I suppose I should’ve seen it coming, but there are now places that do craft malting of grain. This interview is describes how the founder of ThirstyBear brewing in San Francisco got into that.
And it makes sense, right? I know there are programs at Oregon State University, the Yakima Valley, and in New Zealand that deliberately cultivate new strains of hops. Yeast has been studied for decades. Why wouldn’t someone try to take that same kind of specialist thinking to malt?
I don’t know what kind of frontiers will open up as a result but I think it’s cool that people are interested in it.
