Square Tomatoes, Bland Malts, and Craft Malting

[Owly055]

Last week I finally encountered the "square tomato". I've long predicted that eventually we would see the square tomato....... At long last I thought, then I realized it merely had a couple of flat sides from sitting in the corner of a box.......soft bruised flat sides ;-( I've watched foods, and tomatoes in particular degrade in flavor and quality in favor of shipping and shelf life for many years. The tomatoes one buys today don't even remotely compare in flavor to the tomatoes of my childhood...... Only cherry tomatoes have that flavor anymore. This is true of all fruits, many berries, and most produce more or less. They look pretty, but are tasteless.
In home brewing many of us focus on hops heavily, with a few specialty malts for color and flavor, and in fact my own brews are extremely "hop centric". I'm not going to buy expensive Marris Otter and bury it under heavy late addition, whirlpool, and dry hops.
BMC brewers have done us a disservice in pursuit of the ultimate tasteless pisswater brew. They've dominated the malting industry, developing "square barley". Not literally square, but tasteless, high yielding, good disease and pest resistance. They do not want taste. Joe Sixpack expects pisswater. It's what he likes, what he's used to, and he IS the market.

There is a slow resurgence of craft malters out there, and a very few people experimenting with heirloom varieties, in pursuit of unique flavor. I spoke to one of these people yesterday. A farm boy..... (at half my age I can call him a boy ;-).... who is also a home brewer, and began experimenting with home malting in his garage. Ultimately he had a vision, and literally bet the family farm on it. The result is Mecca Grade Estate Malt, just West of Madras Oregon on Columbia Drive, down near the Deschutes Canyon. The family farm is planted in a unique heirloom variety of malting barley, and the pursuit of other suitable varieties with unique flavors is an ongoing project. A huge stainless drum malting system of his own design about the size of two freight containers combines all the processes into one piece of equipment. The product is being used by a number of local microbrewers exclusively, and sold to home brewers out the door or through local home brew stores in Oregon.

I intend to visit Mecca Grade and meet Seth in person on my next Oregon trip, probably this summer or fall, and to purchase some of his product. If you are in Northwestern or Central Oregon, I encourage you to check it out.

I find this very exciting!!

H.W.

Correction: I had gotten the description of the drum malting machine from an article about the operation. On their site, they describe a floor malting system..........

H.W.

https://www.meccagrade.com/

 

[bleme]

Just went through their web page and it does sound exciting! From the way I read their malting process, it sounds like they might be using that massive drum and use the term "floor malting" loosely.

On a side note, when I was in High School, there was a plum orchard just behind my house. They grew the best looking plums I have ever seen, but they tasted like water! It never really made sense to me. People are only going to fall for that once right???