Malting Barley with Bob Hansen from Briess – BeerSmith Podcast 35

by Brad Smith on March 31, 2012 · 2 comments

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.

Thanks to Bob Hansen from Briess for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!

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