding by having his important innovation named after him. Registered in 1974, Klages became an immediate success, and, starting in 1975, it was the dominant two-row malting barley grown in the Pacific Northwest and in the Northern Plains of the United States and Canada, retaining that prominence for almost a decade. It was succeeded in popularity in 1984 by Harrington, but today Klages still retains a strong following among some established North American craft brewers, who started using it at a time when it was among the first easily obtainable two-row malts for the small-scale brewer.