The two systems can be converted using the following formulas: Europeans use a corresponding but different scale known as EBC (European Brewers Convention). The palest Pilsner malt has a value of 2 SRM, while the blackest roast malt can be more than 600 SRM. In North America, color is measured in SRM (Standard Reference Method) units or degrees Lovibond, an older visual method that is essentially the same scale. For base malts, there is also data on diastatic (enzymatic) power. These values can be grouped into several categories, including color, moisture, extract, modification, proteins and physical characteristics. The terms for the values reported in each malt lot analysis vary slightly, depending on the maltster. Freud, and we predict you will enjoy your beer more than the doctor did his cigar. It’s a lot less personal than going on the couch with Dr. Come along with us as we examine a typical lot analysis and explain the various entries. A couple of them have a feature on their web sites for viewing lot numbers online.Īs you might expect, the vocabulary of malt lot analysis is technical, but it’s not that hard to learn to interpret. If you buy malt in quantities of less than a full bag, it’s possible to obtain the lot number (printed on each bag) from your local homebrew shop and contact the maltster directly, who will be happy to provide the information via telephone, fax or e-mail. Homebrewers and small craft brewers can request one from their malt supplier. Most commercial breweries require that a lot analysis accompany each malt shipment they receive. Standardized testing procedures are used to test specific qualities that are significant to brewers. To create a malt lot analysis, a sample of the finished malt is carefully analyzed in a laboratory. After kilning, the rootlets attached to the barley kernels are removed. Once the rootlets have grown sufficiently, the wet malt is heated (kilned) to dry the malt. The barley is then removed from the water and allowed to germinate. In malting, barley kernels are steeped in water, until the root sheath just penetrates the husk. Making maltīefore discussing malt lot analyses, it may help to briefly review the basics of malting. Even those brewers who are more of the “relax, don’t worry, etc.” school of homebrewing can benefit from this information. Some sheets give an average analysis, others are reported on a lot by lot basis. Malt spec sheets are available from virtually every malt producer to anyone who requests it. A malt spec sheet allows brewers to determine the characteristics and quality of the malt we use, select between different malts and also allow us to alter the amount of malt in a recipe or the procedures we use for handling it. This is because maltsters analyze the malt they produce and release the results in the form of a malt lot analysis. None of this, though, should be cause for despair among brewers who seek the highest levels of consistency. And the color of black roasted malt among different lots from the same maltster can vary by 40 degrees Lovibond (°L). For example, an increase of one percent in the moisture content of the base malt, along with a corresponding decrease in the extract potential, will lower the original gravity (OG) by more than one point. The remaining differences, however, can be significant enough to affect the gravity and color of the beer. And, some differences - most notably kernel size - can be tightly controlled by screening. Of course, maltsters know this and therefore blend barleys before malting and blend lots of the same kind of malt after malting. And despite strict modern quality control procedures, there are also subtle variations from lot to lot even at the same facility. This impacts such values as kernel size, starch, protein and moisture content. Variations in rainfall, soil nutrients and temperature during the growing season, along with storage and handling conditions, all affect the crop from year to year, region to region and even from field to field. Just as no two batches of beer are exactly alike, neither are lots of malt.
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