MALTING QUALITY TRAITS - Canadian Malting Barley Technical ...

4 Introduction
Malting practices may vary from region to region, and from country to country due to varia-
Malting with
Canadian Barley
tions in available malting barley supplies, designs of malting plants, local brewing practices, and
climatic conditions, as well as social and historical reasons. However, the basic malting procedures
remain very much the same. In general, malting practices, perhaps one of the oldest biotechnologies
employed in the history of human civilization, have been very conservative to embrace any
drastic changes in technological development. The rapid advances in barley breeding techniques
have provided more and more new barley varieties with more desirable malting and brewing traits
in terms of plant physiology and biochemistry, which has lead to more efficient malt processing.
Advances in computer science and engineering in the past century have enabled today’s maltsters
to employ shorter processing times for a production batch and to produce malt with consistent and
desirable quality. In addition, adequate cooling and heating capabilities at a modern malting plant
today have enabled maltsters to produce malt year round, in contrast to the old plants which could
only operate seasonally to avoid adverse weather conditions.
In the malting process, the viable barley grains are converted into malt by germinating the grains
to a selected degree, and then the germinated grains are dried in a kiln under carefully controlled
processing conditions. Although malt production facilities around the world differ widely in design
configuration and capacity, the basic process is the same. All maltsters strive for uniformity in
the processes of steeping, germination and kilning, so that the resultant malt meets the functional
requirements of brewing, distilling or food processing. Considering that one metric tonne of
malting barley contains roughly 25,000,000 barley kernels, it is easy for the reader to understand
why barley purity and homogeneity in kernel size, germination energy and protein content are so
important to maltsters. The maltster expects/hopes that all the barley kernels in a production batch
hydrate evenly at steep, germinate evenly at germination and obtain a similar degree of modification.
Quality malt results from careful attention to malting, barley cultivation by the producer,
selection of consistent quality barley by the maltster and the skill of the maltster in choosing the
appropriate malting conditions. First, the farmer must grow and harvest a high-quality barley crop;
barley selectors (from grain companies or malting companies) must select the barley according to
the requirements on variety, type, protein content and germination capacity, etc. Upon arrival at a
malt plant, retesting the barley to ensure the barley meets quality requirements is done, and once
it is approved, barley is put through a complete cleaning process to remove any impurities, chaff,
broken or low-grade barley kernels. At this time, the cleaned barley is ready for malt production.
Sometimes the uncleaned barley is sent into separate storage silos for future production. Usually
the barley is stored separately by variety, type, protein content, and plumpness etc.
A brief review of the malting process
The whole malting process, which begins with the barley being loaded into a steep tank and
ends with the malt being unloaded from the kiln, is traditionally divided into three separate stages:
Steeping, germination and kilning. Since each stage usually takes place in different vessels (or
compartments) in a commercial malting plant, to facilitate the discussions, the malting process will
be discussed stage by stage. Please note, in reality, malting involves more than these three stages,
and the divisions between the stages are not always clear-cut. In some plants with multi-function
vessel designs, some of these physical separations between the stages are not present, for example,
steeping stage and part of the germination stage may take place in the same vessel (compartment),
and the germination stage and kilning stage may take place in the same vessel (compartment).
Chapter Four
21