Ordering Sorghum Malt
Who it's for: a brewer who knows the beer they want and needs malt for it, from a contract maltster, a malthouse, or their own malting. Starting point: a beer, and no malt yet. Where it ends: a lot that's been checked, trialled, and put into production, with the paperwork in your batch record.
Malted whole-grain sorghum is "essentially unavailable" as a retail product in North America, and when Bard's needed it at production scale, "it produced its own" (where to get sorghum malt). So for most brewers, ordering means writing a spec for a maltster rather than picking from a catalogue, and the words in the order carry more of the weight.
1. Know what the beer needs
Decide the base and the roasts from the beer, using the two profile pages:
- The base: Sorghum Base Malt Profiles. Pale · White or Pale · Red, and any lean.
- The roasts: Sorghum Malt Roast Profiles. The style, the type, and a custom lean if no common type fits.
- The colour target for the finished beer. The one recorded use rate: a 50 lb (22.7 kg) bag of the C-70 roast on a 7 bbl (8.2 hL) batch brought the beer to about 11 SRM.
Move on when: you can name the base type, each roast type, and the beer's colour target in one line each.
2. Find a maltster who'll run it
Ask first whether they'll run a non-barley grain at all, then how they keep your lot separate, how they test for gluten, what their minimum lot size is, and what a small run costs. Finding a Contract Craft Maltster has the full question list, and Choosing a Malt or Grain Supplier has the framework for weighing the answers. If you're malting it yourself, the malting section is the maltster's side of this path.
Move on when: a maltster has answered the gluten-free questions in writing, with documents attached.
3. Write the order
Send the order as a note that reads the same on both ends. The base and roast lines use the words from the profile pages; the rest asks for the numbers that change the beer.
BASE
Type: Pale · Red (or Pale · White)
Lean: ______ (e.g. flavour-first cultivar; longer germination)
Cultivar: named, or declared anonymous
Crop year: ______
ROASTS
Type: Medium · Caramel (one line per roast)
Lean: ______ (at most two)
Colour: as the type / or: ______
FOR
Beer: ______ Colour target: ______ SRM
Quantity: ______ Needed by: ______
REPORT WITH EACH LOT
Lot ID, on every document
Extract, with method and moisture basis (wet or dry)
Colour, with unit
Moisture · total protein · FAN
Filtration and clarity (turbidity, with unit and instrument)
Tannin class, and how it was established
Gluten test result, with method and threshold, lot-matched
Enzyme values, if measured, with units and method (descriptive only)
SAMPLE
Retained sample of each lot, held by the maltster
Why each line is there:
- Lot identity, cultivar and crop year. Crop-year differences can show up as extract, turbidity and colour changes, and "the label is not enough" (sorghum malt lot questions).
- Protein and the certificate values the seller already has. The Lot Reporting Standard asks for protein to 0.1% and the rest "reported as they appear": it asks the seller to forward what their paperwork already says.
- Units, method and basis on every figure. "Every archived screwup in our own records traces to an unstated basis", which is why the malt evaluation standard makes moisture basis, units and method, and cultivar identity mandatory declarations.
- Enzymes are descriptive only. Don't reject a sorghum malt for low diastatic power: external enzymes own conversion in this process.
The order asks for numbers. We hold the ranges sorghum malt has actually run (see reading a certificate) but no agreed release targets, so set your acceptable range from your recipe's costing and your last good lot.
Move on when: the maltster has confirmed the order in writing, including what they'll report with each lot.
4. Check the certificate on arrival
Run the eight-point receiving check on reading a malt certificate of analysis: the certificate matches the lot, units are declared, extract is in the range you costed, FAN suits your pitch, moisture is low enough to store, nothing has moved sharply from the last lot, the gluten-free documentation is separate and lot-matched, and it's filed with the batch record.
Move on when: every line of the check passes, or you've written down which one didn't and why you're trialling anyway.
5. Taste and trial before you scale
Taste the malt before you brew with it: a hot steep, scored in the sensory lexicon's terms, beside your last good lot if you have one. Then brew it in your own process. "Lab promise does not replace brewhouse proof." The trial, reject or scale table on Sorghum Malt decides the next move, and Sensory Evaluation of Gluten-Free Malt covers how to taste it fairly.
Move on when: the trial batch has run off, fermented and tasted within what the beer needs, and the table says scale.
6. When a lot is off
Describe the problem in the same terms you ordered in, so the maltster can act on it:
- The lot ID and the certificate you received.
- What's off, in shared words. The number that moved, or the flavour in lexicon terms: grainy, earthy, stale, rough or astringent, rather than "it tastes wrong". For a finished beer, use the words on Describing a Sorghum Beer.
- What you've ruled out in your own process, so the lot isn't blamed for a mash or yeast problem. "A bad lot can make the brewer blame the wrong thing."
- The retained sample to compare against.
Harsh, stale, solvent-like, rancid or persistently rough flavour means "reject or restrict to very small blending trials" (Sorghum Malt). A gluten result over threshold is a different matter. It's a question for your gluten-free controls, and it's settled there.
Move on when: the maltster has the lot ID, the evidence and a retained sample, and you've agreed what happens to the lot.
7. The next lot
Compare every new lot against the last good one: trend matters more than any single figure. When a recipe needs something no common type carries, that's a custom request, written as a type plus a lean on the roast or base profile page. When a lean proves repeatable, ask the maltster to record it as a named variant with its lot data.
Move on when: the new lot's numbers are filed beside the last one's, and any change is explained.