On Legacy and Loss at Admiral Maltings

Standing inside a former naval warehouse, Ron Silberstein was looking up.

It was the summer of 2017 in Alameda, a friendly island city across the bay from San Francisco. In a few weeks, Silberstein and partners Dave McLean and Curtis Davenport would open Admiral Maltings, California’s first floor malting operation since Prohibition.

But for the moment, Silberstein’s eyes kept darting upward at the wooden ceiling: “a redwood cathedral,” he called it. There was an element of faith in what he and his partners were building beneath it. They believed malt from California-grown grain could become something more than a commodity. That it could be an ingredient local brewers and distillers would seek out. One that could carry a sense of place all the way into the glass. 

That it would happen within walking distance of St. George Spirits and Faction Brewing, with Almanac Beer Company soon moving in next door, only added to the excitement. Silberstein had already spent two decades running San Francisco’s ThirstyBear Organic Brewery. For all his optimism about Admiral, he was clear-eyed about the risks of what he readily admitted was a passion project.

“I’m trying to be smart about it,” Silberstein told me over beers on Faction’s patio in 2017. “I’m trying to do it so we can all pay the bills.”

But nearly a decade later, Admiral Maltings can no longer make the economics work.

Last week, Admiral Maltings announced the closure of its malt house and its pub, The Rake. After spending recent years seeking partners to help carry the business forward, Admiral simply exhausted the resources to continue.

From California Grain to Glass

The closure represents more than losing a source of malt. It breaks a link between farmers and the brewers and distillers turning their grain into distinctly California beer and spirits. Producers lose an ingredient they say genuinely changed the flavor of what they made. And with the closure of The Rake, the Bay Area loses a gathering place built quite literally around celebrating Admiral’s mission, where drinkers could sip beer and spirits made with its malt while looking through windows onto the malting floor.

In an email this weekend, Silberstein said one of Admiral’s proudest accomplishments was helping people understand that “beer is agriculture—no malt, no beer.” 

The malt house helped create a premium market for California-grown malt barley, giving farmers another option for a drought-tolerant crop in a state with limited water supplies. That connection will be difficult to replace. 

“Farming malt barley is a specialized skill that will disappear if it isn’t practiced,” Silberstein said. Brewers and distillers, he added, will lose access to some of the diverse grain varieties and sense of terroir that came from working with small farms and small-batch floor malting.

From the beginning, Silberstein promised a product that would be “like getting fresh-baked bread versus packaged Wonder Bread.” And by all accounts, Admiral delivered on that promise.

Reacting to Admiral’s closure on Instagram, distiller Tyler Burke recalled storing Admiral malt in one room and malt from other producers in another. 

“The aroma intensity coming out of the Admiral room would blow the other away,” wrote Burke, who worked with Admiral malts at Spirit Works Distillery and with Redwood Empire Whiskey. 

Almanac Beer Company founder and CEO Damian Fagan said it was a privilege to use Admiral’s malt in dozens of their beers, calling “the quality and consistency of their products second to none.”

And Admiral helped many producers tell the local story Silberstein and his partners envisioned from the start. 

At Alameda Brewing, Let It Lager employs 100-percent malt from Admiral. In Sacramento, Geisthaus Brewing Company makes Landbier, a lager made entirely with California-grown ingredients, including Admiral’s Feldblume malt. And in Arnold, a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Hinterhaus Distilling uses Admiral’s malt in its flagship American Single Malt Whiskey.

Co-owner and head distiller Nate Randall was proud to tell patrons who grew and malted the barley. “[They] were able to taste the land in every sip,” said Randall.

The Problem with the Math

In many respects, Admiral Maltings was a success. Steve Clark, president of the Craft Maltsters Guild and co-founder of Colorado’s Troubadour Maltings, called Admiral an inspiration and a “gold standard craft maltster.”

But the company couldn’t make that success pay off in the long run. Much of what made the operation special also made its products expensive. And the math only got harder as the breweries and distilleries Admiral depended on faced downturns of their own in recent years.

Days after announcing the closure, Silberstein told the San Francisco Chronicle that Admiral had its best financial year in 2023, when distillers accounted for about 40% of its malt sales. Last year, that figure fell to less than 1%. Sales to breweries were falling, too.

Then there was the cost of operating in the Bay Area, where rent alone was a huge burden. Might Admiral have had better luck in a more rural setting? Perhaps. But Silberstein acknowledged that Admiral may never have achieved the same recognition or impact without its urban location and The Rake. “There are always tradeoffs,” he wrote.

There may have been a deeper challenge. For all the value brewers and distillers placed on Admiral malt, that value doesn’t always translate to the person holding the glass.

Making Craft Malt Matter

The closure of Admiral Maltings raises an existential question for small, niche malting companies: Do consumers care whether a brewery uses craft malt?

That assumes that consumers even know what craft malt is. Those who do likely care more about the taste of what’s in their glass than how the ingredients got there.

Even so, Admiral’s closure doesn’t mean the craft malt movement is doomed. The Craft Maltsters Guild counts more than 60 active malt houses in North America. Still, losing Admiral stings.

“I’ll say that this movement is as difficult as it is rare and important,” Clark said in a statement. “Craft maltsters worldwide need your partnership more than ever. Our humble ask to brewers, distillers, and consumers is to consider more ways to choose craft malt and the products made with it.”

Back in Alameda, St. George master distiller Lance Winters said the loss of Admiral Maltings is a gut punch, especially in a state that prides itself on locavorism. 

“The pioneering work of Ron, Curtis, and their entire team allowed California brewers and distillers the option of using malt that was both locally grown and malted, as well as being of world-class quality,” Winters said in a statement. “The fact that the economics of our state can’t support one of its cornerstone philosophies (eating and drinking local) should be alarming to all Californians.” 

The final batch of malt from Admiral Maltings came out of the kiln on Friday, and The Rake will close on Oct. 18. Over the weekend, the company’s website was replaced with a landing page bearing a simple message: “Thank you for 9 great years!” 

But the story isn’t quite over. 

Some of the first malt produced at Admiral Maltings has been aging in another form just down the road. St. George head distiller Dave Smith said that malt was brewed at Faction, then distilled and barreled at St. George. The distillery plans to release that whiskey sometime next year.

“When we do,” Smith told The Alameda Post, “we’ll be raising a glass to our friends and neighbors who built something special at Admiral Maltings.”

Unfortunately, Silberstein and his team won’t be able to savor it beneath that redwood cathedral.

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