hi everyone welcome to Kate's Ag i'm kate and i'm here with ryan feifly
and he will be telling us all about malt so have you ever wondered what malt is i definitely have
and i've gotten a ton of questions on my barley videos what we use our barley for so today
ryan's going to take us on a tour we're going to learn all about it it's super exciting
so let's get into the video now ryan's going to explain exactly what malt is
ah hello everyone malt is basically the first step in order to get sugar out of a grain
most malt is used for barley but it also can you can also use a sugar for many other products such
as malted milk bottles or malted syrup or even ultimately mold vinegar oh yes definitely and
we have some of those with us here today and ryan is a craft malter so that's absolutely
amazing and he's going to share a little bit more about his operation how is malt made
generally it's a three-step process you take the raw barley of malt quality you get it wet
to soak it and you want to get it to sprout so the first step is generally considered the steep
and that's getting the water into the barley then once the water the barley's sufficiently
hydrated that next we move to the next step which we call germination and that's where
you let the barley kernel start to grow just like it's in the ground but we're tricking it
growing and that's usually about a four to five day process and once it's grown to a sufficient
point we now kill it down or dry it back down that's roughly a one to two day process to dry
back down and get it down to moisture where it's now against uh shelf stable and wouldn't
spoil of course the reason we do that is because the starches in a barley cream are all locked up
in the cells and we want to get them released and malting is tricking the kernel into growing
and it's starting to break down the cell walls and start to create the precursors of sugar that
it can use to fuel itself out of the ground but sadly as malters we don't let it get that far we
dry it down and kill it and then it's ready those sugars and starches are ready
for subsequent processes for the brewer to use or someone making mulch sugar to use and they get the
sugar out of the barley that's very interesting thank you barley is grain that we grow on our farm
and ryan grows it on his farm and lots of farmers grow and now we're kind of going to
show you what types of barley two row and six row and here are what they look like
so common types of barley are two row and six row could you explain a little bit more about
uh what that is yeah um this particular one is a six row barley and if you were able to look at
it from the end you can see six rows this one is a two row barley and if you look at from the end
there's two rows six row used to be very common in north america but i don't know over the last
maybe 30 years or so most of breeding efforts have gone into two rows so pretty much everyone
especially in montana grow two row barley anymore i do there's a little bit of six row grown in
other parts of the country now i've gotten a lot of questions about the difference between wheat
and barley and here on the left we have wheat and then on the right we have barley and if you notice
the wheat doesn't have a husk on it and a husk is the little covering that the barley has now
the reason barley is so important for malting is because of its husk now ryan's going to explain
a little bit why that's so important like kate said the on wheat the barley the husk is there
when it's growing in the in the head of the grain but then it gets blown out the back of the combine
with barley it's attached and stays attached at all times and that's absolutely perfect for
barley being used for beer because later on in the process that husk actually gets used as the filter
in the brewing process to filter the liquids away from the solids that's very interesting i mean the
whole process is so fascinating thank you ryan has the malted barley and then i have normal barley
and you notice it looks a little bit like the same but there's big differences that ryan's going to
talk about that make it way more delicious to eat malted barley yes on the if you actually chew it
there's a significant difference the malt is much crisper and actually has a little bit of sweetness
and that's because the internal cell walls have been broken down and all the starches are
starting to turn into sugar and it's actually quite tasty yes definitely and it's so interesting
i tried a normal barley and then the malted barley the crunchy barley and it's so different
although it looks very similar now ryan has a super special way of making maul so how do you
kind of make your mouth i spoke about the three steps the steep the germ and the kiln and most
larger scale malt houses actually have three separate vessels and they move it around i came up
with a drum design that i built here on the farm and we actually do all three steps within the same
drum the steep the germ and the kiln and one of the reasons i like the drum so much is because as
you're molting things heat up and you really need to stir it a lot to get a very uniform quality
product and in the larger vessels it's hard to stir frankly all the large commercial malt houses
would love to have a drum they just can't make enough but on the craft scale drums are perfect
for what we do it's absolutely incredible i cannot even begin to believe that you could build such an
incredible machine yeah it's one of the things we do on the farm right we love building things
and designing things and and uh thankfully we're farmers and that gives us the ability to do it
definitely it is so special to buy craft products and craft malt because you get a totally different
experience and you're supporting local farmers and also local craft malters thank you i agree
why do we eat malt we want to get sugar to get sugar out of something like a grape is
quite easy you just squeeze it and then you have sugar to get sugar out of a grain is a little more
tricky and we have to that's what malting is we have to trick the grain into growing
so it is going to start fueling itself with sugar so of course in the malting process we stop it
early and then we can later use that sugar that we formed in the kernel to brew or make malt syrup or
or molten melt balls yes definitely thank you what is the history on your family farm ah thank you um
my family is mostly uh germans from russia immigrants they came one set of my family came
to montana in about 1915 and the other came in the late 1930s they homesteaded around here just south
of town in power and the other one's homesteaded on what we call the fairfield bench over here
oh okay a bunch of germans went to russia and they didn't work out so well there so then they
left russia and came to america and they came my ancestors came to south dakota in the late 1800s
and i guess it didn't work out so well there and in 1915 and in the 1930s they came to
montana and homesteaded and i'm now the fourth generation and we still own and farm the family
homestead that's just amazing those are my great grandparents who came over in 1915 and 1913 and
step on down now i'm fourth generation farming and we've got the third generation hiding over there
yep i started farming in 1974 and uh ryan started in 2007 i think yeah about 2007 when i came back
well i'm a fourth generation as well okay and so that's so cool yeah yeah it's been a
long that's all i ever wanted to do is farm really yeah that's amazing my wife graduated from college
we packed up the trailer and moved to power and she cried the whole way and now she wouldn't
leave power if her life depended on it and i had to move to scotland to get my wife to come back
that's so fantastic thank you you're welcome my grandparents were a matched marriage
my grandpa homesteaded in power in 1915. wow lots of fun family history back yes great history thank
you so much yep you're very welcome how did you get into malting well after uh after university i
got an engineering degree and i was as an engineer i worked as an engineer for eight years and
i don't know it seemed to be half the engineers at the firm i worked with were home brewing so
as everyone was doing i got into ho brewing and just absolutely loved the process but one thing
i always didn't like about my home brewing is that i couldn't use my own family's barley to brew my
home brew beer so i ended up eventually building this little drum machine here too and made
my family's barley into malt and used it in my home brewing and then i guess you could say things
got a little out of control and i started making more and more malt and now we got this drum that's
amazing thank you do you have any tips for people who want to start homebrewing or malting barley um
homebrewing is a fantastic hobby and there's so many resources on the internet and it's actually
not near as hard as you think you can make it as as complicated as you want or you can make
it as simple as you want so yeah i would just get on the internet start researching
um you obviously you can buy your malt initially and if you want to
get really crazy and start making your own malt then i guess get a hold of me or cade
here and we'll get you some raw barley and you can practice molding yourself that's amazing thank you
now what do you do with your malt uh here at farm farm malt we like to sell to local montana
breweries we take our mall we package it into bags and sell it to local montana breweries um another
cool thing that we really do is we actually will take talk to some of our brewing friends and get
barley or wheat we can malt wheat too from their local farming communities and we'll custom malted
for it then when they use their malt that molt and their craft beers then they have that super
hyper local connection to their surrounding community definitely and so if you ever need
any malted barley ryan and farm powerball is the perfect place to get it from because
this is the best process ever and you have the best operation ever thank you what malt looks
like when we're done killing and it's a dried product but you can still see the roots are
still attached so uh the last step in what we do here at farm power mold is we have to knock
the roots off and clean it up and bag it so here's a quick overview of ryan's process
it's very exciting thank you we keep it simple here at farm paramount we bring in bulk bags from
our grain bins outside let it maculate we'll put it in our little auger here into our seed cleaner
and from the seed cleaner it goes into the drum we once it's in the drum we'll add water to the
suspicion amount of weight our drum is actually on scales so we know how much water to add and
we turn it a lot of course to keep things mixed up after it's sufficiently hydrated
we let it germinate for four or five six days depending on what kind of malt we're going to make
during all that we are bringing in fresh air so we extract the co2 and we're also humidifying the
air that's coming in to make sure and we're also acclimating the temperature of the air
coming really interesting to give that perfect conditions for that uh barley to germinate it's
super technical yeah well i suppose once it is germinated sufficiently and all the cell walls
have been broken down at that point we want to stop the growth and that's where we kill it and we
will put on the hot air at different temperatures depending what type of malt we want to make or
we can even put hot air on when it's wet and and keep oh okay we can keep all the humidity
in there and caramelize the malt if we want or we can bring in fresh air dry air and dry down
the malt and we use temperature and humidity and different levels to make different types of malt
once the kiln is done it's dried down sufficiently to now it's shelf stable and we can
give it to brewers and they don't have to use it right away oh and it's very interesting how
you can take just a couple of your barley the way you melt it it can create tons of different
flavors and it's just the same varieties of barley can create so many different things yeah
i speculate maybe maybe 50 different malts are commonly used in a brewery
and yes depending on how you process it you can take the same barley and make those malts yes once
once the barley's done killing we still have the root attached and whatnot
so most companies use a d bearder we didn't really want to spend money on a d bearder we
modified the top of our auger here to kind of rough up and d beard and break off the roots of
the malt and we run it back to the cleaner then so those roots get separated and if you wanted to
oh yeah here's a bunch of roots from our last malting run and a wild oat seed but uh
that's so interesting how seed cleaning is very important in your process as well so if you
haven't seen that video definitely go check that one out i did a video about seed cleaning as well
so it's just so cool how they all are a part of different operations absolutely yeah if you didn't
remove these roots your your beer wouldn't taste as good as you want thank you so much of course
so although i'm 16 and i definitely don't drink beer i think it's definitely something we should
talk about and the brewing process yeah earlier i talked about how you can take the same malt
and make up or same barley excuse me and make up to 50 different malts here at farm
power mall we make about six different types of malt most of them are base malts like a
pilsner or a two row or even get a little higher kiln like a vienna and munich mulch
and the brewer will take once they're done with here we'll get to the brewer and the
brewer will take all these different malts and that's kind of where their art comes in they'll
take those malts and mix them in different ratios and make the different types of beers
of course they have hops and whatnot too and they will grind up our malt and add water
and at a very specific temperature enzymes that we created in the malting process get activated
and that's to find those enzymes do the final step and chop all the carbohydrates and what and
starches up into sugars and then they now have the sugar they need for the yeast to fuel the yeast
and the yeast ultimately make the ethanol that's incredibly fascinating yes all of the technical
behind-the-scenes super interesting work leads to the final product that you've all been hoping for
a beer a beard and although i can't drink it ron can explain a little more well i'll be
honest it's quite satisfying at the end of the hard day on the farm to enjoy a beer that you
grew the grain you molted it and you delivered it to the local brewery so although kate can't
i'm going to enjoy a wonderful craft beer from my local craft brewery make sure to support your
local farmers and drink local you're supporting family operations and people like ryan thank you
so much for the tour this has been amazing now to learn more about ryan and farm power malt
go to farmpowermalt.com thank you so much for watching now make sure to like and subscribe bye
prost