Malt & Grain

Barley malt determines whether a bitter tastes of bread, biscuit or toffee. For British ales, Maris Otter is considered the classic, a winter barley bred in the 1960s at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge. Whether an individual Yorkshire brewery uses it is a matter of recipe, not style guide.

Malt is made by letting barley germinate and then drying it in a kiln. The higher the temperature, the darker and sweeter it becomes. Pale pale-ale malt gives beer a crusty-bread character, while darker crystal malt lends caramel and reddish tones.

That's exactly where the difference lies between a golden best bitter and a deep brown old ale. Old ale gets much more malt, including darker portions, and it matures for longer; its original gravity — the dissolved sugar in the wort — falls between 13.6 and 21.1 degrees Plato according to style guidelines. For best bitter it's 10 to 11.9 degrees.

A visit to Tadcaster or Masham makes this easy to see, since the beers there range from gold to almost black. If you want to know what's in the glass, the colour is the best guide. It reveals more about the malt than any description: gold to amber suggests pale malt, red to brown suggests crystal malt, and black suggests roasted barley.

One thing is certain: unlike German beer, English beer is not bound by a Reinheitsgebot. Brewers in Yorkshire are also allowed to use sugar, oats and wheat, and Samuel Smith even names one of its beers Oatmeal Stout, a stout brewed with oats.