Since 1870 we’ve lived and breathed malting. With this passion and expertise, and by combining traditional and modern techniques, we create an impressive range of malted and non-malted products, including several unique and exclusive barley malts.
There is nothing more we love than talking to brewers and distillers so if you have any questions, or would like to arrange a call with a member of our team, please feel free to get in touch – we would love to hear from you!
It's a match up between two malt giants
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About Me
Mike is the sales manager for Wales and the West of England and is located in Wigan.
You can read my bio by clicking the button below
It’s Ali v Frazier, Yankees v Redsocks, Hamilton v Vettel or my personal favourite, a Wigan v Saints rugby league derby. The list can go on and on, inserting your favourite events and sporting heroes. Two greats going head to head, on the day anyone can win and the support for each is divided.
Maris Otter is old school, it’s been around since 1965 and was specifically bred for its brewing qualities. It could quite easily be said that the craft beer boom in the UK was on the back of Maris Otters premium quality. Best Ale is the best modern barley breeding has to offer. Both offer something different to the brewer, but what are the differences?
In the field Maris Otter barley is a variety that loves the light sandy soil in East Anglia. It’s a winter barley making it very important to the farmers, aiding with crop rotation and helping to combat black grass. The winter variety can be harvested earlier than the springs, helping the farmer to maximise their time and machinery use. Its typical fertilizer addition is usually lower than modern varieties as we are looking for lower nitrogen levels in the malt, one of the reasons why it’s been the malt of choice for cask ale brewers for many years. Its yields in the field are lower than modern variety but it copes with differing weather conditions well, making it a very consistent crop.
In the maltings it matures quickly with no dormancy issues. It absorbs moisture quickly in the steep, making it easy to work with.
This ease continues in the brewhouse. It’s very forgiving, making mashing and wort separation trouble free, fermentation consistent, while contributing that quintessential Maris Otter flavour and fantastic mouthfeel. Grain sizes are typically smaller than the modern counterpart and extracts slightly reduced, but considering its age it still packs a punch. The extract deficits does not necessarily mean increased costs;, it’s ease of use can bring considerable time savings and reassuring consistency in finished beer, minimising ullage.
Best ale is the workhorse of the brewery and is made from modern varieties. Modern varieties are high yielding, both in the field and the brewery but at no point was flavour in anybody’s mind when thinking about the breeding programme. It’s all about yield. Does that mean it does not taste great? Absolutely not. It’s just a different offering to Maris Otter. I haven’t mentioned what variety we use for Best Ale, that’s because we should not get too tied up around modern varieties. They are all high yielding and give great taste, the maltster will choose it based on the growing conditions. If it grows well, it will malt well and brew well.
Before we get onto flavour, not all brewhouses are equal. This does not mean that having a state of the art fully automated German brewhouse is better than Manchester’s wood cladden best. Maris Otter can make any brewery perform. It’s a highly modified brewing malt, making it easy to mill, even on the simplest setup. It’s easy to obtain a crush that will give you excellent extract while maintaining husk volume to make wort filtration easy.
Wort clarity is excellent, and trub volumes are reduced, making sure you don’t pass any undesired nutrients into FV, helping to keep fermentations constant. Beers made with Maris Otter clear easily, making it ideal for cask. That’s not to say it can’t be used for hazy beers. If juice is your thing, it helps to keep any haze consistent. So you can have it bright for shelf life or hazy for shelf life.
Without doubt one of the biggest reasons is cost. Best Ale is cheaper and will give better extract. I have spoken a lot about how easy Maris Otter is to use, that does not mean Best Ale is not as equally easy to use. The light sandy soil we have in North Norfolk allows us to grow low nitrogen high quality malting barley. Low nitrogen is important because it means more starch and helps us to produce a well modified malt.
Easily kilned with a higher enzyme content you can throw more adjuncts at Best Ale without any conversion issues. Wort separation is good as is wort clarity and fermentation performance, unsurprising as the barley variety we tend to use is a great grandchild of Maris Otter. The main difference is the flavour and mouthfeel, and this is where the arguments start.
Yes it does!
It’s clear to see as a malt tea there are big differences in the taste and mouthfeel. I can hear all the haters screaming “it makes no difference in the finished beer”, especially the highly hopped beers. I will be honest, I thought the same. I bought into the ‘its out performed by modern varieties’ but I will always remember Derek Prentice’s passionate defense of Maris Otter at the IBD Great Northern Section Seminar in Leeds and I started to wonder.
I only had the privilege of brewing with it on a limited basis before the money men got involved, but it definitely made a better beer. This was set in stone when I joined Crisp and started visiting more breweries, whose beer I loved, whether that be traditional or hazy. The common denominator – Maris Otter as a base malt. Many brewers have changed over to Best Ale and say they don’t notice any difference and I can’t argue with those comments. Maris is a base malt that divides opinions.
That’s simple, neither. It’s horses for courses, in some beers you can definitely see the difference between the base malt and Maris Otter makes them better. In other beers, the Maris Otter flavour is understandable, that’s fine, and it’s accepting there is a difference. Best Ale will make the beer they want, and it will taste great.
Experimenting with base malts is a great way for the brewer to add extra tools to their flavour tool kit. Mixing Best Ale and Maris Otter can give you the best of both worlds, hide the flavour of Maris while improving the mouthfeel or on the other hand make a more cost effective beer.
What do you think? Do you already use Maris Otter Ale Malt or Best Ale Malt, or both? No matter which of our malts you use in your brewing, we pride ourselves of creating the finest malt, so you can always produce something to be proud of and that tastes delicious every time.
If you want to try any of our malts, you can order one of our awesome Sample Boxes, so you can try before you buy! Order a Sample Box today.
If you know exactly what you want, then please do get in touch with your account manager or our customer service team, who will be more than happy to get your malt ordered.
In the meantime, learn more about Crisp Malt and our range, using the carousels below.
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