Brewers and distillers don’t get to have all the fun.
The craft beverage world is full of creative thinkers: artisans pushing the boundaries of their craft, professionals adding just the right touches to make their work shine, free-wheeling adventurers willing to buck trends and try something new.
With brewers experimenting away in their brewhouses, and distillers exploring all the possibilities of their stills, we too wonder what the world of possibility is with our malting drums.
Over the last year, our team has spent a lot of time thinking about what we can do to be the best version of Root Shoot possible, and how we can keep our customers and our craft drinkers excited about craft malt. We’ve got a lot of awesome things planned…and Munich Wheat is the first of these. We wanted to bring forward a limited run of something cool. Maybe we’ll do these experimental runs a couple times a year...maybe just once. Who knows? Only time and our drum schedule will tell.
What we do know is that we want to put something awesome in your mash tuns on the regular.
And this Munich Wheat…well…
It is kind of awesome.
How’d we get here?
We wanted to explore the world of flavor beyond our traditional Malted White Wheat. So, we took our malted white wheat, germinated it as usual, and sent it to the kiln with an entirely different kilning profile. We made sure the grain was full of moisture, then blasted it with high heat, applying the same kilning process that creates all the rich, complex flavors in our Munich 10 malted barley. We locked in that flavor thanks to the Maillard reaction - the reaction of sugar and proteins to heat that causes the distinctive flavor of browned food....think of how toast darkens as it warms.
What came out of the kiln was a beautifully browned, toasty, super complex malted wheat. For all of you brewer nerds who love these things, we’ll tell you that the flavor contributions coming from the hot steeps are deeply malty and slightly sweet with nice body. Lab results have put its color at 6 SRM.
For those of you who don’t know hot steeps or Standard Reference Method (SRM) we’ll just tell you that this wheat came out…awesome. Amazing.
Really dang good.
It’s a limited run, however, with only about 10,000 lbs available. That may sound like a lot, but - hypothetically speaking - if someone were to make a Belgian Blonde with some Root Shoot Pilsner and the new Munich Wheat, our own Maltster Mike just might come and drink all of it, in which case 10,000 lbs will go very quickly.
We’re intrigued to see what our brewers and distillers come up with. So, we promise to keep you posted as those Munich Wheat beers (and spirits?) roll out.
In the meantime, if you need us, you can find us in the malthouse, snacking on handfuls of the stuff and plotting our next special release…
Cheers!
- Your Root Shoot Malting Team
