Understanding Malt with Jeff Bloem – BeerSmith Podcast #325
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Jeff Bloom joins me this week to discuss how many brewing malts are misnamed and misunderstood. This is Beersmith Podcast number 325. Music

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This is Beersmith Podcast number 325 and it's late May 2025. Jeff Bloom joins me this week to discuss how many brewing malts are misnamed and misunderstood.

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Today on the show, I welcome Jeff Bloom. Jeff is the founder and head maltster at Murphy and Rood Malting Company in Charlottesville, Virginia. Opening its doors in 2018, Murphy and Rood is Virginia's first and only dedicated commercial production specialty malt house.

They now produce a wide variety of base, high kiln, crystal, and dry roasted malts for regional brewers and distillers. Jeff, it's great to have you on the show. How are you doing today? I'm good. I'm good. And I see you again. Thanks for having me back. Always a pleasure. It's been about a year, I think, since I last had you on. What's new at Murphy & Rood? Last time we were talking all about the online store. Did that go well for you?

Yeah, it's still going very well. We actually just added some Virginia-grown hops from our neighbors down in Scottsville, Greenmont Hop Works. So that's been kind of an exciting new product launch. We've launched a new Honey Light product that's a great IPA malt. And for all intents and purposes, just kind of adjusting to the market conditions.

kind of cyclical market conditions here and trying to keep everybody happy and do right by our customers, I guess you can say. That's awesome. Well, today you wanted to talk about malt types, and I know you've been doing a malting course at the University of Richmond. You sent me a talk titled, Malt, What Is It? Can you tell me what you mean by that? Yeah, and I probably meant to say malt types, you know, what is it? Some of these, some of the

the myriad malt types out there right now can be significant when you're looking worldwide. And sometimes you can find yourself asking,

Yeah, but what actually is this malt? Looking at naming conventions and kind of the cryptic descriptors that can sometimes go along with them. So I figured it would be a good opportunity to kind of demystify some of this, maybe add a little context and perspective into how to look at these malts if you...

can take the naming conventions out of it. I mean, that's really a good tool for brewers, both commercial and hobby, to really fully understand maybe what they're looking for, but then also what they are looking at in a given product. Yeah, I mean, a lot of times the names don't match at all, right? Correct. And the University of Richmond course, folks find this section interesting

pretty interesting because I think it's kind of just one of those unspoken frustrations at times and it can be quite confusing. So can you give us a few examples of things that don't match? For example, I think honey malt doesn't taste like honey, right? Believe it or not, it actually kind of does. In a finished beer form, on the

on the chew, it actually does not have a very honey, honey like taste. But if you were to steep that out in a sensory exercise or brew with it, you'd actually do get a lot of those honey notes. And that might be a bad example. Can you give us a better one? Well, sure. Sure. I mean, there's, there's a lot of and, you know, some of these are typically proprietary malts, right. But things like you know, extra special roast or,

extra dark crystal or dark medium crystal or special B. What on earth is special B? There's special W as well. You can get a

an idea of what these malts are going to present like by using the descriptor and the color, if you were to take the name out of it. So all to say, if you just had a list of, um, of descriptors and you would use this malt before you would be able to identify it, um, without its name, which the, the, the part that's important here is that, um,

It really helps in seeking out equivalents or swaps if you perhaps liked the

the idea and the color of a, of a malt, but you didn't actually like how it presented in a beer. Um, or if you liked a portion of what that malt provided, but maybe not, uh, like some of the residual sugars, maybe that it has, or, um, a particular flavor note that irks you. Uh, and so you can use these, um, these tools outside of just saying, Hey, do you have something like a

um, crystal medium dark. Uh, if you were to approach me with that, I don't, I don't know what that means. Um, and so breaking it down by its color attributes, its flavor sensory notes, um, that are provided by the malster that can give you a sense of maybe what category of malts to look at with a different malter. And, uh, there is, there is some variation from malter to malter too. Even when we talk about a single malt, right?

No, absolutely. There is the house flavor, if you will, is real. And also, you know, each malt house has the license to kind of put their own spin on things. I mean, we certainly take advantage of that opportunity here. I mean, creative experimentation is, you know, a common thread. And

The, you know, our house roasts, for instance, those are all malts that we have come up with leveraging perhaps an existing malt that we weren't entirely excited about and put our spin on things to make it something that we are excited about. Cool. Well, let's start with something basic like Pilsner malt. How's a Pilsner malt defined and how does it vary perhaps from maltster to maltster?

Yeah, so before I kind of get into the nuances of it, what could probably be a little jarring for folks is that for all intensive purposes, pilsner and pale malt are the same thing. And we have to go back into kind of the historical brewing practices, right?

in the regions that they're typically used in. So the U.S., for instance, was, you know, the beer industry was dominated by macro lager for years. And so that particular market

high enzyme, high conversion malt that macro lager brewers were using. They're converting a lot of unmalted adjuncts and they needed a very powerful malt to carry, to carry the conversion of that. Whereas in across the pond in Europe, they had malt options that were much more diverse and specific to smaller groups.

brewing operations and more nuanced. So essentially craft beer before US had craft beer, the European method of brewing is very similar historically to how craft beer is thought of and brewed today. And so particularly in the regions of Germany, Hilsner is their lager malt. Our lager malt has in the past been

you know, what we would call two-row brewer's malts or standard brewer's malts or, you know, pale base, if you will. And they are produced to achieve roughly similar outcomes. And so predominantly these are, you know,

significant, you know, a modest but powerful enzyme package, but most notably very low color. And those are typically under two lovabond, which, you know, you really have to

do your homework to ensure that a malt can stay under two. There are factors, you know, color can be difficult to create, but it can also be very easy to create if you're going for a very, very low color spec. And so, but, you know, there's been some comparison. Philosophy, I know, did a comparison of like, really, what's the difference between American pale and US, excuse me, American pale and European pilsner malt?

And flavor-wise, they're very, very similar. And that's simply to say that Europeans called their lager brewing malt Pilsner, where we were calling it American two-row brewers malt. When the craft beer evolution happened here, many craft brewers looked to Europe for a more diverse catalog of potential malts. That's really why we import so much European craft.

or four, I should say just generally foreign malt, because the US really only had a couple. Brees was working through the specialty malt market there, but a lot of that was focused on food. And so we have become more catering to craft brewers in this country now. And so

The U.S. now makes Pilsner malt. Historically, we have not... There's no such thing really as a U.S. Pilsner malt. We already have it. It's our two-row brewer's malt. And so what we are now doing in the U.S. is creating Pilsner malts because they are the same name as the European malts that people are seeking out. And so it kind of levels the competitive playing field. But they are...

In theory and characteristic and color and derived flavor, they are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same. You can get, you know, we have both here. I mean, Murphy and Root is a great example of why the U.S. now has Pilsner malt. And we do differentiate them. Our Pilsner malt is really produced to drive continental lager brewing. So there's a focus on

uh, certainly low color, but then also foam creation and, uh, and body. And so, so we can make these very, very light color beers while crispy and, um, and dry and light. They're also flavorful. Um, and so by doing that, what we have started to do is kind of reinvent the pale malt, um, because Pilsner has kind of replaced, uh,

what we, you know, had historically known or considered a pale malt in U.S. brewing. And so now we're starting to see differentiation on the pale side a little bit because we need to make these two malts different now. So is it becoming the case that, you know, the Pilsner and the pale malt really only differ by a little bit in color, I guess?

And sometimes really, really none. I mean, Pilsner malt is, you know, you're kind of straddling the fence of two lovabon. It might be a couple points under maybe, excuse me, a couple of tenths of a point lovabon under, you know, one, seven, one, eight, one, nine. Our Pilsner malt can sometimes creep into like 2.1 in, you know, seasonality, kilning, so on and so forth. And so, yeah.

When you really look at a Pilsner spec, you're seeing that same range, you know, under 2, 1.7-ish, 1.8 to maybe 2.1, 2.2. When you then look at the descriptors, you're like, wait, what's the difference between Pilsner and Turo Brewer's malt? And that is why it's difficult to find one.

um what about the difference between the european pilsner and the american pilsner malt is it really a much different because of the the you know the way the the barley's grown and so on or not uh i mean i i yes and no i mean you know there's there's spring and winter barleys um there are there can be a focus on kind of the the

the protein composition in a Pilsner malt, um, that could potentially lead to better, uh, you know, foam creation and foam stability, but for all intents and purposes, uh, in the, you know, modern day turn and burn brewing, um, there really is no significant agronomic difference. Now, what Europe has that you at the U S is, uh,

still figuring out or, or, you know, we're kind of, um, we're figuring out, we know we have something, we just don't know where it is yet. And that is heritage varieties. Heritage Europe is very rich in heritage varieties. Um, while, so while not necessarily agronomically, um, ideal, their flavor is exceptional. And so, um, that is oftentimes when you can start, um,

leveraging a heritage variety and bring it to life with pilsner malt because it's really pilsner these these very light malts are unencumbered by kiln created flavor so they're really expressing their natural flavor their terroir their um their expression of the locality that they were grown in and so that is where the difference between um

You know, purposely bred varieties for functionality and differ and agronomics can differ in heritage lines that they are what they are. And you kind of celebrate them in their current existence as opposed to trying to make a new variety that does certain things that you want it to do.

You bring up an important point. I believe until the craft beer revolution hit, there were a relatively small number of barley types being grown in the United States, right? Commercially? Well, I mean, historically, you know, the big macro lager brewers are using six row. I mean, it's the general, general.

between six and two row Barley's is that the six row has six rows of, of barley on that, on the Colonel where two, or excuse me, on the head where two row only has two and four of those what are called glooms or where a Colonel would develop.

four of those glooms don't pollinate in two row. And so that those two rows of kernels on the head have much more space to fill out and fatten up during the growing season. Whereas six row, they're kind of packed in pretty tight and are constricted by their neighbor. And so you get more kernels per head, but they are smaller. And typically six row varieties, they had some sort of feed gap

feed barley heritage parentage. And so those have a predisposition to higher protein. They were grown to be higher protein and enzymes or proteins. And so when you get elevated protein, you get a bigger enzyme package. Again, my macro lager brewers needed that higher enzyme package to convert their unmalted adjunct ingredients. And so two row was, um,

you know, kind of a, a, a big finding in, with, within the U S and, and from a breeding perspective, being able to, um, then control traits within, within the two row varieties, um, that led to, you know, higher test weights, more modest enzyme packages, um, more modest, uh, you know, enzyme packages mean diastatic power, alpha amylase, um,

and increased extract. And so, uh, with, with six row varieties, because they're smaller kernels, um, and if they are higher protein, that, that protein offsets the starch. Um, the smaller kernels don't fill out as much. They don't have as much starch content, which is a lower, slightly lower extract, but a much more powerful enzymatic malt. Um, and so as we started to find new two row varieties that, um,

were agronomically able to grow in our, you know, an adaptable to our, our microclimates in different regions of the U S that really opened up a big playbook of, of potential varieties. But yes, I mean, long ago we were really just predominantly working with six-year-old barley and now it's making a comeback, you know, I mean, it's, it was forgotten and now it's being reappreciated. Yeah.

Yeah, I know there's a lot of malt growers that are actually bringing back some of these heritage barleys that you were talking about. Well, let's move on to pale malt. Can you talk a little bit about pale malt? You know, probably the most widely used base malt in craft brewing. Can you share some thoughts on that? Yeah, and so this, and for the purposes of this discussion, we're kind of going to think of the pale malt as the new, our new...

expression of pale malt, which is really slightly, very, very slightly higher color. So you're typically within the two to three lovabond range under two, um, is really suggesting that as a very neutral, uh,

terroir driven malt, whereas pale malts with that little added, you know, half lovabond or full lovabond can really start to express a little bit more nuanced flavor in the form of breadiness, some cracker,

you know, once we get in, I, we'll talk about some pale ale malts, uh, here in a bit, I think. So, um, you start to introduce a little bit of kiln derived, uh, flavor, uh, which comes from that in slightly increased color. And so now you get something that expresses a little bit more, um, malt backbone, if, if you will, whereas, uh,

Pilsner can be used really mainly in two primary ways. One is a clean, neutral malt. I'll give you a hazy IPA, for instance. When you're trying to highlight something other than the malt, Pilsner malt's a pretty great option because it kind of stays out of the way. As we move into lighter, still very pale-colored malt,

lower color beers uh but we want to start to introduce a little bit of a malt backbone that's where we'll then choose a pale malt because it has a little bit more to it from a flavor uh from a flavor standpoint and it's slightly less neutral while also playing well in the sandbox with um with others and so pale malt still kind of remains a very good go-to for um for

you know, what I would kind of consider like flagship, um, you know, high volume beers that are, you know, I, IPA for instance, uh, like West coast styles, um, and where you need a little bit of both and you don't, you don't, you, you want there to be a little bit of more malt expression because you're also, you know, bringing in some barely more stout hop, um, hop

contributions here and so they kind of need to balance themselves out can you give us an example of how some pale malts might vary from uh from brewer to brewer for or from a monster to monster this is this is a tough uh differentiation i think where you can you know it can get a little wonky in these is that there are there's pilsner malt and then there's in europe and and

Because they don't, Europe doesn't have what we would call a pale malt. They have, their pale malt is Pilsner. So typically what they'll have is like an extra pale malt. So it's very, very light. You know, we're talking like 1.3, 1.5 lovabond.

And one thing to consider in those, and this is not to suggest that it is true across the board, but when you get into very, very light malts like that, there is, in order to keep that color that low, you really have to check yourself in kiln cure temperatures. And typically, you know, 180 degrees in the kiln in cure, not only...

lead you to really hold color down, but it also denatures precursors for DMS and lipoxygenase. And so 180 is kind of a standard, get the precursors out of there. It avoids having to use a 90 minute boil, a 90 minute boil, for instance, to boil off any DMS presence. And you're at a higher risk of having those precursors in those very, very light malts because

it's likely that they did not reach 180 degree cure temp in the kiln because that would have bumped that color up a little bit more so we're talking you know 170 those precursors are still present so you got more precursors in a light light malt like that i guess in a in a i mean we're talking like lighter than you know a standard pilsner malt in europe right and so um

It's just kind of a side note for folks to think about. And if you are noticing those in those very late malts, that is why you're noticing them. So what differentiates a pale malt something like a Maris Otter? I mean, what makes Maris Otter different than an English pale malt or a U.S. pale malt? So that is a heritage variety. And so, you know, Maris Otter, Golden Promise, Araclea, Barca, there's...

There's a wide range of heritage barley varieties, particularly in Europe, that that flavor difference is variety derived. Our English pale here at Murphy & Rudd Malting, which is our pale ale malt that is really meant for British ale styles, that...

flavor in our english pale is kiln created we bump up our cure temperature a little bit to bring in some of those nutty kind of grape nuts notes if you will um whereas maris otter you know if we had to pick one delivers that on its own um and so you that is where you know the

The joy of heritage varieties, if we can grow them with enough agronomic upside, are really, really useful and valuable in the brewing space. Really, those heritage varieties, it comes down to an agronomics thing. They're typically more expensive. Their yield is lower, so the farmer's looking for a better bushel variety.

dollar per bushel price. And so, which they would certainly, uh, deserve if they are growing, let's say 70 acre, 70 bushels an acre versus, uh, 90 or a hundred. Um, so they're just not getting as much squeeze out of their acreage. And so, um, but the, you know, the downside is countered by an exceptional flavor contribution, um, on the brewing side. And so it's, uh,

And, you know, we have these heritage varieties here. They're somewhere. It can just be tough to find them. And we've got, again, I'm aware of some projects of kind of seeking out some of these U.S. heritage varieties to see what we have to offer. Yeah, I think in many cases, just not grown in large quantities yet, right? It takes years to really develop a significant quantity of growth, right?

Yeah. And I mean, you know, somebody essentially has to take over the cultivation of these varieties. I mean, they have been, you know, cast aside for better agronomically performing varieties. And so they're typically, you know, they go extinct for all intents and purposes. We, you know, we've saved one of these varieties.

endangered varieties in our Venus soft white wheat, because we just, you know, in the small grain breeding world, we're constantly trying to innovate. And so we are constantly then moving on to the next new thing. And some of these varieties can kind of be cast aside

from an agronomic standpoint because we now have created something better but we can sometimes throw the baby out with the bath water in those decisions too and that's where heritage varieties and people really seeking those out um why that's really kind of coming back into favor is because they they do in fact have a very differentiating character to offer sure sure

Well, working our way up the color scale, we have something like a Vienna malt, which might have color very close to a pale malt, but a much different flavor profile. Why is that? How do you get that? Yeah, and so Vienna and pale ale malts. And so, you know, again, pale ale malts, they're really flirting with three and crossing over the three lovabon mark and getting into, you know, maybe three.

of the color range of two, five, two, seven to 3.5 or so. And so with that color contribution, that is where we get some of that nuttiness that, that really kind of inspires the maltiness of, of the beautiful maltiness, subtle maltiness of British ale styles. If you look in European malt catalogs,

Some of the Vienna malts are in the same color range, but they are made differently. And so this is where we start to look at, okay, the color's the same.

with these two malts, but now we're going to look at the flavor descriptors and can we determine whether these are actually different or not? And that is, you will see that difference between pale ale and Vienna malts in the flavor descriptor. Again, the color's not going to help you, but the descriptors will. You know,

Against pale ale's nuttiness, Vienna malt will have that more rustic bread character. It's really more of like a depth of maltiness as opposed to turning the malt flavors into other recognizable things like toasted bread crust or...

Some other, you know, biscuit notes, for instance. Biscuit notes, cookie notes, spreaded notes. Absolutely. And so what those are derived from is the Maillard reaction that's been driven in the kilning process of...

Bavarian style malt, so Vienna's, Munich's. Those go through a stewing process very early in kilning that is prepping the building blocks for a Maillard reaction that, you know, I'll spare us all the details of how that is put together, but we are essentially lightly mashing the malt in the kiln

right out of the gate. Like right as we turn on the kiln, we're starting that stewing process, we kind of turn the kiln into a crock pot, if you will. And that drives a little bit more modification and actually a little bit of small molecular weight starch conversion that then gives us the simple sugars that we need for a Maillard reaction. And that Maillard reaction presents differently, that Maillard browning

um, presents differently than, uh, you know, a toasted malt, if you will. Um, and that's where Vienna's flavor contributions, um, are different than a pale ale. Cause there's a much more, um, uh, depth of character there, uh, where a pale ale malt is, um, it's really been kind of, uh, flavorized, if you will. Um, yeah.

Well, switching over to caramel and crystal malts, they're malted in an entirely different way. Can you talk about caramel crystal malts, how they're made, and how that drives a different character into the same – malts that may have the same color profile? Yeah. The crystal cara department gets a little busy and confusing. There are –

All sorts of differences worldwide in how we refer to what we would in the U.S. consider to be crystal malts. Some regions in Europe refer to their crystal malts as cara malts. So cara 20, cara 40, cara 60. Sure. Those are...

Chris, what we would refer to in the U S as crystal malts. And so these are a hundred percent glassy. They've been fully gelatinized, um, typically in the, in the roaster. So that's not done on the kiln that, that gelatinization is done in the roaster. We can get it done much more homogeneously and thoroughly. Um,

And that then we dehydrate that gelatinized malt and then we re-roast it up to a color spec. And that's where crystal malt gets its name. You crack that open, that glassy endosperm is the result of that gelatinization. And then when we re-roast, we're leveraging caramelization in the kiln. So depending on whether you call it crystal malt or caramel malt, you just have to...

understand that some regions of the world

call a fully glassy crystal malt caramel malts. Now in the U S you can also have, you can have a crystal malt and a caramel malt. Um, and the main difference there is that the caramel malt is produced on the kiln. And so, um, assuming everybody can generally understand how a kiln dries, it dries from the bottom up just like a hop kiln. Um, and so we inherently get, um,

a less homogenous result. The bottom is changing at a different rate than the top layer of the bed of malt is...

is changing. And so there is an inherent hybridization there for you within those kernels. So some may be fully glassy, some will be kind of half and half, some may not be at all. And that's probably because the ones that aren't at all were on the top of the kiln. And a hybrid, kind of 50/50, were in the middle. And the fully crystallized were in the bottom layer of the kiln.

And so you have to kind of, when you're looking at a crystal or cara and a number, so generally speaking, cara crystal and a number, you're looking at a crystal malt. Sure. If you're looking at a cara word, so cara bien or cara munich or cara foam or cara hellis or cara hell or blah, blah, blah.

Those are typically, those can be hybrid malts. So they're essentially taking that non-homogenous creation that happened because we were gelatinizing in the kiln and we're leveraging them, we're coloring it, we're curing it all at the same, all together at the same temperature, but we're getting different results.

uh, results depending on where that malt is in the, in the malt bed. And so you get this almost, um, beautiful variation, whereas in crystal malts, you do not want at all any variation. Everything you want everything to be homogeneously gelatinized. And so, um, that is like our product here, caramel light and caramel, uh, dark. Um, those are hybrid malts. We, we produce those in the kiln and some have a very crystalline, um,

you know, C40, C60 flavor, and some have very much a Vienna or Munich flavor. And when you combine those into a single bag, it can, you know, creates an all new product in and of itself. Interesting. Interesting. Can you walk us real quick through the process, how the process is different from, say, kilning a colored malt, okay, or a kilned malt or making a caramel crystal malt?

uh but sure so i mean i i i touched on this a little bit typically full crystal malts um those are actually they're kind of one of the main outliers here we take green malt so it's been steeped and germinated but it has not been killed still wet right yep still moisture is still about you know 38 40 percent and we move that into the roaster uh we

We heat that roaster up above barley's gelatinization temperatures, and that inherently gelatinizes all of the starchy endosperm. It will present almost like you've kind of liquefied the inside of the kernel. It's not actual liquefaction. It is gelatinization, but from the naked eye, it appears to somewhat be the same thing.

And then that, because that's in the drum roaster and being turned and homogeneously heated and everybody's getting the same treatments, um, that is where you get that consistency of glassiness and those kilned malts that are, that are colored, um,

post gelatinization, that's where you get that kind of striated variety of malt types. And we are gelatinizing those in the kiln by essentially recirculating our airflow. And so hot air in goes through the bed, picks up moisture and then goes through the exhaust vents. But then we send that

now warm, but very, very still humid air back through the kiln. And we are essentially heating up. We were heating up that malt with its moisture because gelatinization is really the combination of moisture and heat. You're heating up that moisture and it's essentially exploding the starch granule. And now that also leads very, very high molecular weight dextrins. And so that's why

Crystal malts, for instance, are not fermentable. Yeast, look at those and say, I'm going to tap out now. I have no interest in trying to

metabolize that monster and so that is where you'll get some residual sweetness in your beer uh using crystal malts because the yeast does not ferment those um those long chain dextrins out whereas with a hybrid or kilned caramel malt um you will have less residual sugar you'll have you know you have a little bit for the stuff at the bottom of the of the

the bed layer, but you're kind of combining the attributes of a crystal and a high kiln Vienna or Munich into one product. Cool. Well, finally, I wanted to hit on roasted malts, which are often considered a separate group. How are they different?

So dry roasted malts are, they go through the same process steep of every other kiln malt. So steep germinated, moved into the kiln. And yes. And so we essentially create a roasting base. And so that can be whatever you want it to be. I mean, we have malts that are roasted off of Vienna malts. We have a malt, our biscuit malt is roasted off of our English pale or our pale ale malts. And yeah,

So the world's your oyster when it comes to what you start with in the drum roaster. But then what we're, when we put whatever base we're choosing to use in, um, by choosing a different base, you can build on the flavor that is already within that base malt. Um, you know, typically like a, uh,

dark chocolate or a black malt, um, you roasted off any, any, uh, resemblance of what that original base malt was. And so you're typically, you're typically using a much more neutral, um, malt base, either a pale Pilsner, maybe perhaps even chip malt, um, and building that malt from there. There's, there's not a big reason to, you know,

run roasting base malt through a full malting cycle um you know four or five days of germination just to essentially you know and create all of these this enzymes break down all these you know break down all this protein um get an acceptable uh s over t index and then roast it to oblivion and so typically we will um in some of our malts we'll use a chip malt base to um it it

preserve some of the texture of the finished malt as we get higher up in temperatures in those very very dark malts they become they can come very very friable or they can i mean even beyond crushability they kind of you could kind of mill them in your hands um and then uh so sometimes a lighter modified malt to start with will help preserve some of the texture on the on the

finished end of those darker malts. But really what we're doing, we're just putting the base in a, in a drum roaster. It's, it can be a drum and it can be a roasting ball. It can, there's all sorts of different technology. Um, oil roasting is now, you know, a thing there's, there's definitely, um, different ways to go about this, but you're just applying heat at different

temperatures and at different increments and in different cycles to create a finished malt. And so, you know, we...

we leverage quite a few tools of, you know, a very slow increase to a target temperature or, you know, going up maybe 10 degrees every five minutes, or we can go up to a high temperature and then let it kind of slow roll down with no heat and kind of cool itself off and then reheat that drum up. I kind of liken it to kind of layering flavor in the kitchen when you're, when you're making dinner. And so I kind of take the same, you know,

you know, philosophical approach, uh, roasting malt as I do cooking. Um, cause you're inherently kind of doing the same thing, except you can start with all different sorts of bases. And that is really, you know, moisture has been taken out of the, the equation here. And, you know, that's where the term dry roasting would come from. You're essentially just, um, going through the stages of, um,

of caramelization and, um, paralysis certainly into the big black malts. Um, you know, you're really riding the line of, of full carbonization on some of those, those very, very dark black malts. Um, and so that's a little bit more straightforward, the dry roasting piece. Sure. Um, well in your presentation, you gave some great descriptions of how malts are named versus what they really are. In fact, um, can you give us a few examples of

Yeah. So I figured we could play just a game here and, you know, I'll be completely honest. I, I could be wrong, but I, so what I, what I did is I took malts that I have absolutely no idea or from a, from an outsider perspective, I would have no idea what on earth it is. And I took the name out of it and I tried to figure out what I'm, what I would be playing with if I, if I was using this malt. And so, and we'll leave company names out of it. It's irrelevant anyways, but,

Folks may recognize some, but it is what it is. So extra special malt. No idea. Not a clue. So if you really look at that descriptor, what I would suggest that that would be is really a hybrid caramel malt. So a kiln produced caramel malt that is then taken and roasted to about 100 lovabond.

Well, you mentioned I was thinking of Special B, which of course is a little bit darker than that, but it's probably in that same ring. Yeah, and I think I've got that down here. Yeah, I mean, it's essentially the same concept, but roasted to a slightly higher color spec. So I think that's like...

Typically like 110 and 120 or so. They're both kind of in that, what I call the harsh zone there between 70 and 200 levobond, you know. I absolutely, that's where you get a lot of like tangs and acidity. Funny flavors, yeah. Yep, yep, yep. And so you would not be able to kind of, that changes how you would possibly use that malt as opposed to be like, well, I've got to use this extra special malt or special beef. Because it's extra special. I don't know.

Yeah, because I don't know what it is, but I like the result. And so I can't mess with it. You know, it's important to understand that there's no brand loyalty in malt. And it's unfortunate because that's very much a commodity market approach. And that's, you know, I hope we can start to kind of change the commodity, the commodity process.

view of finished malt. Yes, we are using a commodity raw material. And when it gets into heritage lines, I would even start to, I would start to debate that. But, yeah,

In order to create, you know, if we're going to take a commodity view of this, that would mean that we're thinking every malt is malt is malt is malt. Every pale malt is you can all be switched. It doesn't matter whoever's cheaper. It all tastes the same. And in order to combat that, that equivalency swap approach,

Malt companies have created malts that are proprietary to them and name them very on descript names. It's marketing, right? I mean, it's Coke versus Pepsi. It's, you know, it's marketing. You got to differentiate your product. Yeah, it's, it's brilliant. But as a consumer, we still need to know what the hell we're, we're working with here. Sure. Well, give us a few more. Yeah. So a special roast from what I would imagine,

Reading the descriptor, I would essentially say,

view that as a very dark biscuit malt so we're you know we're a darker biscuit malt about 30 lovabonds um you know our biscuit malt is typically like at murphy and root is about 20 to 25 sure um so bumping that up you're you're essentially just putting that biscuit character on a microphone and really expressing that um well we've done this with blonde rye uh we've taken our rye malt and we we

we light roast it as opposed to dark roast it because we're actually accentuating the rye character. It was my response to what I view as the abomination known as chocolate rye, which to me has stripped out all of the attributes of rye trying to get to that chocolate color. And our blonde rye is,

45, 50 lovabond. Um, and so you really, it actually is a very, very loud rye component, but you can use it in much more smaller, much smaller amounts to deliver a rye attribute. Um, but you can also use it at different amounts to, to create color that you would otherwise perhaps use like a crystal malt for those kind of brass or Amber, um,

hues, that blonde rye at its lighter roast can be used as more of a coloring tool as well, as opposed to only being able to use it in some big rye bomb of the beer. And so this is kind of reinventing some malt. So a darker biscuit malt, that sounds pretty good, but it's much more helpful for me to know that I think I'm just using a darker biscuit malt as opposed to

um special roast sure sure uh yeah we have time for one more please go ahead two okay so um let's get into um crystal extra dark

Um, I guess it depends on what your dark is to then make it extra dark. Um, but this is, it's, it's a high color crystal malt. So I would say it's about a crystal 175 crystal 180 or so. Wow. That's a, yeah, that's like a special, a special B plus, right. Or something like that.

It would be, it would certainly in the color side of things. I mean, we have a crystal two 60, that's a seasonal release. I mean, it tastes like s'mores and I mean, from the beginning to the end, you get the, the char of the husk, you get a little bit of graham cracker there. You get the charred sugar sweetness that presents kind of as marshmallow. And then you get this just persistent lingering chocolate note on the, on the tail end of it. And,

And so, I mean, that's probably better. The one, one 75 is probably pretty harsh. I would think, right. That, that is, I have not used that one, but I guess it's probably pretty harsh because again, it is within that. It is within that, that no man, that harsh zone. But this is where we then start looking at risk percentages. You know, you can,

An otherwise somewhat maybe unappealing sounding malt, if you get the grist percentage dialed in that you could do through malt sensory, like through hot steep methods, you can really dial in that grist percentage and get all of the best things about that malt and nothing.

not and leave out the stuff. Oh, I mean, I use special B, which is a very harsh malt in a lot of my porters and stouts, but I use it in very small percentages. You know, we're talking single digits kind of thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And so, and I guess, so just a couple of,

I'll do one that's an interesting one. So Imperial, Imperial malt. Pale malt? I don't know what it is. It is, from what I can tell, just a dark, a fairly dark Munich malt. And sometimes these, and it's, you know, 15 to 20 lovabonds.

Sometimes these are malts that are fit, you know, they are filling a gap within that given maltster's portfolio. So whereas like we have Munich 15, like this is a pretty standard malt for us. If you're a malt company with a lighter Munich only, this Imperial would be

a, you know, your dark version, or maybe you have a light and a dark Munich, and then this Imperial is slightly darker than the, even the dark Munich. So, um, you know, view these things as both, um, somewhat self-serving from a malt company perspective, cause they're trying to kind of cover the color spectrum here, um, and give new flavors, but also, um, you know, Imperial's not very helpful from a, what am I using standpoint? Yeah.

And then just a couple others. I mean, I think folks know this. You know, victory malt, that's for all intents and purposes biscuit malt. And carafoam, that is dextrin malt. There's two different ways to make dextrin malt. You can kiln a finished green malt and essentially start the kiln at a higher temperature. The denatures limit dextrinase. And that leaves... That does not...

it doesn't allow that limit dextrinase to cleave off those long chain dextrins. And so you're leaving behind, um, those high molecular weight dextrins and that's helping with foam and, uh, and body. Um, but you can also fully, you know, fully gelatinize your, your, uh,

what I would call our crystal base. And so, you know, you're, we're putting green malt in the roaster, fully gelatinizing that. Well, by doing the full gelatinization, we have inherently denatured limit dextranase. And so that can also be used as a dextran malt if we don't re roast it to a crystal color spec. And so coming, coming out of the roaster, fully gelatinized and dehydrated our base crystal is, you know,

one and a half to lovabond um so it's fairly colorless from the standpoint so you're not contributing a lot of color for the benefits of the body and the foam that you're getting from it yeah and those those malts are really just used for body and foam so makes sense exactly okay um well i want to give you a chance to mention your your online store i know you have a great online store now where people can find your malts and then uh give us your closing thoughts if

Well, yeah, I mean, I, you know, the, the grain store is always, uh, is always up and, and open for, uh, for home brewers. We, uh, fulfill both as onsite pickup and then, uh, as an e-commerce store, we'll also ship, um, direct to your door. And it is, you know, it's just straight from the source malt. We've always, I think I've said this on a previous, um,

podcast it's you know this is not our way of paying credence to our home brewer champions i mean they for all intents and purposes put our company on the map when we were um when we were infants in this uh in this space um and so i just always drove me nuts that uh

They're our biggest champions, but it's really hard to get malt into their hands when you're working in a wholesale format. And so we had the opportunity to open the grain store. We took it. It can order by the pound or 5, 10 or 25 prepackaged milled or not milled. Like I said earlier, we've added some hops to the, to the store as well. And so it's just a fun, it's a fun additional project to do here. Can you mention the website please?

Yeah. Yeah. Murphy and Rude Malting, murphyroodmalting.com slash shop. If you go to our website, murphyroodmalting.com, there's a big arrow that says home brewers that's pointing down to our grain store link. So hopefully it'll be pretty easy to find. And your closing thoughts on malting, malt names and inherent confusion.

Yeah. So, I mean, this is, you know, this is really a way to smarten up as a, as a brewer and better understand your ingredients. There's nothing worse than making something you love, but not really knowing what it was that you were using. You know, it works, you know, it's high quality, but you don't really know what it is. And that can be a little disconcerting. And so, yeah,

All you have to do is take the name out of it and focus on the color and the descriptors, and you can start to really, um, break down and get to the core base concept of what this malt is. And hopefully, um,

It will reduce the number of surprises if you're using a new malt, or it will allow you to swap in a new malt of similar but maybe advantageously different flavor parameters. And so it just gives you more tools in the box and can hopefully make you a little bit more informed in recipe development. Well, thank you, Jeff. Really appreciate you coming on the show.

Always love being here. Thanks, Brad. My guest today, Jeff Bloom, founder and head malter at Murphy and Rood Malting Company in Charlottesville, Virginia. Thank you again, Jeff. Thank you.

Well, a big thank you to Jeff Bloom for joining me this week. Thanks also to Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They recently added a new collection of more than 500 beer recipes from pro brewers to their site, and most let you download the Beersmith recipe file. The new Craft Beer and Brewing recipe site is at beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes. Again, that site is beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes.

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