Trip to micromaltster, Valley Malt, in Hadley, MA

[whiskeyD]

I had the pleasure of going to see Andrea and Christian Stanley this weekend at Valley Malt. They are a husband and wife team that run a craft malting facility called Valley Malt. They began with a 1 ton per week system and are now up to 4 ton system. They are cool people and use all local and organic grains. They have done some unusual stuff like smoked triticale. I will post some pics if I can figure out the picture system. They were working on malts for Brooklyn Brewery and Dogfish Head, so they have gotten a lot of respect in the industry quickly.

[whiskeyD]

This is one of their 2 ton vessels, they have 4 tons total.

[whiskeyD]

[whiskeyD]

Grain cleaner.

[whiskeyD]

Andrea checking on the grain.

[whiskeyD]

turning the grain.

[whiskeyD]

This is the debearder they use to clean rootlets off the kilned grain.

[whiskeyD]

They have a BSA(Brewer supported agriculture) program and a "malt of the month" club where local homebrewers can com by and pick up monthly malts.

[whiskeyD]

This is their kiln, hot air feed.

[whiskeyD]

What is amazing is that the whole system fits into a two car garage. It is literally in their garage. They have semi automated parts of it, mainly the steeping and kilning, though they still manually turn the grain. For example, it can send a text message to them on their iphones when something is finished. Or if a temperature is getting too high. They have purposefully not automated the germination stage as they want to be closely monitoring the grain. Everything happens in one vessel. Steeping, germination, and kilning.

[jholmz]

very nice thanks for the tour whiskey glad to see the little guy make it

[wildrover]

Love it. Thanks for the info. Do they use gas heat? Do they manually turn the grain in the kiln also?

[whiskeyD]

Yes, they use gas heat. They do not turn the grain during kilning.