A visit to Dingemans maltings

Dingemans is fairly small compared to some maltings I've been to, but I was delighted to see it had a malt roaster. Steeping, Germination and Kilning vessels can produce white malts (e.g. lager, ale, Vienna and Munich). But if you want to make crystal and roasted malts (e.g. amber, brown, chocolate, black) you need a malt roaster.

The grains are dried before storage and rehydrated in steep tanks. They have six 30 tonne steep tanks and two of 20 tonnes:

They do two steeps: five to six hours wet, eight hours air rest, five to six hours wet, ten hours air rest, before ending with the grains wet. The air rests stop the embryo in the grain, which needs oxygen, to thrive. Chalk is added to the first steep to bring the pH up to 10. The aerate the steeps by pumping compressed air.

They have 50 and 110 tonne Saladin boxes they use as Germination and Kilning vessels. The turners are moved through the grain bed to stop the rootlets tangling.

He was a Kurd you know

Only joking, the malting one was French

They are filled to 80cm deep. Germination is at 15 to 20°C. When kilning they run the turners through the bed five to six  hours into kilning to give good homogeneity. They can go up to 50 EBC colour in the Saladin boxes. They also have 25 tonne kilns for speciality malts.

It was the roasters that impressed me the most though. Having only seen pilot plant sized ones before something with a 20 tonne capacity was in another league. And they emptied it whilst we were watching.

It was pointed out that they can do three very different malts with 150 EBC colour, using the kiln, a crystal malt and a roasted biscuit malt. Which shows some of the limitations of malt analysis. They can make cara or crystal malts with colour of 20-350 EBC, the darkest Special B malt is roasted twice, the last 50 EBC of colour added after the first roasting and cooling.


Annually they produce 30,000 tonnes. 60% of their production is speciality malts, with only 40% white malts.









Thanks to Richard Rees for the pictures