A project worth its malt
An Alameda malting facility wants to change the beer world
Nestled in an unassuming building constructed in 1944 as a dry goods storage facility inside the Alameda Naval Air Station, a new business making malted grains has taken root.
Locally, Admiral Maltings is the first of its kind — not just in Alameda, but in all of California. It is the new project from well-known Bay Area brewers Ron Silberstein (Thirsty Bear) and Dave McLean (Magnolia), with investment from Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman.
Their goal: to create a local alternative to the industrial malt used by the Bay Area’s breweries and distilleries. Admiral Maltings plans to start its first batch of malt toward the end of July, with an attached pub to open in the fall.
Already, the team has partnered with family-owned farms in the Sacramento Valley and other parts of California to grow grain that will meet the needs of craft brewers in the Bay Area. As they put it, it will be a malt designed by people in the local beer industry, for people making beer and whiskey professionally.
Most beer consists of four core ingredients: grain (usually malted), hops, yeast and water. In recent years, the craft beer world — and its consumers — have come to understand the importance and intricacies of hops and yeast in special brews, be it an India pale ale with fresh hops or a saison with proprietary yeast strains.
Malt has often been overshadowed, because it has been industrialized and obtained through only a few facilities.
“Currently, craft brewers do not have local, unique choices (for malt),” says Silberstein. “It’s to beer what grapes are to wine.”
John Martin, co-owner of Drake’s Brewing Company in San Leandro, describes the difference in taste to be akin to how superior the flavor of freshly roasted coffee is to months-old coffee.
“Working directly with a small and local raw materials company is very important to us, as well as the opportunity to support and work with small local farmers that will grow the barley we will be using,” says Martin. “This will be truly going from ‘grain to glass’ — that’s almost unheard in craft brewing today.”
The process of malting involves soaking and germinating the grain. This, in turn, creates enzymes that break down proteins and starches in the brewing process into simple sugars, which the yeast consumes and turns into alcohol and carbon dioxide. It’s important work — no malt, no enzymes, no beer.
Industrial malting is typically done in large, stainless-steel tanks that hold hundreds of tons of grain; the walls are several feet thick and it’s all aerated with an auger and forced air.
On the other hand, floor-malting is the traditional way of malting. It is a slower and gentler technique wherein the soaked grain is spread out onto a special floor to a depth of four to six inches thick, and then allowed to sprout, all while it’s carefully raked and turned by hand. Few places in the country still implement this laborintensive method, which is said to produce deeper, richer flavor.
The scarcity of floor-malting facilities also make it difficult for first-timers to learn the method, says Curtis Davenport, who is heading up the malting operations at Admiral Maltings.
A former farmer, he previously experimented malting his organic grain in 2011 in the Santa Barbara area. To learn the craft, he visited all the floor-malting facilities he could, which turned out to be four: Valley Malt in Massachusetts, River Bend in North Carolina, Colorado Maltings in Colorado and Rebel Malt in Nevada.
Not too long ago, Silberstein reached out to Davenport about buying his malted barley for his Thirsty Bear brewery, but by chance, that initial call sprouted a plan for them to open a brand-new floor malting facility in Alameda.
The potential of a local malt supply is intriguing, because for years, the brewing industry has put a premium on consistency over regional and seasonal variations in flavor. The result is that brewing ingredients are broadly homogenized. Like hops, malt can be more than just some interchangeable ingredient in beer — there are differences in flavor that most consumers have never considered.
“Malt, grown in different places will have different characteristics, and all of that malt is blended together and sold that way so that it’s really consistent,” says Jesse Friedman of Almanac Beer Co., which will open a brewery and taproom next door to Admiral Maltings in October.
“But sometimes, we don’t want super consistent; we want unique and interesting, and that sense of terroir. So, for us, to get small-batch malt grown in California is really, really interesting.”
Admiral Maltings plans to begin by malting barley, rye, wheat, oats and corn. Down the line, there are considerations of ancient and alternative grain experiments as well.
By focusing on developing the flavors and terroir from the grain through the floor-malting and roasting, Admiral Maltings hopes to maintain the unique identity of the grain variety and farm. Not surprisingly, sourcing the grain will be a very large part of the operations, so all the grain they use will be either organic or grown “notill.” (“No-till” refers to a technique that minimally disturbs the soil, better trapping carbon from the atmosphere in the soil.)
The malt won’t be for beer only, either. At St. George Spirits, also in Alameda, master distiller Lance Winters plans to create a uniquely Californian malt whiskey. The floor-malting process, coupled with access to a variety of local grains, offers him more choices — and the ability to create a spirit with an identifiable sense of place.
“If you’ve got more variety available out there, you’ve got more ways to express your individual thumbprint,” says Winters. “It’s really about being able to have a deeper color palette.”
The question of how these malts will make their way into the product lines of local breweries remains to be seen. For many brewers, simply swapping out their base grain for Admiral Maltings grain may not work; it won’t be as simple as substitutions in a recipe.
There is also concern about availability; John Martin of Drake’s is planning on using Admiral Maltings with small, one-off batches to start. Yet Drake’s uses hundreds of tons of grain a year, so Admiral Maltings will be only be used as a small part of the lineup.
“From an industrial production standpoint, they are going to be a very small malt house, so my expectations are that we will be very limited on the amount of malt that we can get from them,” says Almanac’s Friedman. “We’ll probably start doing some really clean experiments that showcase (the malt), so we can do a baseline.”
Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada is one of the few brewers who has been making a grower-producer beer. Sierra Nevada has farmed its own barley and hops for many years, using its crops to make an organic Estate Ale. For Grossman, Admiral Maltings solves an old problem: having to send the barley out of state to be malted.
“When I started up in 1980, I used to drive my old ‘57 Chevy flatbed down to San Francisco to pick up my own malt each month at the Bauer Schweitzer Malting company, which was located by Fisherman’s Wharf,” says Grossman.
“I sold the truck, but hopefully I will soon be able to make that trek again and pick up a load of malt for a batch of beer.”