Mrs. R and I went to a seminar on Tuesday night put on by Fermenta, an association of women in the industry here in MI. The featured speaker was Andrea Stanley of Valley malt. Craft Malting was the focus.
Andrea did a demo during her talk where we sampled 5 different malts that had been Hot steeped using the new ASBC method. Samples were in cups on the placemat in front of us. There were two from Valley malt, two from MI, and Crisp MO. Wewere able to taste differences in all of the malts. Some were different varieties. The two from Valley malt were malted and killed the same, but different growing conditions from the source farms gave big taste differences. Yeh Crisp MO was the crowd favorite, go figure.
So there is only the 15 minute rest at ~65C? That is a pretty short rest, but that should be enough to convert the starch to polysaccharides. I guess this is just a sensory evaluation and that preparation is probably enough.
Yes, but then it goes on the filter, but will cool off there, so maybe you get a tad more going on.
The water to grain ratio is high. 3/5 of the samples had astringency, probably due to that. The samples all tasted different, which might be what we are looking for as homebrewers.
It depends on the year, but they darned near all are. Muntons bags are marked MO Blend, but for extra $ you can buy all MO (I have a bag). As an aside, some say more MO is sold than grown.
One of the comparisons was Valley Malt from two different farms, one had a decent year, the other was a dry and year. The one was ~9% protein, the other was >13% protein. They were malted and killed to the same specs. The high protein malt had some flavors many did not like.
All in all, a good talk and demo. You get more from this than chewing on the grains.
I didn’t found out about it until last week, when I started researching some malt specs that I haven’t seen posted yet. I’ll contact that company for some more detailed spec sheet information, maybe they’ll actually respond. (so far no malster has even responded )
Astringency is likely due to the thin mash and lack of any water chemistry and so it’s out of the pH range we want.
@mabrungard I’m uncertain how much of the flavor profile (besides the obvious sweet flavors, and abv) comes from the conversion process, and how much comes from the kilned husk. I tend to think in flavor contributions as LB of grain per gallon of batch size, and not as a % of the grain bill as a result. I don’t think conversion really matters that much for malt flavor, especially for specialty grains and not base malts. Also because it’s being ground so finely, gelatanization likely happens quickly.
No, I don’t think this is necessarily a water chemistry result. In distilled water, the mash system is still likely to buffer its pH into the upper 5 range.
Tannins are produced within chloroplasts and that would include the husk layer. Cracking open or otherwise exposing the cells within that husk is going to present a greater potential for tannin to escape each former chloroplast. In a proper milling operation, the husks tend to be more intact and fewer chloroplast cells are ruptured. In this testing, the husk and kernel are pulverized which undoubtedly exposes more opportunity for tannin to leave the cells. I believe its the pulverization that contributes most to the astringency noted in the wort.
I can see that this method would elicit more than flavor from the grain. The mashing does produce saccharification and also enables aroma to enter into the evaluation. This has to be better than chewing the grain alone.
Here are some notes from the seminar - they were tucked away in the car.
5 samples were tasted. There are 59 Craft Maltsters in the Association. They have 0.5% of the market combined. The 2 varieties that are grown in the highest quantity are Metcalf and Copeland, used by the big guys.
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