Malt & Grain

What grain is Spanish lager brewed from? Barley malt is the main ingredient. Barley grows across large areas of Spain, especially on the high plateaus of the country's interior, and ranks among the most important grains grown there.

Many Spanish beers also include corn. For the Mahou Cinco Estrellas, the brewery lists water, barley malt, corn, and hops as ingredients. Corn is popular as an adjunct because it supplies the wort with starch without adding much flavor of its own, making the beer lighter and paler in taste. That suits the caña well, since it shouldn't sit heavy in the stomach during the heat.

This isn't a violation of any rule. The German Beer Purity Law doesn't apply to beer from Spain, and since the 1987 ruling by the European Court of Justice, a beer that can legally be sold as beer in its country of production may also be sold under that name in Germany. So the Mahou Cinco Estrellas on a Berlin shelf is, legally speaking, beer too.

The malt is kilned pale. Kilning means the germinated barley is dried in hot air, and with pale malt this is done gently so it barely takes on any color. This produces the straw-yellow to golden appearance typical of Spanish lager.

Breweries generally don't disclose the exact ratio of barley malt to corn. Only the general direction is certain: little roasted aroma, a grain-based body that carries the cold sip, and a flavor that complements salty tapas rather than competing with them.