Author: Ray Found

Thanks in large part to Marshall’s ongoing conversations with Ken Smith from Gambrinus Malting, I was able to plan a visit to get a behind (or inside) the scenes look at how Gambrinus transforms a particular grass seed into the malt we lovingly grind, mash, and cherish in our brewhouses.

I owe a huge thanks to Ken, Mattias, and the entire Gambrinus team for making this possible, as well as for their participation in the Single Vial vs. Yeast Starter xBmt tasting. They’re a group of folks as great as the malt they make!

| From Field to Mash |

There are many ways to skin a cat, and malting barley is no different. Every malthouse is going to have different traditions, scale, regulations, processes, and philosophies. In fact, there are even minor differences between the 2 malthouses Gambrinus operates, for example, the “old plant” uses a boiler-based kiln while the “new plant” uses a direct, forced-air style kiln. My entire tour took place at the new plant, though the overview photo below shows the exterior of the old plant taken from the roof of the other.

Our story begins in a farmer’s field. In the case of Gambrinus, their barley originates at farms all over the Western Canadian Provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. The barley is allowed to dry in the field before being harvested.

Once harvested, the field-dried barley is stored in silos at the farm until the malthouse is ready to accept it. While harvesting occurs essentially all at one time, the malting process happens year-round, thus barley is stored in large silos at these farms for a significant portion of the year. Once the malthouse is ready to accept the barley, it is delivered in 42,000 lb truckloads and gets a good inspection upon arrival.

After offloading, it is transported by auger and bucket elevators (exactly what they sound like) to the storage bins, which are referred to as “bins” when filled with unmalted barley but “silos” if they’re holding finished malt. The largest of these bins/silos are flat-bottomed, while conical bottoms are found on the smaller sizes, which is apparently more convenient but not practical for the larger ones.

Gambrinus malts their grain in batches of 30 metric tonnes (MT), or over 66,000 lbs. The first step of the process involves cleaning the grain, which is accomplished by transferring the “dirty” grain from storage bins into the cleaning hopper via the bucket elevator.

Rocks, sticks, dirt, chaff and undersized kernels are removed as the barley passes through a series of stainless steel agitation screens.

Once this cleaning process is complete, the barley is again lifted to the top of the bucket elevator (I respectfully declined an invitation to walk up the ladder for a view) then allowed to flow by gravity into 2 “dry steep tanks,” which are silos (functioning as hoppers) on the roof of the plant that each hold 15 MT (33,000 lbs) of barley before it enters the steep tank.

The barley is then transferred to 2 identical steep tanks– massive stainless steel vats where the grain sits in room temperature water, for a specific amount of time, depending on the malt being produced, to hydrate and soften before being transferred to the germination beds. Occasional agitation occurs during this period by pumping air into the bottom of the tank and allowing it to bubble-up through the grainbed.

I was admittedly rather ignorant about the malting process prior to this tour, but the germination beds really surprised me. I had been under the mistaken impression malting was all done right on a germination bed, that the dry barley was added to water in a sort of flat, open, shallow pan type bed. I learned there is a lot more to it than that! The germination beds actually have giant screens on the bottom, like the biggest false-bottom you’ve ever seen, and the grain comes in wet. The screen allows air to flow through the grain, which is a crucial part of the process. Gambrinus’ germination beds are of the Saladin Box design, and look like huge concrete swimming pools, maybe 12 feet deep with a similar width and about 130 feet long (my estimates). The photo below shows an empty bed that has yet to have the screen floor installed, it’s 1 of 2 new beds being built in order to increase production capacity.

The screens are positioned roughly half way up from the floor of the bed.

I was taken below one of the germination beds and informed this space is sort of where the magic happens. Standing below 30 metric tonnes of malting barley was a surreal and somewhat anxiety-provoking experience, to say the least. The underside reveals a large space… and fans. Huge, high-volume fans (regrettably not pictured).

The fans are part of a tightly monitored environmental control system that precisely evaluates and adjusts the temperature and moisture content of the malt.

Gambrinus Malting is primarily focused on base and character malts such as Pale, Pilsner, Munich, Vienna, and the fantastic Honey Malt; they do not currently produce crystal or roasted malt varieties. The differences between the various malts in their lineup are primarily a function of 4 factors:

Barley Varietal

Steeping schedule

Germination temperature schedule

Germination moisture content schedule

Kiln/drying profile

Together, these factors create what I can only describe as a recipe for a particular malt. For the types of malt Gambrinus is making, the lion’s share of the differences occur in the germination bed where the temperature and moisture content of the germinating barley is controlled. This was an area of great ignorance for me, as I’d always assumed germination was largely the same for all malts and that different characteristics were created by varying the kilning or roasting of the malted barley.

Over the course of the malting process, the grain is occasionally turned with an automated auger system that tracks along the length of the germination bed. This serves several functions, largely to prevent the rootlets from weaving into a mat and making big clumps, as well as ensuring uniformity throughout the germination bed.

Toward the end of the germination process, the timing of which varies by barley variety, malt being produced, and environmental factors, each barley kernel features a small sprout, a sure sign the enzymes required to later convert the grains straches to sugar have been developed.

Finally, the same augers that were used to turn the malt throughout the germination process are used as a “plow” of sorts, pushing the malted barley into a hopper at the end of the germination bed that will allow it to be transferred to the kiln.

Rather than a large, specialized piece of equipment as I had envisioned, the kiln was essentially a large and mostly underwhelming room with a stainless screen for a floor similar to the one in the germination beds. As the green malt arrives from the germination beds, a worker using an adjustable chute spreads it evenly over the floor to roughly the same depth as the original germination bed.

The malt is then heated with hot air from a very powerful natural gas furnace, heating the air to temps as high as 230°F (110°C) to dry the grain. The kiln is powered by a 7.2million BTU unit on the roof of the building, which is the only application of it’s kind in North America (as Gambrinus understands from the makers of the unit). It allows the kiln air to reach higher temperatures than the traditional boiler style, effectively reducing kiln cycles by 10-20%, which reduces energy consumption.

The output of this furnace is attached to a diffuser below the screen-floor of the kiln room where, despite being cleaned weekly, a staggering amount of grain dust and sludge accumulates. Every malt variety goes through a different kilning process, the primary difference being that Pilsner malt is kilned at a lower temperature while the other malts go through a “kiln off,” which is when the grain bed is raised to 230°F (110°C) to drive off some DMS precursor and develop the characteristic colors of those malts. Once kilning is complete, the malt is moved to an outdoor grain silo to await packaging. While most of the finished product is packaged in 55 lb (25 kg) sacks recognizable to homebrewers, some is shipped in bulk to breweries that have grain silos of their own. The packaging process involves a robotic system that fills the bags, sews them closed, then stacks the sacks on a pallet. This was fucking rad to watch.

A relatively small amount of malt from each batch is reserved for lab evaluation where extract potential, protein content, plumpness, and other measurements are made.

And that is basically the story of how malt is made at Gambrinus Malting Company!

My awesome host, Ken, was enthusiastic to show me other pieces of the puzzle, specifically where all the stuff that doesn’t end up in our sack of malt ends up. Grain dust, root sprouts, and clumps of malt that get rejected at various parts of the process are all collected along the way and sold to local farmers as livestock feed. And what about all that water? Gambrinus has an on-premises treatment pond where the water drained from the germination beds gets processed before being sent down the hill to be used as nutrient rich irrigation at farms in the valley floor. Gambrinus Malting creates very little industrial waste.

Following the malthouse tour, I sat down with Ken and Matthias for a Q&A session where we discussed malt, brewing, beer, and everything along the way. We’re currently working on condensing this chat into a readable format, which should be finished fairly soon, stay tuned!

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