Craft Beer & Brewing

How Low Can You Go - Brewing With Prairie Select and Other Low Colored Malts

How low can brewers go when selecting a base malt—and what impact does that have on flavor, performance, and overall beer quality?

ByKevin Wright, Mark Hunger, Jared Tuttle, Daniel Hymus, Kate Bernot
Sponsored Content

The use of ultra-pale malts in craft beer is on the rise, driven by growing demand for lighter-colored IPAs, modern lagers, and other styles that prioritize drinkability without sacrificing character. But how low can brewers go when selecting a base malt—and what impact does that have on flavor, performance, and overall beer quality?

Join Prairie Malt and a panel of brewing industry professionals for an in-depth discussion on low-colored malts, including Prairie Select, and their role in today's brewhouse.

We'll explore: * The trends driving increased use of low-color malts * Production and brewing considerations when using ultra-pale malts * Real-world insights from brewers incorporating them into a variety of beer styles

Speakers Include: * Kevin Wright, Cofounder & Brewmaster, Third Space Brewing * Mark Hunger, Brewmaster, Great Lakes Brewing Co. * Jared Tuttle, Head Brewer, Liability Brewing Co. * Daniel Hymus, North American Quality Manager, Prairie Malt * Kate Bernot, Contributing Editor, Craft Beer & Brewing

The Future Is So Light, I Can Barely See It.

What’s driving the push behind ultra-pale malts anyway?

ByPrairie Malt (Sponsored)
The Future Is So Light, I Can Barely See It.
Sponsored Content

Every year brewers drive themselves crazy trying to figure out what the next trend in craft beer is going to be. A new hazy IPA style? The long-prophesied Year of the Lager? Perhaps Mild Madness will spread across the nation? But one trend has been blindingly obvious for the past few years, and it’s not a style trend, but an ingredient one: Ultra-pale colored base malt.

Even five years ago, the standards for base malt were as straightforward as Coke vs. Pepsi: Is it pilsner or two-row? Now ultra-pale malts such as Prairie Select are growing in sales, as craft breweries seek maximum color reduction while still retaining flavor. So, what happened? And how did an ultra-pale malt developed for large commercial breweries become a craft darling?

The current push toward ultra-pale base malts feels like the newest trend in craft brewing. But in reality, it may be one of the oldest. For nearly two centuries, brewers have been steadily pushing toward lighter and lighter beers, using whatever technology was available to do so. Today’s ultra-pale pilsner malts aren’t breaking new ground; they’re evolving a tradition that is nearly 200 years old.

Eras of IPA

Like everything else in American craft, the trend for ultra-pale malt is driven by IPA, and the throughline of IPA color is pretty clear as it has evolved. It might be hard to pick just one or two beers to define an IPA “era,” but the color trend by decade is obvious.

1980s—Amber
1990s—Light Amber
2000s—Gold
2010s—Pale Gold
2020s—Straw

Sierra Nevada Celebration in 1981. Bear Republic Racer 5 in 1997. Ballast Point Sculpin in 2005. Founders All Day IPA in 2010. Highland Park Timbo Pils in 2015. Every step of the way IPA got lighter in color and used less caramel malt. The 1990s saw crystal character fade, the 2000s West Coast movement pushed it even lighter, and by the 2010s many flagship IPAs contained little to no caramel malt at all. Hazy IPA today counts on oats and wheat to provide the sweetness that crystal malt once did, producing IPA as light in color as light lager used to be. The story of American IPA, ironically, sounds a lot like the story of lager.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: A beer style emerges that is dark and bitter, then technology and skills improve, brewers make the beer lighter, and consumers embrace the change. It’s exactly what happened to IPA this century, and it’s exactly what happened to lager in the last one. Both lager and modern American IPA have their genesis in older styles that were firmly amber or darker. As technology and knowledge spread, each became brighter and lighter. In their final forms, each is now as close to straw as possible and commonly uses adjuncts to get that ultra-pale color. If the story sounds familiar, that’s because it is. And the reasons for it are the same in both instances.

The Hunt for Light in Lager

Lighter malt wasn’t pursued merely for appearance; it was also more efficient. Better brewhouse performance, better hop expression, and prettier appearance all pointed brewers toward the same conclusion. Once lighter-colored malt became possible, its adoption was inevitable.

With beer’s long and varied history, it can be hard to find a starting point for certain trends. But for light-colored malt being used in lager, we have a very clear date: 1841. That’s when two best friends, Gabriel Sedlmayr from Spaten and Anton Dreher from Dreher, debuted what we now know as Munich and Vienna malts. Their motivations were the same in both cases: better brewhouse efficiency, more apparent hop flavor, and greater visual appeal. If these motivations sound familiar, they should; they’re the same reasons modern brewers seek ultra-pale malt today.

Spaten debuted its brand-new and lighter-colored malt at Oktoberfest 1841, while Dreher’s release happened in his home town of Vienna. The two pals had traveled to the United Kingdom and learned how to produce base malt that was lighter in color (and thus higher in enzymes, increasing efficiency) than anything anyone had yet seen. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Once consumers could actually see their beer, thanks to advances in glass manufacturing, lighter color became a selling point all on its own.

But Sedlmayr and Dreher had no idea that an even-lighter colored beer was soon to appear from the east: Pilsner. Josef Groll (described by his own father as “the rudest man in Bavaria”) took knowledge gained from the Bavarian beer scene and applied it in Pilsen in Bohemia, developing the world’s first truly golden beer. This new “pilsner” became a sensation for a lot of the same reasons that American IPA is sensational today: It was light in color and had explosive hop character. So, this “newfangled” trend toward lighter-colored beer with loads of hops is actually not so new.

Let’s not forget who really drove this trend to ultra-pale beer: Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors. Anheuser-Busch began using rice (at great expense!) all the way back in 1876 to get ultra-pale colored beer. Both Miller and Coors began using corn to lower the color while also adding some fermentables. Their successful mass-marketing of ultra-pale colored beer shifted a standard that had existed for millennia, making pale-colored beer the new definition of what beer looks like.

Everything Old Is New Again

The same forces that drove Vienna lager, Munich lager, Pilsner, and eventually American light lager, are now influencing American craft beer. Brewers want three things:

  • Greater control over color
  • Malt that complements instead of competes with hops
  • The flexibility of a base malt that can be used in a range of styles

That’s exactly what Prairie Select was designed for.

Prairie Select gives brewers what they value: extremely low color, a clean malt profile that stays out of the way of hops, and relentless, almost-boring consistency. Select is a super-pale pilsner that Prairie Malt has offered for broader commercial sale for some time, but it didn’t start that way. Prairie Select exists because large commercial breweries demanded an ultra-pale malt that delivered exceptionally low color without sacrificing malt quality or brewhouse performance.

Select begins life at barley selection: Certain Canadian barley varieties are better suited for production as Select than others. The finished malt is called Select because very specific low-protein varieties are “selected” to make it. Protein is the most important part of the selection process because lower protein varieties provide a better starting point for producing pale malt with consistency.

The malting process is also different for Prairie Select. Pilsner and two-row have generally set drying times as they convert from barley into malt. Select is a bit more variable because the drying of the malt happens at a lower temperature, thus taking more time. The result is malt with a lighter color but a maltier flavor. In theory, it’s not very different from smoking a pork butt for barbecue: “Slow and low” is the guideline, and “it’s done when it’s done” is the rule.

How Low Can You Go?

So, if it’s possible to make malt at 1.5°L, why not go lower? What about 1.0°L? How low can you go?

A maltster doesn’t go lower than 1.0°L because, at a certain point, the malt would just taste like grass. Some specific malt color and Maillard development are necessary just to ensure the malt tastes like malt. And ultra-pale malts that get their color from a too-short drying period are among the worst offenders. The basic reason malt needs a minimum of color is that without it, the finished beer would taste horrible.

Other practical considerations drive malt being a certain minimum color—specifically, enzyme content. The malting process naturally destroys some of the enzyme content present in the barley, which might seem bad but is actually good. Too many enzymes making it from the malt into the mash would lead to beer so dry as to be undrinkable.

Another factor that prohibits ultra-low colored malt production is LOX. The malting process is important for destroying LOX enzymes as well as DMS precursors such as S-methyl methionine. There are ways to compensate (somewhat) for the higher amount of DMS precursors, but the likelihood of the beer tasting stale faster is much higher. At the end of the day, a certain amount of color is necessary for making sure that the finished beer still tastes like beer within a month of packaging. The low and slow malting process that Prairie Select undergoes destroys a lot of DMS precursors, but ultra-pale malts created in a hurry may cause problems down the line.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

The use of ultra-pale malts in craft beer seems to be accelerating, and it’s a trend as old as the Golden Age of Lager. But it’s important for brewers to not pick any ol’ pale malt, or they’ll end up with beer that tastes like a freshly mowed lawn. Malt selection is highly important, as is looking at a malt COA to determine whether enzyme content and protein levels are being kept in check. Ultra-pale colored malt has a lot of brewhouse benefits and can be used in virtually any beer style.

But malt selection is key. Too much light makes the baby go blind. Don’t pick just any available pale malt. Prairie Select is a terrific and tested option for ultra-pale pilsners and hazies. For more than 200 years brewers have chased lighter color for their malt. Today’s pursuit of ultra-pale beer is no departure from brewing history, but a continuation of it. Prairie Select gives modern brewers a way to continue that tradition without sacrificing quality, flavor, or performance. Join the new “old” trend.

A Nightmare on LOX Street

It’s the nightmare of every brewer and enough to make beer lovers wake up in a cold sweat… oxidation!

ByPrairie Malt (Sponsored)
A Nightmare on LOX Street
Sponsored Content

DUN DUN DUN.

It stalks your beers and murders its taste and texture, reducing luscious hazies to flat oat milk and crispy pilsners to limp lagers. Lipoxygenase (LOX for short, and not the delicious smoky kind on your bagel) stalks your beer freshness like a horror-movie monster. Just like Freddy Krueger favored chasing co-eds with his claw, LOX is using trans-2 nonenal (T2N) and trihydroxyoctadecenoic acid (THOD) to do its dirty work. Dread it, run from it, oxidation arrives all the same. So how to stop LOX from oxidizing your beer? Or at least slow it down?

The answer is LOXless malt. And here’s how we learned to stop ignoring and start addressing LOX-derived oxidation in beer.

LOX. Never heard of it before? Lipoxygenase is a bit obscure as a beer concern. But make no mistake, LOX is killing your beer right now. Most brewers have rightfully latched on to oxidation as a leading cause of beer-flavor instability but have only ever looked at mechanical means with which to address its influence. From reducing dissolved oxygen (DO) during packaging to maintaining a vigorous cold chain to the liquor store, brewers go to terrific lengths to make sure their beer shows up to the consumer fresh and ready. But what happens when it leaves those caring hands?

LOX, T2N, and THOD

Flavor stability is arguably the greatest challenge in brewing. Even under ideal packaging conditions, beer develops stale flavors (cardboard, sherry, soy sauce, etc.) as oxidation products accumulate. T2N is a by-product of LOX (as is THOD, which kills beer foam) and arguably the greatest cause of stale-beer flavor. When IPAs start to taste like old ale, T2N is to blame. T2N has an extremely low flavor threshold (0.15 parts per billion), and for the past several decades researchers, maltsters, and brewers have focused vast amounts of attention on how T2N forms. The answer lies in the very barley that is used to make your beer—and the lipids that fuel barley growth.

Lipids

Barley contains numerous lipid compounds, and these compounds are essential for yeast nutrition and cellular metabolism during fermentation. The downside is that these lipids are highly susceptible to oxidation. Unsaturated fatty acids are especially reactive in the presence of oxygen and can be transformed into aldehydes and ketones that generate stale aromas. Most of this lipid content is destroyed during various parts of malting and brewing, but not all, and it takes only a little to affect beer flavor.

Between 2.5 and 4.7 percent of barley’s kernel composition is lipids, Meanwhile, an oat kernel’s composition includes a whopping 4.5 to 10.3 percent lipids. So, if you’ve ever wondered why hazy IPA tends to lose its intention of flavor so quickly, LOX-derived T2N is a chief cause. Rice kernels, on the other hand, contain only 0.9 to 3.1 percent lipids. So, if you’ve ever wondered how lagers made with rice have such reliable flavor stability, that might be your answer.

To get technical: T2N is primarily formed through the oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids, and LOX enzymes in barley catalyze the oxygenation of those fatty acids, creating hydroperoxides that later degrade into aldehydes such as T2N, with THOD as a co-product. To be nontechnical, fat makes your beer taste flat.

Importantly, beer-flavor staling via LOX doesn’t “wait”; it begins attacking beer immediately. T2N formation pathways develop during mashing and continue through boiling, fermentation, packaging, and storage. On average, the intensity of a papery note in beer doubles during the first month, then doubles again by month three or four. And flavor instability doesn’t come from any one single source. Rather, oxidation products hide in precursor-bound forms until aging releases them. This is the basic idea behind why beer starts out tasting fresh and then degrades over time.

Maltsters do terrific work in reducing LOX during kilning of the malt. Brewers also traditionally reduce LOX through good brewing practices, such as limiting oxygen pickup during the mash, optimizing the boil, improved packaging control, and cold storage. But researchers have increasingly realized that barley genetics themselves might be a better long-term solution. Studies have identified LOX-1 (there are three main types) as a key source of T2N production. What if you could just get rid of the LOX in the barley?

“At Dawn, Look to the East”

Okayama University in Japan was one of the first research centers to begin aggressively searching through their barley germplasm, finding a handful of barley strains that lacked the lipoxygenase gene. With LOX-1 as the prime producer of T2N precursors, the identification of barley strains lacking LOX-1 activity was a major development toward greater beer-flavor stability. Greater still was the introduction of CDC PolarStar in 2010, the first crossbred LOXless variety on North American soil. PolarStar was entirely developed through existing breeding programs (i.e. no GMOs), and in sensory evaluation, flavor was rated superior to its parent breeding varieties.

More importantly, beers made with LOXless malt had significantly improved flavor stability during storage. T2N levels were dramatically reduced, with sensory panels consistently finding the beers fresher after aging. LOXless malt overperformed in every way, with reduced T2N precursors, fewer staling aldehydes, and improved flavor and freshness as the beer aged. Studies revealed that LOXless malt didn’t completely eliminate oxidation pathways, but it did greatly reduce LOX activity.

Got Foam?

Foam was another component of beer that was dramatically improved through use LOXless malts. Lipids are known to be foam-negative; the fatty acids disrupt protein structure and compromise bubble density. Because LOXless malts disrupt this disruption, brewers consistently noticed improved foam. Ever wonder why dark beers typically have such fantastic foam? A greater proportion of the malt is roasted, and roasting destroys LOX and—by extension—foam-killing THOD.

Flavor Freshness Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum

The findings with LOXless malt are highly promising but are not a silver bullet to prevent all beer problems. LOXless malt isn’t a catchall to compensate for bad brewing practices, and brewers shouldn’t look at it as such. Good raw material selection, minimizing oxygenation, a tight packaging game, and a quality cold chain are all important components of ensuring maximum beer-flavor stability. But the benefits of LOXless malt for flavor stability are undeniable.

Likewise, brewers shouldn’t view lipids as only good or only bad. Lipids play an essential role in the brewing process, but their oxidation can cause staling in beer. The lipids that LOX turns into T2N are less the problem than controlling the oxidative reaction to them. LOXless malt takes great strides toward eliminating this problem by short-circuiting the pathways that LOX uses to do so.

Research covered in the Polish Journal of Microbiology even hinted that T2N could exhibit cytotoxic and genotoxic properties under experimental conditions, giving a further impetus to reduce the compound. Perhaps there is something to the adage that stale beer not only tastes bad, but also makes you feel bad.

LOXless malt translates directly to increased shelf life. Malt-derived staling of beer is directly correlated to loss of perceived hop flavor. When packaged beer has to spend wildly varying amounts of time on the shelf, in hot trucks, and in non-temperature-controlled distributor warehouses, flavor fades fast. LOXless malt buys a brewer precious weeks of flavor stability, ensuring beer tastes as intended. LOXless malt preserves delicate hop-flavor aromatics when all other preventative steps fail.

Again and again, LOXless malts have demonstrated superior flavor stability and fuller foam in finished beer. As breeding programs develop, expect LOXless malts to progress from being an obscure curiosity to an unmistakable standard. The future is now in the world of malt, and that future is LOXless barley.

Digging In

If you want to dive deeper, sources include the collected research of Dr. Xiang Yin as presented during his AMBA presentation on LOXless barley, as well as the following articles, videos, and papers.