MALTING QUALITY TRAITS - Canadian Malting Barley Technical ...

5 Brewing
Whirl
Pool
Hot
Wort
Tank
Wort
Cooler
Shipping
Weigh
Hopper
Brew
Kettle
Ware
House
Malt Storage
Cereal Storage
Malt
Mill
Lauter
Tun
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of a typical
Canadian brewery.
with
Canadian Malt
THE ATTRIBUTES OF CANADIAN MALT ALLOW FOR SUCCESSFUL BREWING OF
a wide range of beer styles, using many different beer production technologies and
equipment. This chapter outlines some of the features of typical brewing operations in which the
characteristics of the malt used are significant.
The brewing process consists of the following steps: milling, mashing, wort
separation, boiling, cooling, fermentation, maturation, filtration and packaging. The whole
process, from mashing to packaging, takes about 21 days.
Malt
Hopper
Cereal
Weigh
Hopper
Hops
Closed
Kegging
Bottle
Shop
Filtering and
Carbonating
Mash
Tun
Secondary
Storage
Cereal
Cooker
Water
Filtration
Initial
Storage
In the mash, coarsely ground malt, together with cooked
cereal adjuncts if used, is mixed with warm water. Malt
enzymes convert the starch to soluble sugars. The residual barley
husks then provide a bed through which the malt extract, called “sweet
wort,” is filtered using a lauter tun or mash filter. The sweet wort runs
to the brew kettle, where boiling with hops adds aroma and bitterness.
In a whirlpool, the hop residues and other insolubles are removed,
and the hopped wort passes through a cooler to the fermenter.
En route, yeast is added and fermentation commences. Wort
becomes beer. Following fermentation, beer is matured,
filtered and packaged. A schematic diagram of a typical
brewery operation is shown in Figure 1.
Malt Storage and Milling
As malt is often transported over large distances, breweries
must maintain sizable inventories. Malt is shipped
at about 4% moisture, with due regard to its hygroscopic
nature. Very cold malt tends to “shatter” in the mill and may
cause lower than expected mash-in temperatures. Therefore,
a period of acclimatization at the brewery is desirable
for malt delivered in the winter. Malt, like any other food
product, is susceptible to pest infestation, and care must be
taken to properly store malt at the brewery. Bins used to store
malt should be emptied and fumigated on a regular basis,
depending on local conditions. Due to the cool and relatively dry
Canadian climate, infestation is not an issue with barley and malt
shipped from Canada.
Malt is coarsely crushed in a malt mill, designed to
keep the husks as intact as possible while producing grist of
optimum particle size from the starchy endosperm. The optimum
sieve analysis of the grist depends on the type of
mill being used and the capability of the wort separation
system (lauter tun or mash filter). Mill settings best suited
to the kernel size must be established when brewing with
Canadian malts, as they may be different from settings used
for malts of different origin. The precise mill settings can only
be determined through trial and error but some varieties
with very plump kernels will require slightly larger roll
gap settings.
Chapter Five
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