Malt & Grain

Southern Chile is both pastureland and farmland. Cool summers and heavy rain suit grain well, and barley is the foundation of every beer brewed here. The region's research also focuses on brewers' ingredients, including work done at the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia.

Barley becomes malt when the grains are moistened until they germinate, and the sprouting is then halted with heat. This process is called malting. It unlocks the starch in the grain, which later turns into sugar and, in turn, alcohol.

How pale or dark the beer turns out depends on kilning, the drying and roasting of the sprouted grain. Pale malt gives a lager its straw-yellow color and a bready aroma. Darker malt brings caramel and roasted notes, the kind you taste in a dark beer from the region.

As the Anwandter brewery grew in the 19th century, machinery arrived from Germany, in two expansions in 1874 and 1882. With the equipment came the knowledge: how to grind and mash malt, and how to lauter the wort, separating the sweet extract from the spent grain, the husks of the grain.

Today the region brews pale lagers as well as darker, malt-forward styles. Small breweries in the Los Ríos region, such as Heráldica, rely on specialty malts for their recipes, setting themselves apart from the big brands.

Kunstmann in Valdivia also shows just how much malt matters. The brewery offers both pale and dark varieties, and its recipes differ above all in which malts go into the brew and how long they were kilned.