Malteurop craft master 2-row malt

[Bilsch]

Picked up a bag of the Malteurop 2-row malt recently. Upon opening the bag, there was a great deal of loose husk, chaff, undersized grains and just general field garbage in there. Decided to see how much so I pulled a 150g sample and screened it over a #7 test sieve. Worked out to be 21.3% by weight of trash in there. Furthermore of the corns that were of relatively proper size, a good deal of them were broken, discolored and generally unhealthy looking. I know the barley harvest was poor in Montana last year but should we be paying $1/lb for lower then feed grade malt?
(bag on the left is the screened out chaff and garbage)

 

[microbusbrewery]

Never used their malt before, but that does look like a lot of debris. On a somewhat related note, I did a pro-am brew with Uinta last year. They run all their grain through a winnower before milling to remove as much dust and debris as possible. The brewers said it helps reduce the likelihood of tannin extraction and helps in getting a better and cleaner tasting final product. I've been toying with the idea of making a mini-winnower for home use. Something like this, http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedcleaner.html

 

[TallDan]

Are you sure you have a good representative sample of the malt that's in the whole sack, not just some junk that settled to the bottom (or top)?

I'm pretty sure that the 2row I'm using now is that brand and i haven't noticed anything usual about it. I also have an unopened bag i got about a month ago, I can report on it here if i remember when i open it.

 

[Bilsch]

Sadly its the same throughout the bag. Whats more troubling then the chaff though is the quality of the barley corns themselves. A great range of sizes and lots of interesting non grain like colors. It really looks like this was the reject screenings that got bagged for sale by mistake. I'm just glad I didn't mail order the bag and can take it back to the LHBS.

 

[Bilsch]

I emailed Malteurope and got a reply in two days. They were genuinely interested in the issues I had with this malt and were happy to receive pictures and sieve data. I also heard from my LHBS they called them trying to work their way back to the source. I give em an A for jumping right on it. Unfortunately though this bag has no lot information and since it was resold a couple times from distributor to dealer they told me they were having trouble tracking it. Quoting.. "therefore due to the multiple resells we cannot back the quality of this material" I get that, but do they think someone along the supply chain is opening the bags and secretly substituting lower grade malt then reselling?