Grainswest - Fall 2021

Fall 2021 grainswest.com 39 model that leveraged high-quality, small-batch malting. Traceable from field to malthouse, he intended to create unique products to align with the needs and desires of the emerging craft brewing scene. TOOLS OF THE TRADE To his value chain research, Enns added a study of the malting process. In 2017, he took a one-week intensive malting course at the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre in Winnipeg, MB. While he honed his knowledge of malting biochemistry, he also became involved in the U.S.-based Craft Maltsters Guild. The organization’s active community of Canadian and American craft brewers provided him with much of the know-how he needed to set up his new business. When Enns approached his potential partners about creating a malting business tailored to craft brewers, they assumed he had been in the city too long. To them, the idea was too niche. But he backed his proposal with research and recruited a small group who agreed it was worth exploration. Maker’s Malt is owned by a lawyer, a construction worker and three additional barley farmers whose grain is used in the malting process. Enns put up half of the capital while the rest split the remaining investment. Functionally, he is the company’s maltster and unpaid CEO, while the balance of the ownership team are silent partners. At the malthouse located in the town of Rosthern, 65 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, SK, the business has two employees—an operations manager who is also a maltster, and an assistant maltster. The 5,000-square- foot, custom-built facility annually produces about 150 metric tonnes of malt. Prior to building the malthouse, there was no template for aspiring craft maltsters to follow and no equipment available within Canada on the small scale the group needed. After an exhaustive search Enns found a newWisconsin manufacturer of just such equipment. “The malting equipment used by the big multinational maltsters is a thousand times our size,” said Enns. “This equipment was shipped out on a couple of flat decks. It is a single very large vessel and a 40-foot skid of supportive equipment. It’s an all-in-one system that can malt barley in a flexible manner allowing for the production of a large variety of malt products.” They integrated the equipment and ran their first commercial batch in January of 2018. Big maltsters aim for consistency, efficiency and cost of production, and their main product is a consistent base malt. In contrast, craft brewers place a higher value on unique flavour, innovation and traceability. While Enns would go on to produce a number of base malts, craft brewers also look for specialty malts made primarily from barley but also from wheat and even oats, that offer unique flavours. Canadian craft brewers traditionally import many specialty malts from the U.K., France and Germany where such operations are more common. A LOCAL SUPPLY CHAIN As Enns and his partners grow the barley he malts, they can adapt their agronomic management to suit customer needs. “Through our own processing and talking to our end-users every day we started to really understand why certain malt quality metrics matter,” he said. “We value our personal connections, quality over quantity and that is what our customers value as well. They want to produce the best tasting product they can, cost is not their biggest metric, nor is volume.” According to the Canadian Craft Brewers Association, more than 1,000 craft breweries and brewpubs have opened in Canada over the past decade, and most primarily serve the communities in which they operate. Craft brewers are increasingly concerned about their carbon footprint and the source of their ingredients, said Enns. Suitably, most Maker’s Malt is grown within eight kilometres of the malthouse. The business delivers its product primarily to The University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre's Aaron Beattie was the lead breeder of CDC Bow. Photo:CourtesyofGloriaGingera.