Jeff Bloem from Murphy & Rude Malting joins me to help us understand brewing malts, and help break through the marketing clutter when selecting malts.
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Topics in This Week’s Episode (57:15)
- This week I welcome back Jeff Bloem. Jeff is the founder and head malster at Murphy & Rude Malting in Charlottesville, VA. Opening in 2018, they are Virginia’s first dedicated commercial specialty malt house producing a wide variety of base, high kiln and specialty malts for brewers and distillers.
- They also sell directly to the home brewing market via their online store here.
- We start with a brief update on some of the new products available from Murphy and Rude.
- Jeff introduces his topic which is “Malt: What is It?” and explains how sometimes the marketing gets in the way of figuring out what malt you are really buying.
- We discuss how there is a lot of variation not only in malt products themselves but how malsters choose to brand and label their malts.
- We begin by discussing Pilsner malt and how European Pilsners vary from US Pilsners and how close many Pilsners are to pale malts.
- Next we discuss Pale malts and how they can overlap with other malts.
- Jeff explains how Vienna and Munich malts are made and how many of the light malts have common characteristics, but there can be variation depending on which barley was used as a base.
- We talk about darker kilned malts and how those are made as well as their flavor profile.
- Jeff talks about Caramel/Crystal malt and how the crystalization of the sugars within the malt husk change their profiles.
- We discuss harsh zone malts and how they can be used sparingly to great effect.
- Finally we discuss roasted malts and what makes them different from darker kilned malts.
- Jeff gives us some examples of what malts are named versus what they really are and how many marketing names can be confusing.
- Jeff gives us his closing thoughts and also tells us how home brewers can directly buy his malts.
Sponsors
- Thank you to our sponsor Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine for sponsoring this episode. I encourage you to subscribe to their great magazine!
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