Here’s a real unique malt that I’m definitely going to use a lot more of in my brews. Brumalt, Melanoidin malt and Honey malt are from my understanding the same thing give or take a few degrees in colour. Honey malt is the proprietary name for a melanoidin malt produced by the Gambrinus malting company here in British Columbia, Canada.
Update: Although Gambrinus has referred to Honey malt as their version of a Brumalt and Brumalt and Melanoidin malt are often referred to as the same thing, (Wolfgang Kunze pg. 180 Technology Brewing and Malting, John Mallet pg. 119 Malt) it should be pointed out that Honey malt has it’s own unique flavour that is different than Melanoidin malt. As I am not entirely sure what the process is for making Honey malt it should not be regarded as being interchangeable with melanoidin malt.
I couldn’t find much information on the actual malting procedure, but I found enough to make a malt that is very sweet and extra malty in flavour. When it was kilning the aroma filled the house with something similar to dark toast with honey and perfectly roasted marshmallows. What info I did find is posted in the Information on malting section of this blog and one or two sentences in Malting and Brewing Science (authors listed in the info section).
A few questions still remain, however, since I have never actually seen this malt being produced and they have to do with the final phase of germination. If you watch the video you can see that by the end of the germination I had so much root growth that the malt formed a solid mass. Was this too much growth? Perhaps I should have covered it better to really deplete the oxygen. Was 36 hrs too long before raising the temperature? and how do they get it so hot anyway?
Like any malt, procedures vary slightly between the companies that produce it. My malting procedure went something like this:
5 steeps of 8 hrs with 8+ hrs rest in between
3 days germination, acropsire at 3/4 length
Transferred to a pot with a heavy lid, 36 hrs. at room temp possibly heating up a little on it’s own. (This is what I did and it worked but I would only do 18 hours next time to avoid excessive root growth)
Pot warmed in the oven (with a hotplate) to 45-50C for 18 hrs.
Malt taken out of the pot, put on a screen and kilned for 12 hrs.50-55C then 6 hrs.@ 60C
Finally cured at 96C 205F for 3 hrs.
Brewing Beer The Hard Way 