Your weekly Beer Education Series has arrived!

This week’s topic: Intro to Malt

Why is malt important?

Malt affects beer when it comes to aroma, flavor, mouthfeel, and color.

Malt is 1/4 ingredients (water, hops, yeast, malt) that we need in order to brew beer. Think of malt as the food of the brewing process. When the malt is added during the brewing process, hot water opens the grains, releasing sugars into the mix. Without these sugars, the yeast would have nothing to eat and thus nothing to ferment into alcohol.

What is malt?

Malt starts as a cereal grain. When we take that cereal grain, steep it in water, and then dry it in a kiln at varying temperatures, the finished product(s) are different kinds of malt!

A basic rule of thumb: the hotter the kiln, the darker the malt! The darker the malt, the darker the beer!

Some malt adjectives to get you started: malty, bread-like, biscuit, nutty caramel, chocolate, roasted…

Now those are just the basics–feel free to dive deeper or tune-in next week when we look more closely at different kinds of malt, what ‘SRM’ stands for, and more!

Thanks for tuning in!

Do you know what malt is used in the beer you love to drink?