THE 15,000-GALLON MISTAKE
STORY BY CHRIS KELLER
Years ago while working at Saint Arnold Brewing Company, I walked into quite a conundrum. I was working a mid shift that day and was scheduled to take over a filter run of our flagship beer, Saint Arnold Amber. When I got to work, the filter run was paused and I was told to meet the other brewers in the taproom. There I found them quietly looking at several glasses of beer.“ What’ s going on?” I asked.“ Taste this,” Michael, the head brewer said, and handed me a glass.“ What beer do you think this is?”
Usually if my boss handed me a mystery beer to taste it was either because there’ s a flaw in the beer that he wanted me to help suss out or it was for me to join in on a“ praise the great beer” party. This was a“ what beer is this?” question. Great. I felt kind of on the spot as everyone watched me. It looked a dark amber color, similar to the Elissa IPA we brewed but it definitely didn’ t taste like Elissa. It didn’ t taste like anything we were brewing.“ I don’ t know,” I said.“ What is it?” He looked at me very seriously.“ According to the tank log, it’ s Amber,” he said. Saint Arnold Amber is a mellow, balanced beer with gentle malt sweetness and fruity notes from the English yeast we used. That beer was not Amber. It was too dark and it had a more robust caramel flavor.
We had four batches of this beer, over 15,000 gallons, ready to package in bottles and kegs, and it was the wrong beer. All of it. They had already looked
over the brewing notes and logs and confirmed that it was brewed to the proper volume, density and strength. Fermentation was to spec, no yeast anomalies or temperature spikes. We all agreed that there were no flaws. In fact it was really good beer.
The robust caramel flavor had me thinking.“ Has anyone checked the crystal malt?” I asked.
“ Let’ s go.” Michael said, and off we went to the malt room.
It was apparent once we looked at the color of the grain. The grain sacks had the right malt on it, but the malt inside was roasted to a darker color. That darker color has a significant difference in flavor too. We had been sent the wrong malt, with which we made the wrong beer. We couldn’ t even release it as a different beer, as we would have had to get label approval. That would have taken at least six months, and in that time the beer would go stale. It had to go down the drain. 15,000 gallons of good beer down the drain. That also meant that 15,000 gallons of our flagship beer would be out of the market. No bueno.
Crystal malt is another term for caramel malt. It’ s called“ crystal” because of the sugar crystals that develop inside the malt kernels. These crystals are very prominent( and sparkly!) when the grain is crushed for mashing in. Normal malt doesn’ t have any sugar crystals, it’ s starchy. During the malting process, the grain is sprouted, and, when sprouted, the grain re-
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