On this episode of the Brewer to Brewer Podcast Andrea Stanley of Valley Malt interviews Lindsay Barr of Draught Labs Sensory Software. The duo discuss the importance of sensory and the growling lexicon around raw ingredients, specifically malt.

The Conversation

Andrea Stanley: Why did you get involved in trying to understand the sensory attributes of the ingredients in beer, and not just stick with craft beer as a sensory playground?

Lindsay Barr: Back in 2014 therw was really no way of analyzing malt flavor. We all kind of theoretically hypothesized that malt had a big impact on beer flavor. But that was still a debate back in 2014, it was still up for questioning.

Around the same time, craft Maltsters, were starting to pop up all over the place. I was interested in finally putting that question to bed, whether or not it mattered. And my master’s thesis was actually in gluten free beer production. So at the time, I was also working with different alternative grains to make gluten free beer, and knew that malt flavor, when it came to different grains really, really mattered.

We wanted to finally answer that question and quantify it just so that malt can be taken more seriously. I think now it is taken quite seriously in beer production. But it was a bit of a journey, because there was even still a discussion about what flavors even come from malt.

Again, we all kind of knew, but there really wasn’t a ton of research. We didn’t really want it to be debated anymore.

From a scientific standpoint, if we’re going to evaluate the attributes of malt in flavor and try to figure out what are distinct flavors and aromas that we’re looking for, we need to number one, have a method, number two have a lexicon and number three validate those methods. We did a systematic approach to ultimately trying to understand and quantify aromas and general flavors of malt.

Hear the full conversation on the Brewer to Brewer podcast.

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The above transcript was condensed and edited for clarity.

This episode is sponsored by:

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