Local Malt?

Hey all!

I was wondering if any of you brewers use any malt NOT made by one of the few maltsters out there? Made your own?

If not, do you have any interest in making your own or using non-commercial malt?

I would love to learn how to. Brooklyn is gonna be the center of craft beer and im willing to invest in making brooklyn the brewing capital of USA. Kinda cheesy but i would love to give it a try.

We will soon be carrying base malts from a somewhat nearby maltster. They are called Valley Malts. They are grown and malted in Massachusetts and are Organic. We are very excited to be working with them! They are super small, so they are primarily doing base malts right now. But if we can support them and help them expand, it will help the brewing community! I should also mention, we would love to support any local maltster that might happen to pop up. Hopefully the Valley Malts base malts will be in and flying out the door before the end of the year!

I should point out that Organic produce is as real as a 3 dollar bill with Michael Jackson on it, despite what FDA allows. I'm OK with it though.
If someone actually managed to make organic malt, it would look about the size of sesame and would run us at about $15 per lb to cover the costs of production.
But hey, let's support the local dudes. So if you guys start carrying it, I'll be buying it.

Hi It's Andrea from ValleyMalt. Just wanted to say hello. Happy to answer any questions about our local organic malt. Happen to be roasting some delicious crystal right now. Keeping an eye on it while posting.

Just as an FYI, we are in Massachusetts but our grains come from NY, VT, MA, ME and NH.

I would also be happy to take a stab at any questions someone may have about our or our farmer's organic growing practices. I get disheartened about the way that organic labeling has gone in the past few years, it is becoming a joke and in fact we are not even bothering with getting a USDA organic label because it just costs too much but there is no doubt that many committed farmers are doing an amazing job of cultivating diverse crops using true organic cultural practices.

Our organic 2-row is over 83% plump, meets all germination, protein, and normal malting barley specs. The beauty of organic grain growing for malt is that protein requirements are low (in fact the lower the better) which means almost no inputs needed if seeded early and rotated properly with other crops such as soybeans.

The beauty of local is you can come visit our fields and see for yourself.

Cool. I'll be buying some in the next couple of weeks for me next brews.

What grains to do eventually plan on offering and to what levels of roast? I saw the two-row at BHB yesterday, along with I believe a rye malt.