Episode
Episode 78: Making the Most of Malt
- Podcast
- BYO Nano Brew Podcast
- Published
- Jun 15, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3252
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://share.transistor.fm/s/733e226d
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Summary
Spending some time with beer’s raw ingredients is important. Finding out what is new, exciting, or how other brewers are utilizing them to create world class beer helps make the whole industry stronger and pints taste better. This month, we’re taking a look at malt and speaking with two industry professionals who are intimately involved in the processing and promotion of grain. Andrea Stanley is the co-owner of Valley Malt , a craft malthouse in Western Massachusetts supplying craft brewers, distillers, and bakers with locally grown malts and grain. In 2009 Andrea read an article about local farms and bakeries in the fertile CT River Valley reviving the lost art of growing and processing local grains. As an avid supporter of local food, Andrea saw an opportunity to connect this emerging local grain growing with craft brewing. She reached out to a local vegetable grower in her hometown of Hadley and convinced him to plant 25 acres of barley as a crop rotation. Initially her goal was to prove that malt barley could be successfully cultivated in Massachusetts and malted into an ingredient that local breweries would want to use. In October 2010, Andrea shoveled the first 1-Ton batch of locally grown malt and has since worked with her husband, malting team, and the local farming community to build a supply chain in the Northeast that continues to grow, despite many challenges to overcome. In 2022 Valley Malt underwent a major expansion, adding 1 million pounds of grain cleaning and storage and the capacity to malt 1.5 millions pounds annually. Valley Malt now supports over 700 acres of grains annually in NY, VT, NH, MA, ME and CT with the plan to keep growing in the coming years by installing additional germination bins. On the larger-scale commercial side of malt, Zach Kel…