Subversive Malting & Brewing Co.
Dear Replicator, Subversive Malting & Brewing showed me something fresh: A brewery that’s malting all of their own grain. The beers were delicious and felt different. Seemed like a brewery really putting their heart into it. I particularly enjoyed their Dark Harvest stout, which I thought was very well balanced . . . the way a classic stout should be. Not only would I love to see the recipe for such a unique beer, but I would also be greatly interested to hear about the malting process and how they handle that side of the business as well.
Mike Mordente
Brooklyn, New York
For much of craft beer’s reign in the modern era, experimentation and extremes have been the name of the game. Breweries raced to out-hop and out-flavor just about every style — but for every action (and every trend), there is always an equal and opposite reaction.
In recent years we have seen drinkability and balance emerge as some of the key trends in craft beer, with a focus on lower ABVs and styles that showcase nuance above intensity. And so, after a decade of domination by Reinheitsgebot-defying pastry stouts, drinkers are once again in the mood for a classic, well-balanced stout or porter.
Catskill, New York-based, Subversive Malting & Brewing is no slouch when it comes to adventurous brewing — they just get started earlier in the process. Founded by longtime friends Max Ocean and Zane Coffey, Subversive was envisioned as a brewery with a timeless ethos: Malt is the soul of beer and by malting one’s own grains, a brewer can maintain the highest degree of control.
While the farm brewery movement of the past decade has returned much-needed attention to the importance of local agriculture, few craft breweries have taken this extra step of founding their own in-house malting operation. The reason is, ultimately, simple: Running a malthouse is genuinely a whole other business with all of its own quirks, pitfalls, and complexities. The real secret of Subversive Malting & Brewing, therefore, may simply be how Coffey and Ocean manage to find time for it all.
“The great thing about doing the malting, kilning, and roasting in-house is that it can function as an extension of the brewing process and the feedback loop is very, very short,” Coffey explains. Rather than tweaking percentages in recipes, Coffey says, they’re able to tweak the very grain making up the recipe itself. “I can say, hey this beer performed great in the brewhouse, we got lovely conversion, it lautered well, but we had a little less color than I wanted, or we got a higher extract than anticipated. Then we can go back and look at our malting process to see what happened on that side of production.”
While extra control knobs to tweak in the brewing process would excite almost any brewer — after all, why do most of us get into the hobby if not the quest of experimentation and refinement? Coffey notes that malting one’s own grains opens an additional benefit — and a significant one at that.
“The biggest thing that performing the malting process in-house gives us is wildly fresh malt, which I haven’t experienced anywhere else,” Coffey says. “It’s hard to overstate the impact on our beer. And Dark Harvest is the beer where I think the freshness of the malt really shines.”
To fully capture the impact of brewing with ultra-fresh malt, Coffey and Ocean try to time their brews so that the malting is done just weeks or even days prior to a brew day.
“All of those volatile aromatic compounds haven’t just been blowing off for two years while the malt sits in a warehouse,” Coffey says. “Whenever we have a chance to smell and taste some of the mass market roasted malts, they often smell flat and rather astringent by comparison.”
As for Subversive’s Dark Harvest stout, the brewers use roasted barley, chocolate malt, and caramel malt to hit the desired color and flavor. Coffey notes that a more traditional recipe might use a higher roast level for the “super dark” portion of the grain bill, such as incorporating black patent or debittered black malt. But in-house malting creates restrictions as well as opportunities, and from restrictions come creative nuance.
“We can’t quite hit high levels of roasting on our equipment as the fire danger is not worth the risk, so we put in a few percent more (roasted barley) to make up for the lower color, as well as layering in chocolate malt for depth of flavor and color contribution. The final piece in the flavor map is a fair portion of caramel malt. I feel it helps to smooth over some of the angles and bitterness of the highly roasted malts and leads to a nice, well-integrated flavor profile.”
Working so closely with malt has also steered Coffey and Ocean’s view of the overall brewing process, particularly when it comes to recipe creation. One of the chief barriers for homebrewers, in Coffey’s opinion, is simply the perception of complexity that’s assumed to be required at every step along the way.
“I think a lot of things in the homebrew world are made more complicated than they need to be, and that was something that I was frustrated with as I was homebrewing, trying to learn as much as I could,” Coffey says.
The longer Coffey has worked in the professional brewing world, he says, the simpler a lot of the processes and recipes he calls upon have become. “As people go, we are good at making things complicated, but just speaking personally I found that simplicity is the key to a lot of things. Homebrew recipes often have these laundry lists of malts and hops to try and layer flavors together and achieve complexity, and I remember being super daunted by the idea that I couldn’t make a pale ale without buying six different malts. But I couldn’t find a good reason that they all needed to be in there.”
The KISS (keeping it simple) mindset is a good approach when it comes to brewing as well. Coffey stresses that everyone’s process is different, and if a brewer loves putting together an elaborate and complicated grain bill, there’s nothing wrong with it. Every brewer should do what works best for them, but don’t feel a need to complicate things.
“Do what you love, at the end of the day. But commercially I tend to use one, maybe two malts in a recipe. Stout is the most complex grist bill in our lineup, coming in at five. The malts themselves are complex and I found that there’s a threshold where they just start to get muddled.”
Coffey and Ocean started out as homebrewers and, though they don’t sell their malt, they recommend that other brewers begin to play around with this little-touched dial of experimentation too. Even a small countertop coffee roaster will be enough to get started at home, Coffey says.
“We did this as we were getting going just out back of our apartment and it was such a cool extra step to really make the beer pop.”
Subversive Malting & Brewing’s Dark Harvest clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.068 FG = 1.017
IBU = 30 SRM = 36 ABV = 6.8%
Ingredients
11 lbs. (5 kg) pale malt
1.5 lbs. (0.69 kg) flaked oats
1 lb. (0.45 kg) chocolate malt (300 °L)
0.5 lb. (0.23 kg) caramel malt (40 °L)
0.5 lb. (0.23 kg) roasted barley (350 °L)
10 AAUs Centennial hops (60 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 10% alpha acids)
SafAle US-05, Wyeast 1056 (American Ale), or White Labs WLP001 (California Ale) yeast
3⁄4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
With the goal of creating a moderately dextrinous wort, mash in with 2.75 gallons (10.4 L) of 165 °F (74 °C) strike water to achieve a rest temperature of 152 °F (67 °C). Hold at this temperature for 60 minutes.
Sparge with water at 170 °F (77 °C) and collect about 6.5 gallons (25 L) of wort. Bring wort up to a boil. At start of boil, add one ounce (28 g) of Centennial hops, then boil for 60 minutes. A kettle fining agent can be added, if desired.
Chill wort to slightly below fermentation temperature, around 66 °F (19 °C). Pitch yeast. Ferment at about 68 °F (20 °C) for one week, then allow a week for settling. Keg and force carbonate to 2.4 v/v or bottle and prime.
Subversive Malting & Brewing’s Dark Harvest clone
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.068 FG = 1.017
IBU = 30 SRM = 36 ABV = 6.8%
Ingredients
7 lbs. (3.18 kg) golden light dried malt extract
1 lb. (0.45 kg) chocolate malt (300 °L)
0.5 lb. (0.23 kg) caramel malt (40 °L)
0.5 lb. (0.23 kg) roasted barley (350 °L)
10 AAUs Centennial hops (60 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 10% alpha acids)
SafAle US-05, Wyeast 1056 (American Ale), or White Labs WLP001 (California Ale) yeast
3⁄4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Steep the specialty malts in a muslin bag in 2 gallons (8 L) of water at 152 °F (68 °C) for 30 minutes. Afterwards, place the grain bag in a colander over the kettle and wash with 1 gallon (4 L) of warm or hot water. Then add water to reach a total volume of 6.25 gallons (24 L). Bring liquid to a boil, then turn off heat. Stir in the dried malt extract and continue stirring until fully dissolved. Return to a boil, add the hops and boil for 60 minutes.
Chill wort to slightly below fermentation temperature, around 66 °F (19 °C). Pitch yeast. Ferment at about 68 °F (20 °C) for one week, then allow a week for settling. Keg and force carbonate to 2.4 v/v or bottle and prime.
