So I thought I'd keep up this blog especially for my homebrew friends. I thought maybe writing down what I learn will help me study and I'm sure people'd be curious. That's not going to happen; there's just too much info. We spent 3/4 of the day on barley before we even touched on malt. That's six hours of farming knowledge. I woke up with a cold too.
What may tickle homebrewer's brains: premature yeast flocculation can be related to the amount of CO2 present around the barley during the germination phase although no one knows why. During the dormancy phase of the barley, the plant acts kinda like a mammal; it respires O2 and releases CO2 instead of the other way around. That's why proper removal of CO2 in the steeping tanks is important.
Gushing in the final product can be attributed to too much percentage of barley infected with fusarium head blight (a fungal pest that plagues corn, barley and wheat). It causes a deoxynivalenol or DON (vomitoxin) which is carcinogenic and withholds free CO2 into the finished beer causing the bottle to gush. If your barley is infected with DON, and you try to sell it as feed, animals tend to vomit, hence the name.
All of these problems can be avoided by buying malt from a GOOD maltser who has sound malting practices and buys only barley with a 95% germination rate. No more discount malt, eh?
BTW, we're touring Briess here soon, I'll try to sneak my camera in.
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6 comments:
Who's using discount malt?
There's some cheaper malt out there and it's cheaper for a reason. What's funny is that the largest malting company in North America doesn't even have a website, I'd never heard of them till today. Froedtert Malt Co. (owned by Kraft) provides 80% of the malt to the brewing and distilling companies.
So Great Western and the cheaper stuff falls into this category?
Our instructor wasn't pointing fingers, so I don't know. My instincts say GW makes a good product. When I said, "there's some cheaper malts out there," I meant that you're paying for the actual barley and the facility that produces it. I think problem malts occur on more on a year by year basis. Some companies are willing to malt a barley product that may be substandard instead of losing a profit on a bad year. What I'm walking away with is that a brewer should understand the malting process, read the malt-analysis sheets, understand what kind of malt you're buying; and what kind of barley it comes from, and possibly find out how your maltser makes their product.
Looks like you need to relax and have one of those sam adams or whatever :-( and take some tylenol. I figured that posts would get fewer and farther between because of information overload. I think Kevin was referring about me trying to find the cheap stuff out there! ... but any tidbits are good tidbits.
Please read this if you've read the last posts!!!
Information overload? Yes. However, I don't agree with relaxing and having a homebrew. I feel that when homebrewing, relaxing is very important. This class I'm taking is not homebrewing--Chill out! I'm not trying to offend anyone. This class is put on by the most leading professionals in these fields.
I'm wrong above on a few accounts and probably will be wrong again and again. Today was my second day of class.
In my first post I mentioned that CO2 removal is important in the steeping tanks. It is also important in the germ tanks and the kiln. I went on to say that the largest maltser in the world didn't have a website. Truth is they were bought out/merged in August. Here is their website:
http://www.malteurop.com
They only produce 11% of the world's malt. Seems very little for the largest producer?
The new plant in Montana converts 21,000 bushels of barley into 450 tons of malt PER batch! Multiple batches are done per day.
I did ask our teacher about which malting plants cut corners. She said that we are extremely safe here in NA because the standards are so high. The "two largest" US companies will reject any sub-standard malt. Considering they account for 86% of all malt sales in NA, all malting companies have to provide good product. In fact, the reason so many of our maltsers provide such cheap malt is because of the big two! We ride on dovetails of major, corporate, government-subsidized companies. All of our technological advances, hop development, barley development, yeast services, YOU NAME IT! were paid for by those big companies. All of it.
I also said there is cheap malt out there and it's cheap for a reason. It is, and it's being produced by Russia, China, South America and more. I was wrong to assume that North America was part of it.
I do suggest being friendly with your maltser and question their practices.
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