The winners of the 2020 Malt Cup were announced at the Craft Malt Conference in February. This is the second year the Craft Maltsters Guild held the competition which is open to American maltsters. In 2020, there were two categories (up from one the previous year) – Light Munich (14 entries) and Pale Malt (with 22 entries).
Quality analysis was conducted on all samples by the Montana State University Malt Quality Lab to ensure entries met the specs for each category. Samples then underwent a blind hot-steep method wort tasting in numerous locations around the United States by qualified sensory panels that included brewers, distillers, Cicerones, and malting experts.
“Malt Houses participating in this years Malt Cup received the full analytical evaluation of their malt as well as detailed sensory feedback from DraughtLab,” says the Director of the Barley, Malt & Brewing Quality Lab at MSU. “This feedback provided rare insight for each groups entry as well as comparison to other malts within the style category. Our aim is to provide an invaluable service to the Craft Malt Industry through the Malt Cup competition.”
The results for this year’s competition are…
Light Munich
- 1ST PLACE: BLACKLANDS MALT
- 2ND PLACE: BRIESS MALT & INGREDIENTS
- 3RD PLACE: ROOT SHOOT MALTING
Pale Malt
- 1ST PLACE: 1886 MALT HOUSE
- 2ND PLACE: LINC MALT
- 3RD PLACE: ADMIRAL MALTINGS
