Over the years I have noticed that, when malted barley is mentioned in connection with brewing, it is usually Maris Otter that is specified. I acknowledge that Maris Otter produces very fine beers and is probably the variety that the beer drinking public have most likely heard of, but I would like to speak up for other varieties. Halcyon, Pipkin, Alexis, Chariot, Optic, Puffin and Golden Promise, to name but a few, can also give brewers equally good results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To give an example, in the autumn edition of CAMRA\u2019s Beer magazine, we are told that Harvey\u2019s use, \u201862.5% pale ale malt and 37.5% coloured malts<\/em>\u2019 in producing Imperial Extra Double Stout and that Hogs Back A over T, \u2018is made from English malted barley<\/em>\u2019. Unless, of course, it is a trade secret, it would be informative if the varieties of malt used could be mentioned as well, even if they are not Maris Otter. Brewers are usually happy for us to know which hops they have used, so why not the malt varieties?<\/p>\n\n\n\n My recollection (and I will be happy to be corrected) is that Maris Otter is quite difficult to grow and does not produce particularly high yields. Given our problems with both the weather and the rise in commodity prices, brewers may well be looking for alternative varieties. Consequently, I would like to see the malt variety included in future articles which feature particular beers. It is, after all, \u2018all grist to the mill\u2019 in educating the drinker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jerry Scanlon<\/strong><\/em> Over the years I have noticed that, when malted barley is mentioned in connection with brewing, it is usually Maris Otter that is specified. I acknowledge that Maris Otter produces… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2981,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2977\/revisions\/2981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
(Jerry was the owner and brewer at Scanlon\u2019s Fine Ales in Yiewsley in the mid-1990s)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"