Vertical Malt has made its home at Valley Technology Park since 2014 as a two-man operation run by Adam Wagner and his father, Tim. Malt is the foundation of any beer, normally created with barley, but variations of malt are created using wheat, rye, sorghum, and other grains. What makes Vertical Malt unique is the Wagner’s grow all the grains used in making their malt on the family farm which was established by Tim’s great-grandfather in the late 19th century in Fisher. By making their malt, the process of going from seeding to malt progresses vertically in the hands of the Wagner family.
Vertical Malt President Adam Wagner took KROX on a tour of the facility, walked us through the steps to create the malt and discussed plans for Vertical Malt’s expansion in Crookston. “The idea was we’re going to grow our own grains, malt those grains and sell those grains direct to craft brewers, distillers and whomever else might want those grains,” said Wagner. “Vertical Malt had been in our minds for quite some time, kicking the tires to see if we knew enough about the malt industry to make a go on it.”
The malting process takes first increasing the grain’s moisture level then removing the moisture in a process called kilning. “It’s a least a five-day process and often a six- or seven-day process,” said Wagner. “A couple of days take place in the steep tank, where if stored properly the grain starts at 11 or 12 percent moisture. We kick the moisture up over the course of a two-day period to 43 or 45 percent encouraging the kernels to grow like the spring rains do after you plant.”
Once the moisture has been increased the grains begin to germinate. “Over the course of the next four or five days as the seed germinates to produce a lot of enzymes and break down the kernel as it prepares to grow into a plant,” said Wagner. “There is a lot of neat things that happen within the biology of the plant, enzymes are getting produced, pieces of the cell wall are starting to degrade which are good things development of what the brewers need to produce beer. The bottom line is your taking all the hard starches in the kernels to produce the enzymes that will allow the brewers to produce the carbohydrates and simple sugars that the yeast uses to ferment into the beer.”
Controlling the conditions of the grain during the germinating process is key to producing a quality malt product explains Wagner. “The air has to be very tightly controlled. The grain as it grows will give off heat, so that has to be blown off and fresh air blow in. The fresh air piped in has to be humidified so your not drying out the grain as it’s growing, allowing it to modify.”
The final stage includes removing all the moisture that was added in the initial stage and then continuing to remove moisture to create the right flavor. “Finally, at the end of that, there is a drying phase where we can remove a lot of that moisture,” said Wagner. “This has to be done very carefully. Otherwise you can denature the enzymes you worked so hard to produce if you add to much heat. At the very tail end, once the kernel is stable, under 15 percent moisture, you can add a lot of heat. You can start to kick up the heat and add flavor and color with time and temperature. The kiln cycle is where you’re curing the barley, adding that traditional malting flavor and color.”
The final variation of the malt plays a vital role in whichever type of beer it will become a part of, “a lot of the malt is going to provide the backbone for really any beer,” said Wagner. “Depending on the style of beer you can offset the flavor of the malt with other sugars or ferments. A lot of light Pilsners are using corn and rice as adjuncts in there. You can also offset that by the addition of a lot of hops like a Pale Ale or Indian Pale Ale. Then you get into your darker Ambers, Bocks, Stouts, Red Ales and a lot of that flavor is going to come directly from the malt.”
It’s crucial that a good balance is found between malt and hops by the breweries says, Wagner. “The malt and the hops have to be balanced, they have to be married pretty perfectly to achieve a beer people want to drink,” said Wagner. “It’s a pretty integral part with just four real ingredients of beer – water, yeast, hops, and malt. Without that malty background, there really isn’t beer.”
There is room for research in malting into discovering if there are any real flavor differences from different barley varieties, but studies thus far have shown barley type has little impact on flavor according to Wagner. “Generally speaking the barley varieties have little impact on the flavor of the beer, what does have an impact is time and temperature,” said Wagner. “Just like a toaster, if you put in on light versus dark you can alter the character of the bread. Same thing with malt, the more heat and time you’re going to end up with something with a lot of darker color and caramelize the sugars which adds a whole different dimension to the flavor.”
Vertical Malt creates a standard malt that is the foundation of many beers, but they also develop varieties used for special beers. “Most brewers are going to use two or three slight variations of the base malt, so that’s 80-90 percent of what we produce,” said Wagner. “Something with a little more aroma, roast or caramelized we’ll produce in smaller amounts through time and temperature. They are maybe the more fun malts because we taste them here in the malt house.”
Wagner says they’ve sold mostly to breweries in Northwest Minnesota but have had a few purchases out of the Twin Cities. “Most of it goes right here in Northwest Minnesota to Bemidji and Grand Forks all the way up to Revelation Ale Works and Far North Spirits in Hallock,” said Wagner. “We’ve had a lot of success with seasonal beers and the more one-offs with breweries trying to do something special. That’s been a lot of fun to work with some of those breweries.”
Vertical Malt has two, two-ton malting drums so they can make roughly seven thousand pounds of malt each week which creates between 2-3 shipments of malt. “We can do two-ton batches which amount to loading them with 4,300 pounds of raw barley and coming out with about 3,500 pounds of malt,” said Wagner. “Raw barley comes in pretty heavy, and then we lose some with root growth and moisture. We’ll dry the barley down to 4-5 percent moisture and when you start with barley at about 11-12 moisture that’s about 6 percent weight loss just to moisture.”
While seven thousand pounds a week, in two-ton batches, can seem like quite a bit, it is still small compared to other “small” malt houses that are producing batches of about 60 tons each. Vertical Malt does have expansion plans in place that would initially increase their capacity by 25 tons a week, but even when complete will still leave them a smaller custom malt house. We will cover Vertical Malt’s expansion concept with a follow-up story tomorrow.
