Malt Preferences of the Craft Brewing Industry - Agricultural ...

produced malt barley. The five sections included in the survey reflect this objective andare discussed below.Section I: The brewer’s individual businessSection II: The business’ malt needsSection III: The maltster from whom the brewer currently receives maltSection IV: Specific characteristics of malt and maltstersPart A: Physical characteristicsPart B: Chemical characteristicsPart C: Service characteristicsPart D: Switch or not switchSection V: Business and industry demographics and trendsSection I was designed to gather general information from brewers about theirbusinesses. Questions included number of years in business and in the industry, theprevious year’s production, job function of respondent, and the primary type of business.Section II concentrated on the amount and form of malt used by the brewer, typesof packaging utilized, frequency of orders and price of the malt.Section III contained inquiries about the maltster from whom they received maltand how the respondent located the current maltster from which they purchased malt.Section IV involved brewers determining the importance of certain physical,chemical and service characteristics of the malt product. Respondents were asked Likertscale questions about both base and specialty malt purchased with respect to the selectedcharacteristics. An overall score was calculated from the scaled questions. Attitudescores were evaluated to determine brewers’ opinions regarding the selectedcharacteristics and whether or not those characteristics were important in the maltpurchase decision. Section IV, also asked brewers whether or not they had ever switchedmaltsters for their base or specialty malts. If they had switched maltsters, a follow-upquery determined if their price increased, decreased or stayed the same. Questions on7