MdV: Merchant du Vin beer e-newsletter – Wed. May 5, 2004:  Specialty Grains

 

NEWS, EVENTS, ARTICLES

 

-Westmalle Trappist continues to draw attention from the press: the March edition of Modern Brewery Age has a detailed article by Gregg Glaser about Westmalle’s US introduction; the April 2004 edition of Beverage Media features Westmalle; and Don Scheidt’s column in the Celebrator recaps the Westmalle kickoff (as well as Seattle’s Museum of Flight VIP tasting that featured Samuel Smith.)

 

-The April 2004 issue of Outdoors Now has an article on grilling buffalo and elk by writer Jerry Sinkovec.  The recommended beer?  Melbourn Bros. Cherry Ale – “sex for your taste buds . . . you’ll just have to try it to believe it.”

 

-Bellevue Community College and Merchant du Vin teamed up for a great class on beer this month.  If you live in or visit the Seattle area, bookmark

 http://at-campus.net/bccsched/index.html?print=/bccsched/output/course_8000.htm 

http://www.conted.bcc.ctc.edu/

and keep an eye out for a fall class.

 

-Pike Brewery was proud to sponsor a benefit in Seattle for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society on March 27 (over $8000 raised for a great cause); Pike Pale was also poured for the attendees of the public forum for the Governor’s Sustainable Washington Advisory Panel on April 1.

 

-It’s a great time for fine beer!  Complete national events are online at:

 http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/news.html

 

BEER CHAT FROM THE BEER COURT JESTER: SPECIALTY GRAINS

 

Last e-news we mentioned how winemaking is straightforward: squeeze the grapes, ferment the juice.  Good grapes and no errors generally results in good wine. 

 

Beermaking requires more skill and more decisions:  barley is first malted, then milled, then mashed.  Then the liquid is gently rinsed away from the husks, boiled and seasoned with hops (in all their wondrous variety!)  At last comes cooling, fermentation, and conditioning: all these steps require decisions and result in different flavors . . . and we haven’t even mentioned specialty grains yet.

 

Beer is made from water and malted barley of some kind – pale malt, pilsner malt, six-row.  These sprouted barleycorns are packed with starch and with natural enzymes that will turn the starch into sugar; the sugar will eventually fuel the yeast later, during fermentation.  (Craft beer gets its fermentable sugar from barley, wheat or rye; some specialty craft brewers also add fruit, honey or Belgian candi sugar. American light lagers use a percentage of rice or corn in addition to barley.)

 

To add darker colors or roasty flavors, or caramel flavors, or biscuity flavors, or smoky flavors, or to change the body and mouthfeel of a beer, brewers often add some malt that has been handled differently from the base malt.  Often it has been heated, either under dry or wet conditions, and it is no longer “enzymatically active” – that means it will not convert from starch to sugar, and fuel the yeast.  It’s there in the recipe only for flavor, body and color, and usually makes up less than 10% of the total malt bill.

 

Here are some varieties of specialty grains and what they do for flavor & color:

 

-Crystal Malt: pale malt is heated while wet, and the starch turns to sugar and then caramelizes, all within the barleycorn.  Crystal comes in varying degrees of darkness, but adds amber color and complex, sweetish, caramel notes to flavor.  English Pale Ales usually have crystal malt to contribute to their rich malt backbone.

 

-Chocolate Malt: no chocolate here – this is malt that has been roasted dry, in a drum like coffee, until it is a deep brown color.  Used in porters, brown ales, and sometimes in other dark beers to give round, deep flavor notes that sometimes stop at nutty and don’t reach roasty.  Also used in small amounts in amber ales and even some pale ales.

 

-Black patent malt/roasted (unmalted) barley: Malted (or sometimes unmalted) barley roasted until black and charred.  In judicious amounts gives roasty flavor and dark color; in heavier amounts makes for opaque black beer and sharply roasted flavors.

 

-Peated, or Distiller’s Malt: Malt kilned over a peat fire, leading to the smoky, spicy flavor found in some Scotch ales, and some American craft beers.  Used by distillers of Scotch whisky in their mash.

 

-Smoked Malt: Malt smoked over wood.  In Germany, beechwood is used for “rauch malt;” in America brewers have used alder-, hickory-, and fruitwood-smoked malts.

 

There are many varieties and versions of specialty grains; there are even malts kilned at higher temperatures (like Munich or Vienna malt) that blur the borders between base malt and specialty grain.  In their many varieties, in the precise ratio the brewer selected, specialty grains are one of the keys to the excellent beer in your glass.

 

America’s Premier Specialty Beer Importer Since 1978

www.merchantduvin.com