Why "malt geekery" is non existent?

The simple reason is, people are uneducated about how delicate the kiln process is in affecting the flavor of malts.

What is a real shame is that people call beer that shows malt character "sweet" and dismiss it as being inferior to a big hoppy alcoholic beer.

I think the recent appeal with "juice IPA" has much to do with hop and malt synergy creating some really smooth beer.

Our local brewery does a new single hop, single malt beer with Marris Otter. The malt character is nice, but the push to a higher ABV and increase in hops, makes for a grassy, uncomplex beer.

I think there is a lot to be said about malt in beer. The lack of appreciation is ignorance, arrogance, one or the other, or both. I'm not sure. I really don't know.

I think malt and organic processing of malt will be more of a big trend coming. Some of the organic beers around here people say are not that good. But quite honestly, I taste a remarkable difference in the fact that the malt stands out...

 

You probably mean pale malt made from Maris Otter. You could make any type of malt from Maris Otter barley. Though I suspect in practice it's all made into pale malt.

 

Chevallier was bred up from banked seed to production quantities by the John Innes a couple of years ago. It disappeared before WW II, displaced by Pratt Archer and Plumage Archer, I think. So there's a big gap between Chevallier disappearing and the introduction of Maris Otter.

Carlsberg have done something similar with an old Danish nbarley strain.

 

Andrea is making a special malt for another of my historical projects.

 

Yes, Ron. When someone says Maris Otter malt, everyone assumes it's a pale malt. But you already knew that. Keep doing you, man!

 

Apologies for the pedantry. I should get out more.

 

Haha, small price to pay for setting a lot of things straight. cheers