Hi Partial Man!
Maris Otter is an old English malt variety with a flexible temp range hence often favoured by home brewers as you can mash reasonably effectively. There are many modern barley varieties now that can give different performance and higher yield and efficiency depending on what you are after. Some brewers (both pro and home) love and swear by Maris Otter, some have been sworn off it. Having introduced Gladfield Ale Malt to pro-craft brewers in Victoria, AU I noticed a lot switch quickly away from Maris Otter to Gladfield Ale Malt which is an English variety but not an old variety. Here is some explanation from one very experienced highly awarded pro-craft-brewer in NZ why they stopped using Maris Otter many moons ago and go on board modern Ale malt variety - most specifically Gladfield Ale Malt - which you can buy at www.beerco.com.au/shop or Grain & Grape or Full Pint if you are in Melbourne and hopefully many new home brew shops across Australia soon
Maris Otter
In what way has it out performed Gladfield’s Ale?
1. Yield?
2. Lautering performance?
3. Taste?
4. Colour?
5. Aroma?
Brewhouse performance – yield and lautering – Gladfields malt tends to be quite delicate – if you over crush you’re in trouble. Maris tends to take a little harder crush but not Gladdys. Yields for us have been massive – we’ve had to dial back some of our recipes the last couple of months because of yield being too high at kettle fill. We do use multi step mashing – usually a rest at 45 or 50 dependent on malt batch then up to 66-68C in main mash. Plenty of brewers I know use only a one stop mash rest at 67 and they have no issues with extract or lauterability. We choose to sit the malt at the lower rests because it gives us damn good yields and stability in the bottle.
Gladdys ale tends to be more ‘toasty’ in flavour and we have dialled back the ale malt and substituted lager malt if we want a cleaner malt profile say in a hoppy pale ale. Not so in the darker ales where we want that toastiness. That toastiness does come thru on the aroma dependant on what yeast and water profile you are using. So dependant on recipe we play around with the ale/lager mix to achieve the right balance we want.
We went away from Maris after using it for years because the quality was so variable across the years that for a long time our beers went backwards. We don’t tend to give a supplier or malt another chance if this happens especially when the maltster or supplier deny any change in the quality of the malt – which is what has happened to us in past! Lately the Maris we notice has been much improved but we cant take the risk anymore based on our experience with it over 20 years. I feel as antipodeans we probably are pretty low on the list when it comes to supplying us from the UK/Europe – have always felt this way but that’s just my opinion. Gladfields responds immediately to any request in malt differences and warns us of any changes – batch by bloody batch. If we ask for a back down in one malt quality they respond by tweaking the next malting. Something impossible with UK based maltsters. You get stuck with the NZ/Aus allocation – you take what you get given.
It is for this reason we have chosen Gladdys over our former dominion masters. Service, malt quality and the ability to work direct with the maltster – cant beat it. Gladdys malt does take a little tweak in the brewhouse from the standard supplied malts from local or Euro sources but once dialled in to the brewery I wouldn’t go back.
Happy to discuss this direct with the brewer if need be.
{name removed to protect pro-brewer privacy}
