Joe White in Hot Water

[manticle]

Can't easily link because on phone but there's a thread on this already. Will merge topics tomorrow.

 

[Hippy]

Thanks Manticle. Did look for it but couldn't find anything.

 

[Hippy]

Thanks JYO your link is much better :lol:

 

[Midnight Brew]

Im a Joe White wheat lover. The Vienna never tickled my fancy and never had any issues with the pils or ale. Sure I found them one dimensional in a SMASH but dress them up nicely with Munich, spec malts and hop additions and they're lovely.

 

[GalBrew]

I used JW malts exclusively in my Dortmunder that has placed quite nicely in comps of late. Can't be all that bad?

 

[slcmorro]

If anyone wants to offload their JW Malts to me because they're scared, let me know and I think I might be able to make room

 

[warra48]

Two topics on the same subject merged.

 

[aussiebrewer]

I take it most people didn't read the article. From this I took that JW was doing the dodgie and then sold, didn't say anything about the new owner doing anything dodgie and im pretty sure there is no malt still for sale from the old owner.

And they didn't say anything about the malt being bad really just that it didn't meet the customers requirements. We all know how anal and precious us brewers can be, if I was a malter id probably fudge the numbers too lol

I'm with you yob won't change till I start getting bad beer.


Cheers
Matt

 

[manticle]

At most, I think many skim read it. I didn't post it to imply jw was bad or that people should sell/give away the malt.

 

[Adr_0]

Exactly how hot is this water? Good strike temp for a 68°C mash?

 

[vykuza]

The take away from this that I got is that the price of the JW malt might rise, considering they will need to lower capacity to meet the standards the new owners want. I don't see it being much of an issue at home brewing level, but when they are competing for the business of the big breweries, it might make it a bit harder for JW to meet the price points the breweries demand.

 

[clickeral]

The take away from this that I got is that the price of the JW malt might rise, considering they will need to lower capacity to meet the standards the new owners want. I don't see it being much of an issue at home brewing level, but when they are competing for the business of the big breweries, it might make it a bit harder for JW to meet the price points the breweries demand.

Atm a bag of the Ale and pilsner is under $50 pickup ($28 for delivery to where I am) I have had no issue with taste

if it goes up I'll switch to powells who sell for $50 a bag (pickup) but only do Ale and pale malt from what I can find out

I also work for a large scale food manufacter and while testing is done most of the time we take what the CofA has on it as correct generally we only test for mirco issues unless it is apparent its out of spec.

If the Malt being supplied was an issue then end product would have been noticeably effected

 

[TheWiggman]

To me this sounds like a largely politicised issue from a new owner who's not satisfied with the deal they got. I have no doubt that there are bases behind the claims but it worries me when articles cite things like:

Substandard malt by Joe White leaves brewers bitter - not by those on this forum it seems. The article doesn't mention brewers being bitter at all.
BREWERS have been routinely supplied with substandard malt - substandard perhaps, but by what standard?
... controversial Swiss commodities group Glencore - adding extra adjectives always put an immediate slant on the article, especially with a word like 'controversial' which immediately implies that foul play is afoot

I have a feeling there would have been a few instances where wrong product was sent (wrong barley for example) but I'm guessing these were isolated cases. A mining company I used to work for stated that they would, about once a year, accidentally ship a product that was not to spec. I'm talking a few hundred tousand tonnes of product. Because of the quality testing in place, it's the customer who recognises this first and the cause is normally a clerical error drawing from the wrong stockpile or putting the wrong thing there in the first place.

I'm guessing the issue is more about false reporting of quality in some instances, and hoping the customer won't find out 2 row is being sent instead of 4 row for example. If the issue was genuinly concerning then the big players surely would have rejected the malt based on their own internal testing, which they certainly would have performed. If it was tested as being an appropriate spec for 250kl of beer, then even if it was slightly out of the stated spec it would still have been ok for the brew. It's not something a brewery would take a gamble on. If the brewers keep accepting the product, then perhaps JW got a little looser on their quality control because they knew it was all that was required for certain customers. This wouldn't surprise me at all.

Who knows really, I'm doing a lot of speculating. I use JW for all my bases and I suppose at least now, as Manticle said, I can have more faith that I'll be getting a decent product because this scrutiny has been raised by the new owners. I'm very keen to see if output does drop by 40% and they do actually spend $30 mil, because that's a big call for a business to make (lost turnover and unplanned capital). I'm hoping it's not just an announcement strategy to add more weight to the court case.

 

[peas_and_corn]

This isn't an issue brought up by customers though- the new owners were lied to about the capacity of jw to produce up to spec malt, with their true capacity being 60% of what was claimed pre-sale.

 

[contrarian]

There's an even more serious implication here, that Lion and SABmiller actually care about the flavour of the beer they produce!

Jokes aside when a company changes hands twice in quick succession you have to think that either Viterra noticed there was a problem and sold it on as quickly as possible to a company that didn't complete due diligence or that Cargill have expensive lawyers on reatiner who have convinced them there could be some money here.

 

[Stormahead]

They state the use of Gibbrellic Acid as an additive - like they're committing some crime.
Guess what..they all use GA to achieve uniform germination, a lot of the food production industry use it

The big brewers have a ridiculously tight spec on the malt yes but any deviation doesn't automatically mean its going to be bad malt

 

[Pogierob]

Joe White owner Viterra, a subsidiary of controversial Swiss commodities group Glencore, by the maltster’s new owner, US agribusiness behemoth Cargill..


And here I was thinking by using JW I was buying locally, sure it's produced in Australia but like everything the money rolls in a different direction after that.


Hurry up NFH and get malting man.

 

[manticle]

You're buying locally by using grain and grape or craftbrewer or whoever. About the best you can hope for.

 

[sp0rk]

So to resurrect this
I've just made a Bavarian Weizen using Weyermann Boh Pils
I've been getting 65-68% efficiency with JW malts
Just hit 85% efficiency with the boh pils (and blew my expect gravity way out)
only difference was I did a Ferula-Acid rest with the boh pils

 

[droid]

well there you go