Malt Spotlight: 2-Row Base Malt
August 20, 2025
Malteurop 2-Row is our flagship base malt. A true workhorse, 2-Row is a highly modified, balanced base malt suitable for any beer style.
“We tend to use the 2-Row base malt for certain IPAs and many of our standard beers. It’s a quality robust malt that gets the job done.”
– Daniel Machado – Brethren Brewing
2-Row General Description
2-Row is our flagship base malt. It is highly modified with an enzyme package that allows it to deliver a high amount of extract for any beer style.
Malteurop 2-Row is produced using the finest two-row barley varieties from across North America. It is a well-balanced base malt with subtle flavor and color characteristics that allow it to be used in up to 100-percent of your grist.
Intended to be the workhorse in your brewhouse, 2-Row delivers on quality and consistency, so you needn’t be concerned with performance.
Flavor and Aroma Contributions
2-Row isn’t meant to provide pronounced flavors and aromas. It is the base malt that allows you to make whatever beer you like.
With that in mind, 2-Row imparts a very subtle nutty character, accompanied by sweet, malty aromas.
As far as flavor and aroma are concerned, 2-Row can be used as the sole malt in lighter beer styles, allowing hops and yeast to take center stage. It can also be used as a foundation to allow specialty malts to create a more complex malt profile.
“The overall flavor profile… lends a wonderful backdrop to a wide variety of styles, from our juicy IPA and fruited blonde ales to our American-style lagers. But we also use it in our red ale and several one-off styles, like our stouts and porters.”
– Paul Mahoney, Launch Pad Brewery
Color and Appearance Considerations
The primary function of 2-Row is to give your beers the enzymatic package necessary to create the extract for any beer style you want. Its effect on color is negligible.
2-Row base malt measures between 2 and 2.3 Lovibond. The resulting color added to the beer is between 2 and 2.4 SRM. At 100-percent of the grist, this would result in a straw to light golden hue perfect for lighter beer styles or as a building block to take color in any direction.
Primary Usage for 2-Row
As a base malt, 2-Row provides the diastatic power needed to break down starches into simpler fermentable sugars in the mash. It is a highly modified malt made from the best barley in North America.
Delivering on quality and consistency, Malteurop 2-Row provides the necessary enzymes, protein levels, and FAN levels for a healthy fermentation, maximizing your extract.
2-Row can be used in several lighter beer styles, such as pale ales, IPAs, blondes, lagers, etc., at or near 100-percent of the grist. There is not so much malt character that it overpowers a lighter beer. It is also subtle enough for other malts, such as Vienna or Steamed C40 to be used minimally to enhance the malt backbone of, say, an IPA.
With a diastatic power in the 150°L to 175°L range, 2-Row has the ability to work with any other base or specialty malts to create whatever beer style you choose. It truly is a workhorse malt that is a strong foundation for nearly any style of beer, ranging from the aforementioned pale ales and blondes to the darkest of stouts and everything in between.
What brewers are saying about MMC 2-Row Base Malt
Malteurop 2-Row Base Malt isn’t meant to be the star of the show. It’s the malt that gets the job done, time after time, without having to worry about quality or consistency in your brewhouse.
Most MMC brewer partners count on 2-Row to create the extract they need with just enough malt character and color to allow them the flexibility to use it in just about any beer style.
“We tend to use the 2-Row base malt for certain IPAs and many of our standard beers. It’s a quality robust malt that gets the job done,” says Daniel Machado of Brethren Brewing in Manteca, California.
“It’s a really nice malt. It has made some great quality beers for us that our customers love.”
Paul Mahoney, head brewer and co-owner at Launch Pad Brewery in Aurora, Colorado, has partnered with Malteurop for several years. At one time or another, he has used just about every malt that MMC provides.
At Launch Pad, Paul uses a varietal of Malteurop 2-Row as his primary base malt.
“The overall flavor profile… lends a wonderful backdrop to a wide variety of styles, from our juicy IPA and fruited blonde ales to our American-style lagers. But we also use it in our red ale and several one-off styles, like our stouts and porters.”
When you want a base malt that leaves you with one less thing to worry about, Malteurop 2-Row shines because of its quality and consistency. It provides the efficiency you need to get the extract you want for a wide variety of recipes.
2-Row Base Malt Typical Analysis
Premium grains from field to flavor.
About Malteurop Malting Company (MMC)
Malteurop Malting Company (MMC) is based in North America—specializing in growing and producing quality malts for the beer, whiskey, and food processing industries. With local farms and Malthouses spread across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, Malteurop’s commitment to excellence is fully ingrained into every batch it produces, ensuring businesses of any size can create the finest beverages and food products on the planet.
Visit www.malteuropmaltingco.com to learn how we can support your malting needs.
Contact us at customersuccess@malteurop.com or (844) 546-MALT (6258) for questions or to place your order.
Malting is our passion. Quality is our promise.