Beer School 101
Malt is the second largest ingredient, after water, in beer. It is the soul of beer.
Malt however, gets treated like Cinderella. It does the yeoman’s work and the hops fight for all your attention.
We brew British Isle style ales. To do this we use imported ingredients. This includes our malt.
Recently our malt purveyor brought Irish malt to our attention. Before we switched malts we went straight to the source in Cork Ireland for a visit. The folks at the Malting Company of Ireland are fantastic. What I thought would be a brief visit and tasting turned into hours of malt science and history.
The Malting Company of Ireland Limited has been producing the highest quality malted grains since 1858. The naturally fertile soils of Munster and Leinster, combined with a mild, temperate, oceanic climate and long growing season provide ideal conditions to produce premium quality malting barley.
Chris O’ Flynn met us on the coldest wettest day I have ever spent in Ireland. The passion he has for the business would have been enough to make the sale. He took us from the loading of the incoming malt, through the malt process, the packaging, and finally the lab where the end product is tested.
The change from our English malt to our Irish malt will hardly be noticeable. We feel our beer is very good now. So, why do we go through all the fuss? Why go to Cork? We did it because our Beer is our passion. We are proud of our Ales. The small changes will bring us closer to the (cue heavenly music) the “PERFECT PINT”!
As for why we tasted dozens of Irish craft beers in dozens of pubs that, dear people, was hard research..