Malt 101

May 11th, 2009 · Posted by ticjones · 0 Comments

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, there are lots of components that make a beer what it is. Among those components is the particular type and ratio of core ingredients that every beer has: water, yeast, hops, and malt. For now, let’s start with malt.

What is Malt?

Malt can be made from many types of grains (oats, wheat, or even bread in the olden days), but most often, the malt used in making beer is made from barley. To make beer, the barley has to be put through a conversion process.

More than any other main ingredient, a beer’s malt determines its flavor, color and body. In fact, nearly all the color comes from malt.

How People Make Malt.

There’s a very involved, chemical process required to turn barley into malt. In case you’re curious:

First comes germination. The barley gets soaked in water at a certain stable temperature until it sprouts. While this is happening, enzymes that convert the starch in the plant into sugar are released. The trick in malting is to stop the germination process right when there are enzymes present (later they’ll help make the alcohol in the beer), but the starches haven’t been converted into sugar yet. This process makes green malt.

Then, drying. After you’ve made green malt, you dry it by slowly raising the temperature around it. How high the temperature is will determine the flavor and color of the beer. After you’ve removed roots and weird things from the mix, you can start the brewing process, which in most cases involves mashing and making wort.

Beginning the Brewing Process with Malt.

Mashing. The mashing process takes all the starches left in the barley and converts them into sugars which can be fermented and used to make alcohol. One way of doing this is to crush the barley in a roller that breaks it up, and causes all kinds of crazy chemical mojo to happen. At the end of the mashing phase, there will be liquid left at the bottom of whatever you’ve mashed it in. This liquid is recirculated through the husks and spent grains, over which hot water is poured. The resulting run-off water is sweet and sticky, and ready to be boiled for wort.

Making Wort. After you’ve made mash, you pour the remaining liquid into a brew kettle, and boil it for a while. You add hops at the beginning for bitterness, and then again at the end (“finishing hops”), for aroma. At the end of this process, you’ve got wort (pronouced “wert”).

Later, the wort will be separated, cooled, and mixed with yeast in the next steps of the brewing process.

Types of Malt.

There are many types of malts, which are in large part determined by the particular grain used, and how it was heated. Some malts include: Pale, Rye, Biscuit, Wheat (used in witbier), Munich (often used in oktoberfest style beers), Vienna, Victory, Chocolate (used in porters and stouts), Pale Ale, and more. A beer can have just one malt (a base malt), or many malts (including specialty malts, which are used in small quantities).

All the malts used combine to make up the total grain bill for the beer.

Next time…

Hops, yeast, and of course: glasses.