Joe White Malts

[McCraggen]

I have been seeing some Joe White malts on offer here and there, im wondering if they are any good (assuming they are all australian barley), i guess you couldnt make truly authentic european styles etc?

Any thoughts?

 

[Fents]

i use JW malts for almost every brew. never had a problem with it.

 

[Fatgodzilla]

I have been seeing some Joe White malts on offer here and there, im wondering if they are any good (assuming they are all australian barley), i guess you couldnt make truly authentic european styles etc?

Any thoughts?

What is a truly authentic european style ?

Joe White is a high class malter using premium australian barley. And often a third the cost of imported grain. I am using their vienna & wheat malts at the moment and have used their ale malts in the past with success. I have no doubts on the qualities of their grain and hazard the opinion that only a very experienced brewer would be able to distinguish what malters grain is in a particular brew anyway, regardless of the style.

no affiliation.

 

[Fourstar]

I have no issues using JW malts and use them almost exclusively as my base malt with the exception of their munich... i just prefer weyermann.

I tend to lean towards using grain from their locality for specific styles e.g. a german pilsner i will use weyermann pilsner, muncih dunkel will get weyermann munich etc.

The crystals from JW have mixed reports, but i tend to lean towards using more of their lighter crystal and a dash of thier darker over using just a 'medium crystal'. Another preference is to use Carafa Special over their Chocolate malt. Each their own really. The bottom line is if i could buy a bag each of JW Ale and Pils malt for the same price of a single bag of weyermann pilsner i would buy up on the JW for my personal everyday beers like APA's IPA's, Stouts CAP's etc. (non mainland european beers).

As a point of reference Ive made a hefeweizen with the same recipe, 50:50 pils:wheat with JW and with weyermann. The resulting beer had very little differences between the flavour profiles. The only thing i noticed was the dent in my wallet my using weyermann.

Bottom line... is JW sub standard to Weyermann? Only if you think beer has Terroir. Much like making a French Brie with Australian Milk. It might taste the same, but the underlying factor is its 'different'.

 

[fraser_john]

I use JWM exclusively as a base malt in all my ales and have started using the export pils exclusively for lagers. I have some Weyerman wheat, but thats just a result of a bulk buy. I have started using the Wyerman crystals (caras) just as an experiment.

The $ are starting to become important in all my brewing these days.

John

 

[matti]

I would say that using Australian malts suitable Most styles including European styles.
You probably need to be more specific in what you are trying to achieve.

As a base malt I think Australian malts are as good and better priced then european malts.
Barley is very seasonal and during the drought there was higher level of protein.
This poorer malts was not used for brewing so I would say the malts produced locally is as good as overseas because of the quality demanded by brewing industry.

Though I think some of the speciality malts are better kilned overseas then here.
I could be wrong, but the consensus here on AHB is that the Germans know what they are doing.

I believe it comes down to what brewer and the brewing practice how well you beers turn out, on this level rather then the who provides the malt.

Matti

 

[Bribie G]

I would like to try JW malts but note that CraftBrewer don't stock them apart from the Choc Chit :super: that is currently in my Brown Ale in primary, and also wheat grain.

Of course Ross would need premises the size of an aircraft hangar if he were to branch out into every malt in the land, and I have tended towards Barrett Burston ... galaxy and ale .... except for my beloved MO of course. There's also the 'malt miles' ethical consideration which is why I would prefer to buy local. Not to mention the recession and keep the dollars at home etc.

If Ross is reading this, any plans to increase the JW range at all?

EDIT: Quite apart from some 'affiliation' via this forum and through the Brisbane club I buy all my malts from CB because the freight to Bribie wouldn't even cover my toll over the Gateway Bridge and back, per brew it works out quite trivial actually.

 

[[email protected]]

I use JW malts for 90% of my brewing. The quality has picked up since last year as better crops are coming through. I've had feedback on a few of my brews commenting on the 'complex malt profile' when all I used was JW pale and crystal malts. Common thoughts are that you can only make true to style beers using authentic ingredients which is fairly accurate but the cost savings while developing and refining recipes is appreciated by the finance department...

Cheers
Booz

 

[Ross]

If Ross is reading this, any plans to increase the JW range at all?

Hi BribeG - Basically no at this stage. We stock the Australian Barrett Burston base malts, which personally I prefer (hence we stock & promote them), but either way, not much difference to the JW so take your pick. For the speciallty malts, you really can't beat the imported varieties IMO, so we stick with what we believe is best & can turnover quickly to keep fresh.
3 new Simpsons malts from the old dart hit our site as well today, the Golden Naked Oats sound/taste great.

Cheers Ross

 

[T.D.]

I've used JW malts for years - it is the staple Australian malt in my view. Great malts. Just recently I picked up a couple of 40kg bags of BB Pale simply out of convenience. Its nice malt, no doubt about it, but I think its pretty hard to beat JW Pilsner malt - its up there with imported pilsner malts IMO.

I also think JW Dark Crystal is the best domestic crystal malt available. I have 4kg of the stuff kicking around at home. Can't get enough of it!