Malting Barley with Bob Hansen from Briess – BeerSmith Podcast 35

This week I invite Bob Hansen from Briess malting and ingredients company to talk about beer brewing, malts, malting your own grain and also malt extract. Bob provides a great overview of how malted barley is grain, how specialty grains are made and even how they make malt extract.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (48:58)

Bob Hansen from Briess malting is my guest this week. Bob is a double major in Biochemistry and Applied Math/Physics and worked previously at Water Street Brewery. Bob is involved in R&D at Briess and helped set up their Briess extract plant as well as their pilot brewery.
We start with a short discussion of Briess and what they provide to the brewing industry.
Bob explains the difference between malted and unmalted barley.
We talk about the steps of turning unmalted barley into malted barley (soaking, germinating, roasting).
Bob explains the kilning process and how it can be used to make some base malt varieties.
We also explore how malted and unmalted barley is roasted to make most of the remaining specialty malts we brew with.
Bob offers some tips for malting barley at home.
We talk about grain storage and how long you can reasonably store malted barley
Bob explains how torrified grains are made, and why some raw grains need to be cooked or gelatinized.
We walk through how grains are mashed and then the moisture is removed to produce malt extract
We talk about how Briess reaches out to the homebrewing community.