Drum Malt Roaster System

Roasted malts are called “Specialty Malts”. These kinds of malts have a big impact on a beer’s flavor, mouthfeel and color. There are many different types of specialty malts with different color and flavor characteristics that influenced by time, temperature, moisture and airflow while being roasted. The roaster also has the purpose of stopping further germination from the malting process, give a better shelf life of the product and ease of handling.

There are currently very few companies that provide specialty malts to a large number of breweries in the U.S. Specialty malts require a big economic investment on equipment in order to produce these products. Having more accessible machinery to do so will allow many other competitors to offer these highly demanded products.

The drum roaster was the initial solution. Further involvement with the solution, the drum’s size, complexity and cost meant it was not a viable solution. With fluidized beds satisfied all of the constraints. This system has many advantages for example, low cost on manufacturing, perfect mixing, more energy and time efficiencies and a higher quality end product

Roasting

While many malts are bagged after kilning, roasting is where we can create speciality malts, providing many options for brewers to fine-tune their product exactly the way they like it. Malt is roasted at temperatures of up to 225 °C in the roasting drums. These drums create two distinctive types of product…

Crystal Malts

 Crystal malts are made from green malt – malt that has been steeped and allowed to germinate for up to four days but not kilned.

The malts enter a special stewing phase after being fed into the hot drum. During this phase, saccharification occurs inside the starchy interior of the grain – this is essential for the malt to achieve its characteristic caramel sweetness.

Once it is done stewing, we increase the temperature, dry the malt out, roast it and voila – the malt is crystallised!

Chocolate and black malts

Other products created at are chocolate and black malts. These malts are put into the roasting drum dry, so they don’t release the same sweetness as the crystal malts. Instead, they develop a deep flavour and hue that adds colour to your beer. 

These malts are made from grain that has been steeped, germinated, and kilned. We go to a much higher temperature than crystal malts to achieve the distinctive notes of chocolate and coffee that characterise many darker malts – up to 225 °C in fact.

At the end of the roasting process, we sparge the malt in the drum, which immediately flash boils off into steam. The front of the drum rotates, discharges the product and then it all goes into a cooler, ready to be shipped off to the lovely brewers!

Cheers!

-- Edith Wei

-- edith@promalting.com