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.
We have a wide range of malts suitable for brewing and distilling to provide you with the foundations for creating your next beer or whisky.
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With Mike Benson
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One of the most common questions is, ‘How much could we save if we switched to bulk malt?’. It’s a reasonable question, and the answer depends on many things, but it will be about £60 per tonne. The problem is the installation cost is going to be over £120k for the malt silo, conveyors and mill! Using 300 metric tonnes of malt is a payback of 6 and a half years, so it’s a significant investment with a long payback time. If you are moving from crushed malt to whole malt, you should see some extract savings from mill optimization. This could be as high as 10%, depending on your brewing equipment and brewing skills.
In reality, I don’t think cost saving is the biggest reason for a silo installation. In my opinion, one of the most significant rewards is time and space savings. You don’t need a body to offload pallets from the delivery truck; move the pallets to your malt storage and then move them to the point of production. You will also see time savings when grinding, you don’t need a body to load the malt sacks into the mill or grist case, the brewer can select the recipe and automation will take care of the rest. They only need to add the adjuncts. On adjuncts, remember to add a hopper for bag additions. You may need one before and one after the mill. As a bonus, all those time savings also lead to the biggest reward. You are saving the brewer’s back and reducing the manual handling requirements.
How much I use does not matter. Bulk supply is not suitable for every brewery. If you are not turning the silo over every 12 to 16 weeks, you open yourself up to potential issues. While barley is relatively stable, it becomes more susceptible to the environment when it is malted. Moisture is the enemy, and if the moisture in the malt increases, it will yield less extract, become difficult to move and mill, and can start to taste sour. On top of this, you are more likely to experience issues with malt variability. Barley is a natural product, and the quality shifts as we move through the crop and seasons, so the brewer is more likely to notice it.
In the maltings, it takes the same route as sack malt, except instead of being sent to the sack plant silo, it goes directly into a truck. Simple right? Not exactly depending on the brewery installation will depend on what kind of truck we need to use. Malt is transported from the silo to the mill via a conveyor system, of which there are many different types. To fill the silo, the brewery has the option to install an ‘intake pit,’ where the malt is tipped into the pit, and then conveyors and elevators transport the malt to the silo.
Or they can ask the maltster to supply the malt on a ‘blower truck,’ which uses a donkey engine to blow the malt into the silo pneumatically. The latter is usually the option brewers take as the capital cost is much lower. There are downsides. Tipper trailers are standard, and malt can generally be delivered within five days of order. When a blower truck is needed the time from order to delivery can increase to 10 working days. You will also pay more for delivery as the blower truck does not hold as much malt as the tipper. The location of the silo needs to be carefully considered to ensure the truck has good access. There must be no danger to pedestrians or traffic and no damage to property.
More considerations are needed regarding how malt is transported around the brewery. While barley is hard, malted barley is friable and can be easily damaged as it moves about. We need to restrict this damage as dust and breakage can cause brewing issues, stock losses, respiratory sensitization, and increase the risk of explosion. Blowing malt around causes more damage than conveyors and elevators, and runs need to be kept as short as possible. The truck needs to be able to unload close to the malt silo. The longer the run, the more damage. If you have a long run from the truck to the silo, a conveyor system should be considered.
We visit breweries with many different silo sizes and configurations. The silo is a relatively small part of the total install cost, and the price difference between the various sizes is not massive. Often, the plinth they sit on is a greater expense. Planning restrictions may dictate the silo size, so sometimes several smaller silos are needed. While they add costs, they can aid with stock control. Emptying the silos before being refilled is better for traceability and allows cleaning to reduce dust build-up. The main thing to consider is keeping to the maximum capacity the truck can deliver, which ensures delivery is optimized and costs are kept as low as possible. If you are paying X per tonne based on 25t loads and only take 18t, you will not be paying X per tonne / 25t * 18t. The extra delivery costs will be added.
In the maltings, malt is cleaned (screened) every time it moves (well, at Crisp, we do). This keeps dust to a minimum and removes any unwanted ‘Chaff’ (twigs and stuff), but they won’t remove stones. As mentioned, barley is a natural product that contains stones from the farm. These will follow the malt through the malting process and into the brewery silo. Big brewers have screens and de-stoners installed to protect the mill, but more often than not, small brewers won’t. The brewer needs to be aware of the potential damage this can cause the rollers if they choose not to install one. I am not aware of any customer complaints, so I don’t know how much of an issue it is, but please be aware of it.
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Several health and safety points have been raised throughout my rambling, both positive and negative. There are legal obligations you need to be aware of when operating malt silos, conveyors and mills. The ATEX directives and DESAR regulations place duties on the employer to eliminate or control the risks of explosions. As we move malt and mill malt, we create dust and an explosive environment. I cannot lecture anyone on these; if you need more information, please visit the link above.
There are lots of good reasons to install a silo and plenty to consider. If you would like to know more about how it would work for your brewery or would like some advice on the companies that install silo projects, please drop us an email.
