Malt to Be: A Visit to Fuglsang

Malt is the starting point for every beer we make today, but humans have been brewing long before they learned to malt grain.

In the Egtved Girl’s grave from 1370 BCE, archaeologists found traces of a fermented drink made from wheat, berries, honey and herbs. No malt in sight, just intuition and nature doing its work.

More than a thousand years later, at Juellinge on Lolland, residues from an Iron Age burial revealed something new, the first evidence of barley malt in Denmark. By then, they had realised that sprouted grain produced better results in brewing. They couldn’t see the underlying biology, but the process worked. 

But what is malt? 

To understand malt properly, we visited Denmark’s iconic malting house, Sophus Fuglsang Export-Maltfabrik in Haderslev. Here, barley from the field is transformed into malt.

Malt begins as grain, usually barley.

It is soaked in water to awaken it, allowed to sprout, and then dried or roasted.

This controlled sprouting creates the enzymes that later convert starch into fermentable sugars during mashing. Sugars the yeast transforms into alcohol and carbonation.

Different malts define different beer styles:

• Dark beers use roasted or toasted malts, giving amber to deep black colours and flavours like coffee, chocolate or caramel.
• Pale beers rely on malt that has been heated just enough to dry it out and stop germination, but not enough to add roasted flavours. Giving light yellow to golden colours with a clean, grain-forward sweetness.
• Wheat malt and malted oats add body and softness. They are also what help make a hazy beer hazy.

Malt also contributes proteins and other compounds that influence foam stability and mouthfeel.

The nine day journey from grain to malt

At Fuglsang, malt takes nine days to make. 

Day 1 to 2: Wake up call - Steeping

The barley goes into water. It absorbs, it swells, it comes alive again. Temperature and moisture are controlled down to the tiniest of details. 

Day 3 to 7: The growing phase - Germination

The grain is spread in large germination boxes and kept warm, moist and well-aerated. Enzymes develop, tiny sprouts appear and the barley begins its transformation.

Day 8 to 9: Halt - Kilning

The grains are transferred to the kiln. Heat steps in and stops the germination.

The heat treatment also affects the malt’s colour and flavour. Lower temperatures create pale malts for lagers. Higher temperatures create deeper, sweeter, toastier malts.

Two days later, the malt is ready for brewing. Just like that. Simple, but not simple at all

A quick detour, organic malt

Same machinery, different choreography.

Before organic barley goes in, Fuglsang runs barley through the line to flush everything. After that, the system is clean, the silos are marked and the organic batch runs separately from start to finish.

Everything is tracked and logged at every step.

Why we love places like Fuglsang

Walking around Fuglsang feels a bit like stepping into history, in the best possible way.

Old brick buildings from the 1880s, a kiln tower from the 1980s designed to reuse heat long before energy efficiency became fashionable, generations of knowledge written into pipes, levers and handwritten batch notes.

It was a reminder that our craft begins long before the brewhouse.