PENHOLD - Fancy a brew made with local ingredients?
Red Shed Malting - a family business located near Penhold - has started roasting locally grown malt barley.
Malt barley is a key ingredient in beer. The Hamill brothers are a fourth generation farm family and brothers Matt and Joe started up the business and use the barley grown by their father to make the speciality malts.
“We've been going for about a year and a half that we've actually been selling malt, setting up the plant was the year previous to that,” said Matt, who does sales and deliveries.
His brother Joe is full-time in the malt house, which is housed in a red shed. Their mom does the bookkeeping, their dad grows the barley and Joe's wife does the social media and some of the marketing.
“Dad's been growing malt barley forever,” Matt said, noting previously all of it was sent to Canada Malting. Now a portion of what he grows is used for Red Shed Malting, though Matt points out that Canada Malting processes more malt in a day then their outfit does in a year.
The idea started germinating when Joe started doing home brewing, Matt said.
“Then we kind of got interested and eventually obsessed with tasting dad's barley in Joe's beer,” Matt said.
A year and a half out, and their malt is being used by just under half of Alberta-based breweries, Matt estimates.
“Sales are picking up, we're dealing with more and more breweries all the time,” he said. “It's pretty awesome to be able to go into the liquor store and see beers that are made by some of your favourite breweries that have some of our malt in it.”
Breweries that use their malt in include Alley Kat, Blindman Brewing, Troubled Monk and many, many more - a list is available on Red Shed Malting's website.
“We're happy the brewers are willing to do some experimenting,” Matt said.
The speciality malts created by Red Shed Malting provide the flavour and colour of the beer.
Matt says to flavour the malt they have a malt roaster, and through a simple change in temperature and time can vary the taste widely.
“We can make it taste like biscuits or nuts or chocolate or coffee, without adding any of those into it, just a different roasting profile,” he said. “We're the only people in Canada to have a malt roaster, so if you want to make like a porter, out of only Canadian ingredients, then you have to use us.”
Matt Hamill
"It's pretty awesome to be able to go into the liquor store and see beers that are made by some of your favourite breweries that have some of our malt in it."
