Starting Small with Sorghum Malt
The route
| Step | What it answers | Where it's done |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Check the grain | Will it sprout, what's its protein, and does it grade? | A state seed lab for germination; FGIS for grade, moisture and protein (Grain Source and Acceptance) |
| 2. Malt and analyse a lab sample | What does this grain become as malt: extract, colour, FAN, filtration? | A malt-quality lab (labs directory) |
| 3. Brew a small batch | Does the malt behave in a mash and taste right in a beer? | Your brewhouse or pilot kit (Malt Lab Mash Process for Testing) |
| 4. Run a pilot lot | Does it hold up at a scale a maltster actually runs? | A contract maltster (Finding a Contract Craft Maltster) |
| 5. Make a production lot | Can it be made gluten-free, lot after lot? | A malthouse that runs gluten-free (Malthouses That Run Gluten-Free) |
1. Check the grain first. Germination is the line you can't fix later, and a lot that fails it fails every step after. Malting grain needs at least 85% within three days (Sourcing Sorghum Farmer-Direct). Get protein too: it tells the maltster how the lot will have to be handled (Lot Reporting Standard).
2. Malt and analyse a lab sample. Montana State University's Barley, Malt & Brewing Quality Lab publishes an "Adjunct Malt Analysis" covering "sorghum, maize, millet, and rice", and micro-malting with analysis at 120 g and at 6 kg, the larger of which it says "supports a 5 gallon brew batch" (testing services). Two cautions before you ship a sample. Its malting service is described for barley, and availability is limited, so ask whether it will malt your sorghum. And its adjunct analysis mashes the sample with base barley malt, so the numbers describe quality and say nothing about gluten.
3. Brew a small batch. A 6 kg lot is enough for a 5-gallon test. Judge it the way the site judges any new malt: the trial, reject or scale table decides the next move.
4. Run a pilot lot. This is the first step that needs a maltster's time on real equipment, and the first where the gluten question gets serious. Ask every question on Finding a Contract Craft Maltster, especially the minimum lot size and how a shared facility keeps your lot apart from barley.
5. Make a production lot. Move to a malthouse that runs gluten-free, and test every lot. Malt is a pre-fermentation input, so "a sandwich R5 ELISA reads it properly" (Malthouses That Run Gluten-Free). FARRP at the University of Nebraska lists gluten analysis at $80 a sample for non-members (method and pricing). Release each lot against the limits on Malting and Malt Release.
How the price is built
The price of a pound of malt carries more than the grain. Expect these parts in it:
- The grain, and more of it than the malt that comes out. Malting costs weight: across sorghum cultivars in one study, "Dry matter losses ranged from 8 to 19%" (Beta, Rooney & Waniska, 1995).
- Malting itself: water, energy and labour. Of a malthouse's energy use, "the largest of these is the kilning stage" (Montana Department of Commerce).
- Cleaning, packaging and testing: cleaning the grain, bagging in sacks or totes, and the analysis and gluten test on each lot.
- Freight, often quoted separately. One craft maltster's per-pound price, as reported, "doesn't include shipping costs" (Good Beer Hunting, 2022).
Both sides test, and both tests belong in the price. The rule at every handoff is "Test the lot before it leaves. Test it when it arrives" (Safe Transport and Custody). For malt, that's two tests on one lot. The maltster tests before release, against the release limits, and the brewery tests the malt for gluten when it's received (Brewery Receiving and Production). Grain works the same way one step earlier: the grower's certificates travel with the lot, and the buyer tests it again at acceptance. Bard's ran gluten testing at five points, from grain acceptance at harvest to package QA (same page). A test at one end shows that a lot failed. It takes both ends to show where the problem got in. Price both tests in from the start, paid by the party that orders the grain, so neither side is tempted to drop its half.
Small lots cost more per pound. Some costs don't shrink with the batch. As one large maltster put it, analysis costs "are the same whether it's a 3-ton or a 300-ton batch" (Whisky Advocate, 2016). That's why the route above uses lab-scale steps until the grain has earned a bigger run.
Adjust the price for water. Grain is targeted at 10% moisture and accepted up to 14%, and a lot at 14% is carrying four more points of water than one at 10% (Grain Source and Acceptance). A price agreed at 10% should come down as moisture rises across that band, on a scale written into the contract and applied the same way to every lot. The same goes for malt, where high moisture "means you are buying water" (Reading a Malt COA). Paying for dry matter keeps the price honest on both sides.
For a toll quote, ask how it's charged. In toll malting you supply the grain and the maltster malts it. Ask whether the price is per pound of grain in, per pound of malt out, or per batch, and what setup, cleaning or changeover charges sit on top. Ask about freight and testing separately.
A benchmark for gluten-free malt. Brewers generally consider gluten-free malt competitive at "no more than two times the cost of traditional barley malt", per University of Arkansas researchers (University of Arkansas, 2025).
Who carries a bad batch
A malt batch can fail, and the question is whose loss it is. Bard's record answers it plainly: when a batch went moldy in the malthouse, the assessment was that "this is usually caused by a farmer not taking care of the grain as agreed," and the supplier carried the batch, grain and malt both, because the agreement said so. The lesson that record draws: "The loss lands on you, not the farmer, unless the agreement says otherwise" (Sourcing Sorghum Farmer-Direct).
Best practice, before any grain moves:
- Write down who carries a failed lot at each stage. A lot that fails germination or mold testing as grain, and a lot that fails release as malt, are different failures with different causes. Settle both.
- Let the evidence decide the cause. Test the lot before it leaves and when it arrives, and keep a retained sample at every handoff. "Without boundary evidence, every custodian can blame the next one" (Safe Transport and Custody).
- Test before production. "A germination check on arrival is cheap. A ruined reactor batch is not" (Sourcing Sorghum Farmer-Direct).
- Hold a failed lot; don't blend it away. Blending a failing lot into passing ones makes a bigger problem with worse traceability (Finished Malt QA).
- Ask the maltster up front what happens to your lot if a result comes back over the limit, and whether you'll be told (Finding a Contract Craft Maltster).
Before the first trial
- The party that orders the grain pays for the testing. Build it into the price and the contract, so the standard gets applied every time instead of being trimmed to save money. Release testing runs at the maltster's own lab, or at FGIS by default until a lab is agreed (Malting and Malt Release).
- Keep the identity attached. Name the cultivar and keep a sample at every step, so a good result can be repeated and a bad one traced (Cultivars for Malting).
- Decide what counts as a pass before the numbers come back. A lot is released when it passes every line of the release limits.
- Write the specification out in full. If the malt meets the specification, the buyer has bought it. A line the specification leaves out can't be held against the lot afterwards, so put every measure and limit you care about in writing before the run.
Who tests what at each handoff, from the grain to the finished malt, is mapped in the testing matrix.
Next step
- Ready to approach a maltster? Start with Finding a Contract Craft Maltster.
- Want help planning a trial? Tell us what grain you have and what you want to make.