How Malt Extract is Made
If you’re a homebrewer and brew like 92 percent of your fellow hobbyists, you use malt extract syrup or powder at least some of the time. A lot of all-grain brewers like to give lip service to the idea that all-grain brewing makes better beer than extract brewing. But the real difference is in the brewer, not whether you start with grain or extract. Do you practice good sanitation? Do you pitch enough yeast?
All-grain brewing gives you an extra measure of flexibility, but extract brews can be outstanding. In fact malt extract manufacturers don’t just sell their product to homebrewers. Several commercial breweries use it, too, to supplement their own mash. At least one brewery, Pacific Coast Brewing Co. in Oakland, Calif., has made award-winning commercial beers strictly from extract.
There’s no magic in the process of making malt extract, although the outcome is something of a magical substance for homebrewers. Malt extract is produced in a standard big-brewery brewhouse. It’s made in large batches of many barrels (a barrel is 31 gallons).
A typical extract manufacturer’s brewhouse consists of the type of glistening stainless steel equipment you’d find in a large microbrewery: a mash tun, brew kettle, wort chiller. But there are two important differences. First, you won’t find rows of fermenters because other than for testing purposes, extract manufacturers don’t actually complete the beer. Second, you will find a large, stainless steel mechanism with four 70-foot towers called a condenser. The condenser removes water from the wort, making it into packagable extract.
The process begins with a malt bill based on the type of extract to be made, typically two-row or six-row barley for pale malt extract, two- or six-row plus light caramel and Munich malt for amber malt extract, for example. Kits begin with a suitable grain bill for the style to be brewed. A stout, for example, might include two- or six-row malt, black malt, dark caramel malt and, for a dry stout, possibly black barley.
Generally, the brewer chooses a temperature program mash, sometimes called step infusion. He adds malt to water and heats it to a series of specific temperatures to maximize the amount of useful sugars in the extract. Once he completes the mashing process he sends the grains through a lautering stage in which water is added to collect additional sugars that remain on the grains.
The brewer then boils the wort for 30 to 90 minutes depending on the type of extract being made. Hopped extracts use the longer boil to obtain the hop bitterness. Hopping is generally done at the start of the boil and partway through the boil. Aromatic hops are not used because the aroma would be lost during the condensing process.
After the boil the wort travels through a wort chiller and into a whirlpool, where the trub settles out. When the wort clears, it runs through a filter and into the evaporator. A typical evaporator consists of four 70-foot towers and what looks like a typical brew kettle. The wort runs into the towers, which have a perforated plate at the top. The plate separates the wort into droplets, and the droplets run down 72 small tubes inside the tower. A vacuum actually pulls water through the stainless steel as the wort drops through the tubes. “I know it sounds impossible, but that’s really what happens and it’s very effective,” says Mary Anne Gruber of Briess Malting Co.
By the time the wort makes it to the kettle-like apparatus, called a finishing pan, more than half of the water has been removed.
The finishing pan removes more water to produce a syrup of 80 percent malt solids and 20 percent water. (Dry malt extract, made in a dryer, is about 99 percent malt solids and 1 percent water). Then the extract is packaged and shipped to a retailer, waiting for a thirsty homebrewer to make it into a tasty beer.
Using Extract
The next time you use malt extract, here are a few tips that might make the process go a little easier.
If you’re using syrup, soak the can in warm to hot water before you add it to the brewpot. This will make it pour much more easily and quickly. If you’re steeping grains as part of your extract brew, keep the temperature below 170° F and steep for at least 20 minutes. Never boil steeping grains; you’ll end up with an astringent taste in your beer.
Add extract to hot but not boiling water. The hotter the water, the easier the extract will dissolve. But trying to mix it into boiling water increases the chance that the extract will scorch — and that you’ll burn your hand on hot steam.
Even if you’re using a hopped kit, add some aroma hops either at the end of the boil or by dry hopping in the secondary fermenter. Consider using distilled or purified water for all-extract brews. The extract maker has used water with brewing salts for his mash. If you live in an area with hard water, using tap water may result in too many minerals in the beer.
Say a toast to the brewer of your extract, who made homebrewing quicker, easier, and just as flavorful.
