This week my guest is Andrea Stanley from Valley Malting. She shares with us some of the challenges in going from home brewer to creating one of the first small malt houses East of the Mississippi, as well as shares with us how you might grow and malt your own barley at home.
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[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/beersmith/BSHB-59-Valley-Malt.mp3]Topics in This Week’s Episode (50:39)
- Andrea Stanley joins me this week. Andrea and her husband Christian are home brewers who started one of the first small malthouses East of the Mississippi. They run a local malt house in Hadley, Mass called Valley Malt.
- We discuss how her family moved from home brewing to running a small malt house in Western Massachusetts.
- Andrea shares some advice on growing your own barley in small plots at home, including which grows best
- We then move on to the malting process and she shares her thoughts on how you can best malt your barley at home
- We discuss roasting and toasting malts including which systems work best for creating a variety of specialty malt
- Andrea talks about how darker roasted grains are created
- She shares her thoughts on malted vs unmalted bases for roast grains
- We talk about gluten free beer brewing and what options are available for those who are gluten-intolerant
- Andrea tells us a little about some of the unique grains she malts for local brewers
- She shares a bit about her company – Valley Malt
- We discuss the small malt house movement here in the US – how a handful of people are trying to bring back the local malt house
Thanks to Andrea Stanley for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!
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I’m from a tropical country, The Philippines. Can Barley grow here?
I do malt my own barley from feedstock shops and I notice that it has 7 gravity points lower than that compared to the the real stuff I buy from the USA. Say Castle Pils has 1.036 gravity points per pound/gallon, at 85% efficiency in my setup, the feed grade barley yields only 1.029 gravity points per pound/gallon. Is this the major difference between a feed-grade and a malting grade? Other than that, it tastes the same.
Andrea mentioned using a stove top, hand cranked stirring type of popcorn popper to dry the green malt. I use a Whirlypop popper (google whirleypop popper) available from bed Bath & Beyond for all my popcorn making.
Great episode! I’m heading out to buy barley to start learning to malt this week. Brewing in Ukraine is quite a challenge as its rarely done here. I learned a lot from Andrea and feel much more comfortable getting started from it.