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Montana State 2019 Malt Quality Panel: The Third Lab

In March 2019 Bard's had sorghum malt on three laboratories' benches in the same month. This is the third set of numbers: Montana State's malt-quality panel, ASBC methods. Published beside the Hartwick panel, it teaches the lesson every COA reader eventually learns the hard way — the measure's name decides the number as much as the malt does.

The Montana State University Barley, Genetics & Malt Quality Lab ran malt-quality panels on two sorghum samples in March 2019 (invoice BB-3222019), with an earlier single-sample run from July 2018 (BB-7182018) recorded on the same report sheet. All testing per the lab's note used official ASBC methods. The same month, the Hartwick panel and the Midwest nutrition panel ran on Bard's production malts.

The dataset​

MeasureSample 1 (Mar 2019)Sample 2 (Mar 2019)Sorghum (Jul 2018)
Moisture, %8.678.138.49
Friability, %N/AN/AN/A
Extract CGDB, %52.753.329.7
Extract FGDB, %——47.6
Color, °SRM1.31.30.9
β-glucan, mg/L3.30.01.5
Soluble protein, %3.63.60.9

Sample identities are the lab's own labels — the report sheet does not state which production or trial malts "Sorghum Sample 1" and "Sorghum Sample 2" were, and we publish the labels as written rather than guess. If the identities are ever confirmed from the archive, the correction log below will say so.

Reading notes — the two-lab lesson​

  • The extract rows are not the same measure as Hartwick's. Hartwick reported fine-grind extract (66.8–76.8% d.b.); this sheet's March 2019 samples carry coarse-grind (CGDB) extract at 52.7–53.3%, with the fine-grind column blank. Coarse grind always extracts less than fine grind — the 2018 row shows the gap directly (29.7% coarse vs 47.6% fine on the same sample). Put the two labs side by side without reading the column headers and you would manufacture a fake 20-point scandal out of a real methodological difference. This is the COA-reading discipline in one table.
  • Soluble protein genuinely diverges. 3.6% here versus ~1.2–1.6% on the Hartwick panel is not a grind-basis artifact — it is a real difference between samples, methods, or both, and with sample identities unconfirmed we state it as an open discrepancy rather than resolve it by assumption.
  • The β-glucan rows are near zero (0.0–3.3 mg/L) — instrument-level confirmation of something structurally true about sorghum: it does not carry barley's β-glucan problem, one of the few places the gluten-free grain holds the simpler hand.
  • The 2018 sample is a different malt in every column — lower extract, lower color, dramatically lower soluble protein. Whatever it was, the sheet preserves an honest picture of how far apart two sorghum malts can sit on the same instruments.

Download the dataset​

→ Download as CSV — all three samples, all columns as recorded, including the N/A friability/modification cells.

Record​

First published 2026-08-24 as v1.0. This dataset is a frozen record — it changes only for corrections, and every correction or annotation is logged in this section with its date and what changed.

2026-08-25 — identity annotation (no values changed): Craig's recollection, recorded this date: one of the two March 2019 samples was the Blue Milo #4 candidate; the other was either Ivory 7 or the second red contender from the same replacement trial. The report's own labels remain the record and the sample identities remain unconfirmed.

Where else this data lives: nowhere else public that we know of.

How to cite this dataset​

Malt quality report BB-3222019: Bard's Beer sorghum samples. Montana State University Barley, Genetics & Malt Quality Lab, March 2019. Republished by Gluten Free Brewer, 2026. https://glutenfreebrewer.com/research/production-data/montana-2019-malt-quality

Zenodo archiving for this dataset is pending; this page will state its DOI when the deposit completes, per the research library's archive practice.

Source and Validation Notes

Transcribed from the laboratory's report workbook (single sheet; two March 2019 samples under invoice BB-3222019 and one July 2018 sample under BB-7182018; the lab's note states all testing uses official ASBC methods). Values are the lab's as recorded; the friability and modification columns read N/A in the source and are preserved as such. The report sheet's date cell contains a live spreadsheet formula and displays the opening date rather than the report date; the invoice identifiers carry the true dates and are used here. The laboratory is named because Bard's commissioned and owns the analyses, consistent with this library's practice for the other 2019 panels; no endorsement by the laboratory is implied.