Malts and Sugars
Malt. The base ingredient of all beers, the elixir of life, the nectar of the Gods. However you want to describe it, malt, or more correctly, malted grain plays an integral part in the life of every brewer.
Generally available in three forms; Liquid malt extract, dry malt extract and whole malted grains.
The most widely available and popular with most home brewers is liquid malt extract. Common throughout 90% of all kits it is an excellent ingredient in its own right. Use it as a base for the creation of your own recipes or put it together with a selection of other grains to re-create popular brews from around the world.
Liquid malt extract is essentially evaporated wort. By that I mean it is created by putting whole malted grains through a mill, to produce a grist, then together with hot water it is fed into a mash conversion vessel which has the temperature carefully regulated to convert the starches to sugars. From this vessel, the liquid, which is now called wort, is pumped through a filter to remove the malt husks and spent grain. From here it runs through a series of vacuum evaporators until the golden viscous liquid we recognise as malt extract is ready to be canned and shipped.
Popular brands of liquid malt extract include Muntons, Brupaks and Youngs from England, Coopers from Australia, Briess and Northwestern from the USA, Brewferm from Belgium and United Canadian from Canada.
Dried malt, or spray dry malt, is exactly what it sounds like; a malt extract either freeze dried or more commonly spray dried, to produce a highly concentrated malt extract powder. Although not as popular as liquid malt extract, there is still a great demand from home brewers wishing to add extra body to their brews. It can also be used as the primary malt in a brew and is also used in some well know kits.
Many of the liquid malt extract manufacturers produce a range of spray dried malt extracts as well. Look out for examples from Briess and Muntons. Both of which are excellent quality.
If you’re new to home brewing you may have heard other brewers talking about doing a full mash brew. This is simply brewing with whole grain malts and it gives us the ability and flexibility to brew any beer or beer style we please.
A full mash brew follows the manufacturing methods for creating liquid malt extract except we do not force filter the mash, we sparge it by sprinkling hot water gently over it and letting the sweet wort separate naturally from the spent grains.
The most widely available whole grains to American home brewers are produced by Briess and Muntons from the USA and England respectively, Dingemans from Belgium and Gambrinus from Canada.
As you would expect there are a whole variety of whole grain malt, each of which imparts a very different flavour to the finished beer. From Black malt which is heavily roasted and used in stouts and porters to impart a dart nutty quality, to Pale malt, which form the basis of most beers and gives a smooth sweet flavour. There is a raft of other malts available all of which can be included in your full grain mash to give an infinite amount of tastes, textures, aroma and body.
If you’ve never tried a full mash brew, then I urge you to take the leap and have ago.
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