Dextrin Malt: Because little things mean a lot to your beer

By: Living a Stout Life

 

Let’s face it, most craft beer customers aren’t craft beer aficionados. Most people who drink craft beer simply want a good tasting beer. 

 

Even when most of us craft beer geeks obsess over a beer, we’re fixated on flavor and aroma. We focus on the senses that are readily understandable and easy to comprehend.

 

As a craft brewer, you want to put a smile on people’s faces. You want them to gobble up your latest creation and shout it from the rooftops. Flavor and aroma are the obvious elements that people notice, but your job includes so much more. You have to consider the subtleties that elevate a good beer to greatness.

 

In addition to flavor and aroma, you need to be keenly aware of characteristics that aren’t easily perceived by most beer drinkers. A brewer has to consider mouthfeel, body, color, head retention, lacing, and many other subtleties that make a beer something that drinkers want to imbibe again and again.

 

These subtle characteristics of beer are where Dextrin Malt enters the picture and why Malteurop Malting Company(MMC) worked closely with brewers like Jackson Borgardt at Eagle Park Brewing in Milwaukee to refine Dextrin Malt specifically for the craft brewer.

Key Characteristics of MMC Dextrin Malt

 

Dextrin Malt is a specialty malt whose primary job is to introduce dextrin sugars into the beer. Dextrin sugars are mostly tasteless and not fermentable. Without much perceptible color or flavor, the dextrin sugars add viscosity to the body of the beer, giving it more substance.

 

If a beer comes across as thin or watery, adding Dextrin Malt imparts more body, giving it a fuller mouthfeel. Dextrin also improves head retention, an important visual queue and a factor that influences aroma.

 

MMC’s Dextrin Malt achieves this without imparting any unwanted color or flavor. That was a key factor Malteurop focused on with brewers like Jackson, who wanted to round out the body of his beers, but not change their color or flavor.

 

“A lot of the Dextrin out there was a little dark, and at the levels I use Dextrin at, it can add a lot of color; especially our Hazy IPAs, we’re looking for a really, really pale color,” said Jackson.

 

“When you’re adding up to 10 percent Dextrin Malt, at like 3 Lovibond it tends to give it a yellow-orange color, which wasn’t what we were looking for at all. MMC was actually able to hit our goal, which was just under 2 Lovibond.”

 

MMC’s highly crystalized Dextrin Malt consistently comes in at 1.7 to 2.0 Lovibond, which at 10 percent or less of the grain bill doesn’t impart much perceptible color. It does, however, add body to the beer and improve head retention.

 

Dextrin Malt Applied in the Brewhouse

When applied in the brewhouse, Jackson uses Dextrin Malt in many different styles of beer, not just his Hazy IPAs.

 

“The biggest thing I’m using Dextrin for is to build body. The Dextrin is that last little punch to give the beer that really full mouthfeel and it also helps with head retention quite a bit. So we use Dextrin in a lot of our Pilsners and Stouts as well,” said Jackson.

 

“In our Hazy IPAs, it really seems to give it what it needs for a full, creamy mouthfeel and really nice head retention. When we go up to double IPAs, we’re looking for a really full, rich mouthfeel; we’re going to use the Dextrin. Most of our eight percent ABV double IPAs, our triple IPAs, stouts, we’re using a high percentage of Dextrin and that really kind of fills it out, if you will.”

 

Whether a lighter or darker beer or higher or lower ABV, if a beer is highly attenuated, it can seem thin bodied. A relatively small percentage of Dextrin Malt added to the grist can bring the body in line with what you want as a brewer to create a beer that really wows your customers.

 

But even when a brewer like Jackson uses Dextrin Malt at higher rates (upwards of 10 percent of the grain bill), the brewer doesn’t have to worry about gumming up the works. Our proprietary process results in a very low beta-glucan level, which means a brewer can increase MMC’s Dextrin Malt usage without lautering issues.

 

Head Retention and Lacing

Though head retention and the lacing left behind in the glass don’t come off at first glance as critical, like body and mouthfeel, head retention and lacing add to a drinker’s perception of the beer.

 

A beer with no head on it imparts the thought that the beer is probably flat, which isn’t something you want in most styles. Keeping foam intact also releases aroma that is important to the drinker’s senses of smell and taste.

 

The effectiveness of dextrin malts in general to improve head retention is something that is debated in brewing circles. At Malteurop, it is not a debate. With the help of people like MMC’s Dr. Yin Li, our proprietary process in producing Dextrin Malt preserves high-molecular-weight foam enhancing protein compounds which aid in head retention.

 

Jackson’s first hand experience with MMC’s Dextrin Malt is a testimony to that fact.

 

“You can tell a beer when I use Dextrin compared to when I don’t. Especially our lagers, it really helps with head retention. You’re going to see nice lacing on the glass. Just using a small percentage of Dextrin goes a long way with lagers.”

 

When you combine all these factors into a nice neat little package, it means a much better drinking experience for your customers.

 

MMC works closely with our brewer partners

As a brewer, your passion is your beer. Malteurop realizes and appreciates this passion. We love great beer, too!

 

That’s why we don’t simply crank out malts that we think will sell and then task our sales team with pushing them on you. We have that same passion to create greatness that you do, and that’s why we work with all sizes of breweries to develop malts that deliver on that passion.

 

Jackson saw our commitment to working with a brewery the size of Eagle Park – which produced around 10,000 barrels of beer in 2020 – as unique.

 

“We met with the Malteurop team and Dr. Yin about a year ago. He shared with me some of his ideas and I told him what I was looking for, and they were able to do some pilot batches and we love it. That’s not that common for a brewery like me. I imagine the New Belgiums of the world and breweries like that (could get a maltster to do that for them), but definitely not usually a brewery our size,” said Jackson.

 

When a brewer is as passionate as Jackson is about beer, how can we not match that passion with our malts? It’s what we love. It’s what we do. So when someone like Jackson wants us in his brewhouse, we’re going to do everything we can to help our brewery partner succeed in making the best beer possible.

 

“The biggest thing for us is a partnership that we know we can rely on and trust. Having people you can rely on is always important in this industry, Malteurop has always done it.”