Beer Forum

Mufasa talked briefly on one of the recent Session episodes about sourcing some undermodified malt if you really want to brew traditional German lagers with step mashes and decoction. Has anyone seen truly undermodified, Moravian malt around anymore? I know Briess makes that 'less' modified malt that B3 carries and Austin Homebrew seems to carry another 'less' modified malt, but nobody seems to sell the real deal?

If you really want it, you'll probably have to go the special order route. Many local homebrew shops have the ability to order undermodified malt. Personally, I don't buy the notion that you need to do decoction mashing for anything. I've yet to try a beer of any style that championed another by virtue of decoction mashing. You can get very intense melanoidin formation from a long vigorous boil and/or by adding a small fraction of melanoidin malt to your grain bill. FWIW, my pilsner malt of choice is Weyermann. I've found it to give the richest and cleanest melanoidin flavors and aromas.

Anthony wrote:Mufasa talked briefly on one of the recent Session episodes about sourcing some undermodified malt if you really want to brew traditional German lagers with step mashes and decoction. Has anyone seen truly undermodified, Moravian malt around anymore? I know Briess makes that 'less' modified malt that B3 carries and Austin Homebrew seems to carry another 'less' modified malt, but nobody seems to sell the real deal?

Weyermann makes a undermodified pilsner malt that i've heard brewers use with success.

For a homebrew competition last year....I was on the prize committee...a company (not Briess) donated a 50 pound sack of "Briess Annisversary Malt"....which is moravian style pilsner malt.

BUT, if you wanted to be a style nazi like Mufasa....then you would need to get moravian pilsner malt from Czech republic.....GOOD LUCK!

Decoction can be debated all day really and that isn't really my aim.

What I was more interested in, and this actually started back when Steve Holle gave his NHC presentation (here), was the traditional German step mash, which I believe is pointless with modern fully modified malts.

Don't get me wrong, I make award winning beer now, but part of being the best is evaluating alternate procedures. I've evaluated step mashing with modern Pils malt (both Dingemann's and Durst) and aside from an efficiency increase, found no definite benefits to the beer. But now I wanted to try it with undermodified malt instead.

Thanks for the tip on the Weyermann product, I hadn't heard of that before, are there any online retailers that carry it?

like saco said, you are going to have to do a special order. I don't know if B3 would do it for you. For example, I know that my LHBS would do it for me. It would just cost me $80-90 for the sack.

My only question about the weyermann malts is. Is the regular malt the under modified? The turbo the one that is best suited for the single infusion?

Henning1966 wrote:My only question about the weyermann malts is. Is the regular malt the under modified? The turbo the one that is best suited for the single infusion?

I believe, but not 100% sure, that if any malt does not say in the name that it is undermodified, then it is modified malt. I've heard that with weyermann munich malt, if made with 100% leaves a lot of dextrins in the wort.

The standard Weyermann pils is fully modified. The "Turbo pils" is made by Durst, I believe. Personally, I prefer the Weyermann over the Durst for richer and cleaner flavors. I've had great success using the both in single infusion mashes. In fact, single infusions are all I deal with.