Small Mesh-Bags within Industrial Malting Batches as a Simple Non-Expensive Alternative Micro-Malting Technique

Abstract

In malting and brewing, early assessment of small batches of barley is of great interest. Thus, micro-malting methods on a laboratory scale are needed in order to determine the potential quality of raw materials, particularly of new advanced barley genotypes or registered varieties grown under alternative environmental conditions, as well as for countless R&D projects. However, the applicability of laboratory-scale results to industry is often poor and the necessary equipment expensive. The aim of this experiment was to validate and optimize a simple alternative micro-malting mesh-bag-based method to be more representative of the industrial quality than other micro-malting based methods. Comparing the new alternative method on the laboratory and industrial scale, it was observed that, in absolute terms, the quality of the malt obtained through standard micro-malting laboratory equipment is overrated compared with that obtained through the other two methods. Furthermore, the relative malt quality through the mesh-bag was closer to the industrial sample quality. There were no significant statistical allelopathic interactions between alternative bagged genotypes and genotypes used in the commercial batches. Through this alternative micro-malting method, there is the possibility to study the varietal and environmental effects on the malt quality. This alternative micro-malting bag scale was inexpensive, easy to implement, safe, and more representative of actual industrial scale data. Supplemental data for this article is available online at