Evaluation Methods Compared: Pros, Cons, and the Proposal
Each method has its own review page with context and papers. This page is the decision view: what each was built for, what it actually measures, and where it breaks.
The comparison
| Method | Built for | Core measure | Units | Conversion premise | Measures character? | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SABS / SANS 235 | Opaque-beer malt trading | Diastatic power | SDU | Malt converts | No | Real standard, real adoption, fits its industry | Wrong premise for modern brewing; own unit island |
| Novellie / CSIR | Founding the lab science | Amylase development | SDU lineage | Malt converts | No | Rigorous foundation; the field exists because of it | Enzyme-first premise inherited by everything after |
| Barley-adapted | Barley malt QC | Congress-mash extract + DP | °ASBC / °L | Malt converts | Partially (color, protein) | Universal lab infrastructure; comparable compositional numbers | Congress mash measures sorghum's deficit; 4× assay workaround required |
| IoB / EBC | European barley QC | DP + hot water extract | IoB / EBC units | Malt converts | Partially | Institute rigor | Same premise; fragmented the units across the literature |
| Taylor / Pretoria | Academic research | Varies by study | Varies | Studies conversion | Rarely | The field's best science; isolates mechanisms | Research instruments, not evaluation standards — never claimed to be |
| Commercial COA | Whatever the lab runs | Barley panel or feed panel | Mixed | Barley premise or none | No | Fast, independent, available now | Neither panel designed for the question; no turbidity, no sensory |
| GFB-SME (proposed) | Character-first modern GF brewing | External-enzyme reference-mash extract, turbidity, FAN, sensory | Declared, mandatory | External enzymes convert | Yes — first-class | Measures the malt's actual job; units discipline; holds conversion constant | Draft v0.1; never run by any lab; reference-mash spec unproven; zero adoption |
Reading the table honestly
Three things jump out. First, every row above ours shares one premise — the malt converts — and that premise is the single variable our proposal changes. If you believe native enzymes are the point, use SABS 235; it's a good standard for that world. If you believe external enzymes own conversion, nothing above the last row measures what you need.
Second, the cons column on our own row is real, not decorative. GFB-SME has never been run by any laboratory, its reference-mash enzyme specification is deliberately unproven at v0.1, and it has exactly zero adoption. Every other method in this table has been used on real malt by real labs; ours hasn't. That's the honest price of being new, and the proposal says so itself.
Third, the units column is the quiet scandal. Four different unit systems for the same measurement, one dedicated conversion paper, and at least one dataset (ours) with a DP column whose units are lost. Whatever method you run, declare the units — that recommendation costs nothing and every row benefits from it.
Which to use today
Until a character-first standard exists in practice: use the barley-adapted compositional panel for moisture, protein, and color (it measures those fine); add turbidity and FAN explicitly, whatever your lab's method, with units declared; treat DP as descriptive, never as a ranking; and evaluate the malt's real performance in your own external-enzyme mash — which is the GFB-SME reference-mash idea run informally. If you run it formally, you're the first, and we want the data.
Related
- Methods Overview — each method's full review
- Proposed: Sorghum Malt Evaluation Standard
- Data Catalog — the datasets these methods produced