This past month, on February 19th the Craft Maltsters Guild hosted the 4th annual Craft Malt Cup.
Originally, this year’s Malt Cup was scheduled for Maine. We were super excited about joining because we wanted to see what winter is like in a place with actual humidity. We’ve heard it’s cold! We even bought new wool long johns for the trip and researched, “How to look like you belong in Maine.” According to Google, we had a good start by being from Colorado. We own plenty of flannel. We just had to buy some flap-eared hats and LL Bean boots to go with it. But then…you know…COVID. So the Maine trip was canceled, we set aside the long johns for the inevitable spring snowstorm that will hit us (probably in May, just to make life difficult) and instead, put on our best Colorado flannels, jumped in our Subarus, and headed over to Stodgy Brewing to watch the competition virtually with a few of our customers, brewers, and friends.
The Guild’s Craft Malt Cup is a malt competition geared toward small, craft operations like ours. It allows entrants to compete against one another on a level playing field and is helping the entire industry build credibility around the quality of craft malt as we work to expand its role in brewing.
It’s also just fun. We get to put up our best malts for evaluation, then sit back, nervously await the results, and learn about what other malthouses in the country (and the rest of the world!) are doing. This year, the winning entries came from a huge geographical spread, ranging from California to New Jersey, and Colorado (ahem…) to Australia. Australia! Now that’s cool. When the Craft Malt Conference is held in Australia, we’ll definitely go. Not sure if they wear flannel there but we can buy some dungarees, or whatever!
And so, this year, nestled in at Stodgy Brewing, Imperial Stouts and IPAs in hand, we found out that we earned our 4th Craft Malt Cup medal. Our English Pale Ale took a bronze! Our previous wins include a gold medal for Genie Pale in 2019, a bronze for Munich 10 in 2020, and a bronze for Genie Pale in 2021. Now, that’s worth a toast!
This year’s win makes us the only malthouse nationally or internationally to medal in every year that the competition has taken place. We’re proud of that fact. Ultimately, however, we are even more proud of the craft malt industry as a whole. Thanks in part to the Craft Maltsers Guild as well as a lot of hard-working farmers, maltsters, and supportive craft breweries and distilleries, we’re seeing a steady increase in the influence of local malthouses and the grain-to-glass movement.
Grain to glass, field to firken, barley to beer - whatever you want to call it, we’re determined, as always, to use our malthouse to continue saving farms, one beer at a time. We’re excited to see so many malthouses doing the same. In fact, while you’re at it, check out this list of all the Malt Cup winners.
Finally, (oh, don’t you think we forgot it) recognition of this win wouldn’t be complete without a huge shout-out to Mike Myers, our Malthouse Manager, lead Shenanigan Starter, and overall Master of Awesomeness. Mike has been our head maltster for the last four years and is responsible for more than 350 of our nearly 400 malt batches produced since we opened, as well as 98% of all malthouse shenanigans. It’s a tough job, but this guy is killing it.
So, for this month of “Malt Madness” we hope you’ll join us in thanking our team. From maltsters to drivers, farmers to packers, they work incredibly hard to keep this business running smoothly and successfully.
Pour a glass, raise a toast, and while you’re sipping, you can watch our acceptance video below. As you’ll see, Todd wore his very best flannel for the occasion. We’re not really sure about the long johns, though. There are things you just don’t ask your boss.
Thank you for following us all these years!
Cheers,
—Your Root Shoot Team
