Search results

Hey HBT, A few months ago, I had been posting long-form articles about malting written by me and my partner at Sprowt Labs. Turns out long-form articles take a long time to write, so we've dialed it back to shorter, more visual content. Through this medium, we're putting out the fun facts...

Most of the world’s malted barley will end up as beer, but the other major industry that relies on malt is distilling. As all-around malt nerds, we took a look at how distillers use malt, especially in making the infamous single malt Scotch whisky. Some things are similar to brewing, some are...

Several articles ago we dug into the story of Maris Otter, the present king of malt flavor. It was a fun story to research, so we decided to turn it into a semi-regular series on barley varieties. In this article, we look into the king of Victorian barleys, Chevallier, a variety loved...

Now that we’ve gathered a crew of home brewers to join The Harlan Society (our open-source project to revive heritage barley varieties), we thought it an appropriate time to come out with an article about its namesake, Harry Harlan. He was perhaps the first man to devote himself fully to the...

Last year, my brewing partner and I started growing out some heritage barley varieties to explore new (but actually old) malt flavors. In the true spirit of home brewing, we want to make this an open source endeavor, which means we’re looking for collaboration from the HBT community. We think...

Just wrote a guide on how to malt at home, using whatever equipment you already have lying around. If you've ever considered trying your hand at home malting, this should help you start. Happy malting! :mug: http://www.sprowtmalt.com/2017/02/23/how-to-malt-at-home/

As brewers, we know malt types, but rarely learn the barley variety they come from. However, most of you have used or at least heard of the variety Maris Otter. The story behind its fame is one I thought worth telling.

I wrote an article about the progression from malting in wells to the modern day malthouse. The equipment has come a long ways… Nowadays, a malthouse will produce several thousand tons of malt per employee per year!

I created a guide to growing barley for all of you brewers who are interested in experiencing your beer from the ground up. Growing is certainly not a prerequisite to be able to malt at home, but an interesting addition to our hobby, whether you're growing 1 square foot or 200!

We shared a little bit about building malting equipment a month ago in this HBT post, and now we want to share a bit more about what we’re doing. Our goal is to make malt and malting accessible to brewers by putting together the necessary knowledge, seeds, and equipment. So far, we’ve been...

I've been playing around with 100% oat malt beers, and made a lager this time around. Before adding biofine yesterday, I noticed a clear band above the haze at the top of the fermentor. Anyone have an idea of what's happening there?

http://www.sprowtmalt.com/2016/12/27/grain-growing/ I wrote an article about my experience growing 25 varieties of barley, 2 varieties of buckwheat, oats, paddy rice, and corn at several different scales. I’ve harvested with machete, scythe, and combine, and gained a basic understanding of...

http://www.sprowtmalt.com/2016/12/20/inside-the-seed/ This article looks into how malting and mashing are enzymatically connected. Do you think of yourself as actively collaborating with your maltster when you brew? Also, this is the third article we’ve written, so we’re hoping to get...

Here's the second article in Maltbrain, our blog about malt and malting. The article discusses a range of topics, including how beer went from the Reinheitsgebot to Smirnoff Ice. http://www.sprowtmalt.com/2016/12/13/realbeerdiscussion/

Got a bit of a head-scratcher. I just kegged a blonde ale that has turned out to have quite the banana flavor. The confusing part is that I did not do any of the typical things to get esters: my fermentation temp was lower than normal, I aerated plenty (15 minutes for two gallons of wort), and...

https://www.brewersassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Managing-Malting-Barley-and-Grains-Supply-Chain-Quality_Manual-1.pdf Brewer's Association came out with a best practices guidelines for brewers not to allow their supply chain to use glyphosate, an active ingredient in Roundup. If...

We posted last week about the automated home malting machine we’ve been working on for almost 2 years - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=595906 In addition to our time spent designing and engineering our machine, we’ve been learning about the many topics surrounding malting...

My brewing buddy and I started working on a little project almost 2 years ago. As you all know, those little projects can sometimes spiral out of control... We had a simple quest: to make a truly local, truly good beer from scratch. Finding the ingredients was our first stumbling block. We...

I recently brewed a Fat Tire clone that deviated from the recipe a good bit. Most significantly, I didn't have enough 2-row pale malt, so I added some 6-row to round out my base malt. The ratio of 2-row to 6-row is about 2 to 1. Has anyone had experience combining 2-row and 6-row? Did I...