MALT

Pale Malt

PALE MALT is the basis for all quality beers and should normally provide approximately three quarters of the fermentable extract. Beers brewed from this malt using mashing techniques are commonly referred to as "grain" beer by home brewers to draw a distinction between them and those made from malt extract.
Some people regard mashing as being a completely new method of making beer for the amateur. From the birth of modern home-brewing about a decade ago, the centuries old techniques of mashing were forgotten and discarded as the craft welcomed the advent of malt extract syrups. The convenience of malt extract enabled the earlier home-brewers to bypass the complex malting and mashing processes and produce a drinkable beer that was cheap, quick to make and needed very little skill.
The limitations and disadvantages regarding quality and flavour were initially outweighed by these advantages, but it has been apparent over the latter years that the enthusiasm and support for malt extract beers is rapidly dwindling. More and more home-brewers are beginning to analyse their beers critically and appreciate the restriction imposed by these syrups cannot be overcome. Beers kits have accelerated this viewpoint. Quite frankly, if you are prepared to accept and drink these inferior beers, on a purely convenience basis, it would be better to make your beer from beer kits. Beer kits are far better and far more consistent way of making beer, and slight difference in price makes messing about with malt extract not worthwhile.

Buying Malt
Pale Malt is available from most reputable home-brew stockists, who usually buy in bulk from wholesalers or direct from the maltster, and package it down to smaller quantities for the amateur trade.
Quantities over the counter are usually in 450g, 3.15kg, 6.3kg packages or multiples thereof. Always try to purchase malt in the largest quantity your pocket and strength can handle! Dry malt grains have better keeping qualities than the liquid extracts, so there should be no worries about the grain going "off" during storage.
Never, however, purchase a large quantity from retail stockists without carrying out a trial brew with a small representative sample of the goods beforehand. Very little information is furnished with pale malt regarding extract potential and nitrogen content, and thus the only test apparatus we have got for malt analysis is our brewing gear, where the final appraisal is in the quality of the finished product!
A visual inspection of a sample of malt can give a useful pointer to provide a broad acceptance of its brewing quality. A sample handful should contain very little dust, debris and foreign matter. A high proportion of straw, fragments, rootlets and dust may indicate that the malt is left-over stock and from a doubtful source.
The malt grains themselves should be plump, an even shape and size, and possess a light straw coloured hue. Consistent appearance of each grain, coupled with these attributes, is a sign of good malting. Nice fat firm grains are good extract bearers, and an even size and shape are essential for correct crushing.
A sample grain should be easily crushed when squeezed between the thumbnail and finger to release its powdery interior. It should also be possible with good malt to write with it on a board using a half grain like a stick of chalk. Always check the interior, extract-bearing portion of the grain. Some grains, which are kilned too fast and at too high a temperature, look nice and fat, but are just ballooned by a large pocket of trapped air.
The barley malt grain is crammed with complex plant substances with chemical formulae as long as your arm! The exact nature of many of the organic substances is not known very well even in today's scientific world, and most are only identified by their action or effect on a chemical change. A brewer needs a basic appreciation of these substances, and also how they can be manipulated to suit his particular brewing requirements.
The most important characteristic of malt is the extract potential which indicates the amount of fermentable sugar which can be produced from the grain. Good quality malt with yield four-fifths of its weight is sugar. The major proportion of this extract is derived from the starchy malt flour and also the cellulose products that surround and bind together each particle of grain.
The most reliable method of assessing the brewing quality is by measuring the nitrogen content. Although only usually constituting between 1.4 and 2.0 per cent of the corn, its presence is of paramount importance to brewing. The whole approach to the subsequent brewing processes can be delicately balanced on a knife edge over this minute percentage of matter. The difference between too little and too much nitrogen can be decided by as little as a tenth of one per cent. Embraced in this figure are many nitrogen based products such as proteins, nutrients, and amino acids. Too high a nitrogen content can cause hazy beer and inadequate nitrogen can result in a deficiency of the yeast nutrient properties of the wort and lead to poor fermentations.
Some of the protein products add to the palate fullness of the beer and are instrumental in forming and retaining the head of the beer.
Consideration of the nitrogen products is a necessity in all stages of beermaking, since it has far reaching effects and fixes quite definitely the parameters for formulating recipes.
By careful formulations and sounds brewing practices, problems arising from nitrogen content are not normally experienced.
The remaining one fifth of the grain is the non extract forming matter that includes the husks, the embryo plant and ash, which have very little contribution the subsequent processes.

Coloured Malts

NEARLY all types of beer derive some flavouring from roasted grain. Raw or malted cereals can be used for this purpose to proveide an infinite variety of flavour for our beers. Proportions formulated iunto the grist are usually quite small due to their comparatively strong flavours. The roasted unmalted grains are solely for colour and flavour, whereas the malted varieties make some contribution to the fermentable extract and strength of the brew.

Crystal Malt
Crystal Malt, or Caramel Malt as it is known on the continent, is made from green malt. The malting process is interrupted after germination has succeeded in converting the barley starch to malt flour. Instead of drying this wet malt, the temperature in the ovens is raised to mashing heat so that each corn undergoes its own mashing process, thus converting the contents into sugars. The subsequent drying and kilning crystallises the sugars and tones the husk to a deep golden yellow colour.
This malt is easy to manage, presenting no problems of starch conversion, and is an ideal "body builder" for the sweeter types of beer.

Black Malt
Black Malt is a highly roasted malt made from kilned malt. Roasting is carried out in revolving drums at temperatures marginally below that which would carbonise the grain (about 230oC). in this intense heat, all the malt sugar caramelises to give the malt its renowned rich, luscious flavour.
Like coffee, it tastes far better when freshly roasted. If you feel adventurous and brave sometime when the wife is out of the kitchen, try experimenting by roasting pale malt grain in the oven set between 200 and 230oC. the grains should be nicely roasted approximately five minutes after the first billow of black choking smoke issues forth from the stove.

Roast Barley
Roast Barley is an excellent grain which has taken far too long to reach the counter of the amateur trade. It is drier and not so rich in flavour as Black Malt. For dry Stouts this grain cannot be surpassed, where it is claimed that it contributes to the firmness and whiteness in the head. I am all in favour of changing the emphasis in dark beers from Black Malt to this barley grain. It is an unmalted grain, roasted to a reddish brown colour. By omitting the malting process, theoretically it should be much cheaper.

Other roasted grains
Amber and Brown are little used nowadays since their qualities and attributes can be generally bettered by other malts.

Mild Ale Malt
Mild Ale Malt is malted barley roasted slightly more than Pale Malt. The higher kilning temperature tends to give a fuller flavoured beer and results in a darker coloured malt with a slightly restricted diastatic activity.

Roast Malt
Roast Malt is the malted equivalent of Roast Barley, and can be formulated as a direct substitute in most recipes. The slight contribution to the extract can be ignored for most practical purposes.

Malt adjuncts

For centuries beer was made from just malt, hops, water and yeast. This happy state of affairs existed up to about sixty years ago, when the character of our beer was undergoing subtle changes. High gravity beers of excellent quality were brewed using the simple fusion mash system. About this time, too, great advances were being made in farming techniques. New ideas on fertilizers were implemented and the farmers returned bumper crops of high quality malting barley. Extract yields were increased by up to 20 per cent, which initially pleased the maltster and brewer.
Brewers then began to experience persistent hazes in their high gravity beers when using these improved barleys. The only way to re-establish the clarity was to reduce the quantity of malt used in the grist. Reducing the amount of fermentables produced a weaker beer, which brought about an immediate outcry from the ever-watchful beer drinkers. In those days, weak beer could still have twice as much alcohol as out best beer today, so I shudder to think of what those old-timers would have thought about our keg bitters!
Cane sugar was well known as a source for producing alcohol, but was never favoured since it tended to produce a thin bodied beer. The need for an alcohol producing source that could still contribute body became urgent. Experiments showed that other starch could be added to the mash-tun and be efficiently converted to sugar by the malted barley. Up to 20 per cent in the form of rice or maize could be utilized by these means.
The power of barley malt to convert extra starch was an extremely important discovery, and changed the whole attitude of brewing in this country. Taxes on malting barley accelerated the use of economical adjuncts. Laws were passed permitting the use of these starch bearing products because it was appreciated that the equipment for the well established infusion mash systems could not be easily converted to cope with these new malts.
The offending constituent in the malt that caused this major upheaval was later determined to be the nitrogen content. Minoe changes in this group of products can play havoc with the formulation of the grist.
On the continent, the decoction system of mashing could easily deal with high nitrogen malt, and for this reason, many countries banned adjuncts and sugar as being unnecessary additives to beer.
Malt adjuncts, then, are technologically desirable for out top fermenting beers made with the infusion system of mashing.
As mentioned before, Maize and Rice are the most common adjuncts. They cannot be used in the raw state, and must be boiled to gelatinise the starch before they can be accepted by the mash reactions. Grits, as they are refereed to, are rolled into thin "flakes" after the cooking process. It is far better for amateurs to use unmalted adjuncts in the latter form.

Flaked Rice

Flaked rice is a readily available product and can be purchased at most grocery stores. It is probably the most useful flaked adjunct on account of its low colour and flavouring properties. These attributes make it an extremely useful ingredient for the light coloured beers, especially high gravity pale ales. Dilution of the nitrogen content means that high alcohol beers can be produced without the fear of poor clarity.

Flaked Maize

Flaked maize has all the advantages of the Flaked Rice and will also contribute flavour. The "corn" taste is quite acceptable, but it is generally more suited to the sweeter dark beers and lagers than to the drier Pale ales. It is, however, one of the best adjuncts to use for full bodied bitters.

Flaked Barley

These flakes impart a lovely "grainy" flavour to the beer and are consequently regarded as the best flaked adjunct in this respect.
More attention nees to be paid to the quality of these flakes than the Pale Malted Barley. Judicial seletion is extremely important commercially on account of its protein stability. I appreciate that we have no chance at our end of the trade to carry out tests, but it is useful to know that problems can exist with this flake. Barley is the only cereal to contain beta globulin, a haze forming protein not present in the other adjuncts. Hence the inclusion of Flaked Barley will tend to increase the risk of haze.
Barley, though, is far richer in water soluble gums than other cereals, and thus can provide a useful service in maintaining the head retention properties of the beer. In the darker beers, especially Stouts, where haze problems are no worry, Flaked Barley is unsurpassed as an adjunct for flavour and head retention.
In the lighter beers, the inclusion of up to one ounce per gallon of the flakes should cause very little problem, and indeed will offer many benefits.

Malt Extract

Malt Extracts are simply concentrated worts. The popular makes on the home brewing scene are made from the worts of lightly cured malts, concentrated in vacuum evaporators at low temperatures to preserve the diastatic activity.
The method of manufacture produces a highly fermentable syrup containing aboiut 80 percent solids. In preserving the enzyme activity, many desirable features of a well balanced wort are lost. Beers are made using these syrups as the base ingredient, but rarely can they match the quality of an "all grain" beer.
Malt Extract is a difficult substance to classify. It ferments out to zero gravity like sugar, but leaves the malty flavour of grain in the beer. Some types leave a characteristic tang of caramel which I regard as being quite objectionable.
For brewers with limited brewing capacity, these extracts could prove an advantage on the grounds of convenience and could be formulated into the mashing techniques. Obviously, one would have to experiment to arrive at a satisfactory balance between quality and convenience.
My tests have shown that the diastatic activity is about on a par with Pale Malt grains. Diatatic activity, as measured on the Linter scale, is about 40-60 for both malts. Being a syrup, with temperature sensitive enzymes, creates difficulties in calculating mash tremperature parameters (e.g. striake heat temperature). Consequently, I rarely use it for mash-tun conversion. In the copper it makes an ideal adjunct for supplementing the fermentables in a dark beer wort.

Torrefied Barley

Torrefied Barley is a useful ingredient on account of its mechanical properties which influence the efficiency of mashing and sparging. It is a very large grain made by heating barley in an oven until it "pops" like the breakfast cereal :Puffed Wheat". It gives porosity to the mashed grain during sparging, preventing set mashes and creating condiditons for maximum wort extraction.
From experience, I have found that too high a proportion of this cereal can leave a "woody" taste in the beer. Amounts should be kept below 5 percent, except for Mild Ales, which can benefit from up to twice this figure.

Oats

Oats are rarely used nowadays. The exception is in Oatmeal Stouts, where its inclusion is mainly for nutritional reasons rather than flavour. Oats contain a high percentage of oils which adversely affect the head retention properties of beer.

Wheat Malt

What is a difficult cereal to malt because the acrospire, or shoot, is very susceptible to damage and disease.
A few ounces of this malt in a brew impart a leasant grain flavour and fullness, and also seem to assist with the foaming properties of the beer.
The nitrogen content may be very much higher than Barley Malt and must therefore be considered when formulating recipes.

Wheat Syrups

Wheat Syrup is just a malt extract made from malted wheat rather than Barley. It can be used to replace wheat malt grains and has the advantage that it does not need mashing. Consequently, it could be used to contribute up to 15 per cent of the grist.

Brewing Flour

There are several specialised wheat flour adjunct available on the amateur market. Their main attribute is to act as diluents to high nitrogen malts with the benefit of maintaining, at the same time, the body and fullness of the beer. The flavour is slight and unobtrusive, which makes these adjuncts ideal partners for Lager malts where the delicate hop flavours maust be unaltered in the finished beer.
The big disadvantage is that the flour increases the tendency to restrict the porosity of the "goods" during mashing that can result in set mashes and flooding during the sparging process.

SUGAR
can be classed as a malt adjunct. It contributes to alcohol and strength to the brew without distracting too much from the flavour of the malts.
Sound technological reasons can be put forward to demand the inclusion of this economic adjunct. Too large a proportion, though, will inevitably lead to thing and poor balanced beers.
Sugar is devoid of nitrogenous matter and thus its inclusion will produce a beer that will mature more quickly than beer made with malt alone. High gravity beers can be brewed without fears on the clarity of the finished beer.

White Sugar
Common household white sugar (sucrose) is our cheapest and most readily available fermentable carbohydrate. It is produced from refined sugar cane or sugar beet and other sources, and is sold under many guises. Granulated, Cube, Icing and Castor Sugars are chemically identical; the only difference being the texture and the price. Consequently, the cheapest, Granulated Sugar, should be used in any recipe calling for this adjunct. Refined sugar is a very pure product and can be assumed to be 100 per cent fermentable. Commercially, it is rarely used in brewing because the refining process increases the cost and removes some of the desirable "impurities" that enhance flavour.

Invert Sugar
Invert Sugar is made by boiling ordinary sugar in a dilute solution of acid, and gains its name through its ability to chance the direction of light after this process. Ready made invert sugar comes in the form of a crystalline mass containing approximately 20 per cent water and due allowance must be made for this point in formulating recipes.
From a chemical standpoint, this sugar is the best for brewing, since it is immediately fermentable by yeast.
White sugar must first be "inverted" by the enzyme invertase in yeast before the fermentation can commence, but in practice, I have never been able to detect any time lad in fermentation that could positively be attributed to this cause.
Home-made invert sugar can be made by boiling 900g(2lb) of white sugar in one pint of water with one teaspoonful of citric acid, until the solution is a pale golden colour. The acidity must then be neutralised afterwards with chalk to increase the pH value back to 7.0. If this is not carried out, the delicate balance of acidity will be upset that will increase the chances of the beer "souring" during maturation. The effect on flavour and colour in the presence of chalk must also be considered for light beer brews.

Glucose Chips
Glucose Chips are manufactured by the acid conversion of purified maize starch. The large chips of crystalline sugars contain about 10 per cent water and tend to produce a much drier flavoured beer than either cane or invert sugars. The cost is approximately double that of household sugar, so that the merits of flavour must justify the extra expenditure to warrant its place in your brewing store. No doubt, a few experiments will consolidate your views.
Dark Sugars
Under this heading come all the partially refined Cane Sugars. Demerara, Soft Brown, Light Brown and Barbados, can all be usefully employed in brewing. Again, they cost more than white sugar, but I consider that the luscious flavour of these darker varieties well worth the investment. Moisture and colouring matter reduce the extract potential by a few percent.

Lactose