Meet the malt makers transforming your local beers and the breweries supporting them

Voyager Craft Malt co-founder and director Stu Whytcross has farming in his blood. He was gifted 50 acres of land for his 12th birthday in Barellan, NSW, and has been growing grain ever since.

But it wasn’t until he met his wife that he began to really think about the potential of Australia’s grain industry to shape how we drink.

“My wife is a winemaker, and I got fascinated by wine and the provenance that wine has: that idea of terroir. We were growing grain on the family farm, knowing it was going into similar alcoholic beverages that sit alongside wine in the bottle shop, but the grain never had any connection to the final bottle.

“Australia grows a lot of barley and makes a lot of malt, but to do that, grain gets mixed from all over to create a homogenous product. There’s no chance for traceability.”

Inspired by his wife, Stu wanted to brew beer using his family’s own grain.

Beer is made from four simple ingredients: malted barley, water, hops and yeast. Malting is a process that involves sprouting and drying grains to convert starch to sugar, which can then be fermented to create alcohol. The drying process determines the colour of the final beer, from pale ales to dark beers.

Australia’s craft beer movement saw a boom from the year 2000 onwards, as many small, independent brands emerged and moved away from the lagers brewed by industry giants to brew a range of styles inspired by European and American traditions. But despite Australia’s huge grain industry, local craft malt alternatives – with their unique flavour profiles – didn’t emerge alongside the craft beer boom as many brewers were forced to import malts that could make the styles of beer they were chasing.

When Stu went looking for a processor to malt his grain, he couldn’t find anyone who would do it at such a small scale. So in 2012, he started Voyager Craft Malt in the Riverina town of Whitton.

Fast forward to the present day, Voyager Craft Malt now runs a state-of-the-art facility in the Riverina and offers a range of craft malting services, including single-origin products and bespoke malting, which allows breweries (and distilleries) to trace the grain all the way from paddock to pint.

One of Voyager’s customers is Capital Brewing Co in Canberra, which has just formalised a regenerative agriculture partnership with Voyager Craft Malt, reinforcing the Canberra brewery’s long-term commitment to more sustainable brewing practices.

Capital Brewing Co is Australia’s first B-Corp-certified brewery, but they realised that importing specialty craft malts was a major contributor to their carbon footprint.

“Moving to locally produced, regeneratively farmed malt allows us to reduce freight emissions, support Australian growers and invest in farming systems that actively improve the land,” said Capital Brewing co-founder Laurence Kain.

“It is about making better decisions all the way through the supply chain.”

The availability of locally grown craft malt means that the craft brewing industry can be more sustainable, support more local farmers and become even more delicious, Stu says.

“Most craft brewers are looking for a malt with unique characteristics. And people like Capital have created a market where it’s actually possible for us to have this business and work with local organic and regenerative growers.

“We’re looking at old heirloom varieties that have those flavour characteristics that people were importing, and when people like Capital – who are really just up the road from us – move to local malt, then the impacts go up and down the whole supply chain from farmers to drivers to people pouring beers. We’ve even got agri-tourism at the Whitton Malthouse!”

Follow Voyager Craft Malt on Instagram. Follow Capital Brewing Co on Instagram.

Original Article published by Lucy Ridge on Region Canberra.