In running a commercial brewery is there a reasonable maximum number of malts that the brewer employs in a recipe due to cost, workflow, availability etc… (obviously there’s no hard limit or theoretical limit)?
What are some reasons for this limit?
Would one ever find a commercial beer recipe that employs 7 or 8 different malt types as in some homebrew recipes? Does this add a lot of cost to the recipe for a commercial brewery?
We’ve all heard that “simple is better” but it seems commercial brewery outfits are forced into compliance with this cliché. (i.e. no Munich Dunkel with 6 types of malts…)
If commercial breweries are keeping it simple what makes homebrewers think that their many malt recipe will be “good” or that all of the malts are contributing something useful?
Right, it’s obvious that commercial brewers have no limited (the same as homebrewers), but how many commercial beers have a ton of specialty malts, can you give me an example? What is the cost difference? For example, if a recipe has 9 different malts what does that translate to in terms of end product cost increase? How does that affect the decision of the brewery in making the recipe?
Yes specialty malts are more expensive than base malts. From material point of view, less SKUs you have simpler it is.
I can not answer your question how much specialty malts other Brewers use. May be a little research on your part can help. Good place to start is Can you brew it podcast from Brewing network.
When you look in raw material cost. Malt is sold in lb here in US. If you are serious about commercial brewing, find a malt supplier in your area and ask for price sheet. There are other cost like hops, yeast, labor, energy, water, rent … That translate to final product cost.
I think another thought that I have heard in regards to this is that pro brewers generally want to build recipes around full sacks: 10 sacks base to 1 or 2 sacks of this and that. Nothing set in stone, but opened unfinished sacks get forgotten
My point is, if commercial breweries are limiting the malts due to various factors, availability, cost, usage, etc… and these same breweries are producing saleable product, in some cases highly rated beer what would it take for a commercial operation to invest in a high malt count beer? I don’t think they would and I don’t think a commercial beer exists of that nature.
Translate that to homebrew - when a recipe approaches 5 or 6 malts one has to start wondering is it making enough of a difference? Does it add that much flavor? If top rated commercial beers have maybe 4 or 5 malts max then one could gather that there’s not much value in going over that many malts in a recipe.
Not a commercial brewer but its a pretty open ended question as Thirsty Monk points out due to all the other variables. You also ave to account for the pricing of the bulk purchases the commercial brewer is making. Knowing other commercial brewers, their main goal is a quality product and their desired beer recipe to produce their vision. I’m sure cost goes in to it but I would think the desired beer takes precedence and recipe ingredients wouldn’t
Absolutely, cost isn’t the only limiting factor… you’ve got labor, availability, etc…
I just don’t think a high malt count commercial beer exists because high malt counts don’t necessarily make good beer! (and I’m looking for a counter to that point).
If you read Zymurgy or BYO or even some of the clone books featuring recipes from actual commercial breweries you will see examples of many styles of beers that employ more than 4 types of grain and maybe as many as 9. Also some commercial breweries will list ingredients of their beer on the website, some even provide home brewers the recipe. Somewhere there is a list of breweries that do this, don’t have the link handy
When I toured Rouge, there were more types of malt on the storage racks than I had ever seen in one place. Multiple sacks of most. I don’t remember any partial bags, but that trip was 10+ years back.
There’s just no way to quantify how many malts should be used max in a beer. I like to have one base malt and maybe a specialty malt or two in most beers. In general I like fewer malts in a recipe for cleaner, more focused flavors. Using too many malts can give a muddy, nonspecific malt character to many beers. But there are those recipes that are spectacular that use several malts.
Absolutely unquantifiable, but when you get to more than say 6 - 2 roast, 2 crystal, 2 base it becomes muddy - like you said. Apply that to a commercial brewery that needs to make money off of the beer and you have found a beer that has value in a high malt count! That would be a special beer indeed (one would think).
Depends on the base malts and the ratio and what you expect to achieve but I wasn’t referring to just base malts. Blending of base malts is fairly common, I would guess, it’s when you throw in those 4 types of roast grains that have been laying around… oh and those two bags of crystal that you get, what some artists call - mud. One can only expect to achieve so much per malt.
That’s why a high malt count beer would have a high perceived “value”.
In most cases, KISS principle. That being said, there are brewers that use multiple malts for various reasons. NOLA Brewing’s Brown Ale has 8 different malts in it in order to add complexity to a low ABV beer (DEM in the 3.9% ABV range). Other times, there may be a gimmick involved. Schmaltz brewing has an anniversary beer that uses the number of malts that correspond to their age. Until last year, they were going for everything around a theme (e.g. 17 malts, 17 hops, 17% ABV). For 18 they kept the malts and hops, but kept the ABV to between 12-13% since they wanted to maximize their distribution.
[quote]We’ve all heard that “simple is better” but it seems commercial brewery outfits are forced into compliance with this cliché. (i.e. no Munich Dunkel with 6 types of malts…)
If commercial breweries are keeping it simple what makes homebrewers think that their many malt recipe will be “good” or that all of the malts are contributing something useful?
[/quote]
Personally, I’ve been trying to work on simplifying my grain bills the past few years. Usually, the only styles where I’m using more than a couple are dark styles.