Describing malt flavours from biscuit and toffee to roast

Why malt is harder to describe than hops

Hops shout. Citrus, pine and mango are easy words because they belong to things you already know. Malt speaks more quietly. Most people reach for one word for all of it: malty.

That word covers too much. A Czech pilsner, a Scottish ale and an imperial stout are all malty, yet they taste nothing alike. The useful skill is to say which malt note you get and how strong it is. If you are building a wider vocabulary, our guide to beer aroma vocabulary is a good companion to this one.

Where malt flavour comes from

Malt is barley (or wheat, or another grain) that has been soaked, allowed to sprout for a few days and then dried in a kiln. The kiln is where most of the flavour is made. Heat drives Maillard reactions between sugars and amino acids, the same chemistry that browns toast and a crust of bread.

Gentle kilning gives pale malt with grainy, bready flavours. Hotter kilning gives toasted, nutty notes. Malt that is stewed wet and then roasted turns its starch to sugar inside the husk, which gives caramel. Very high roasting gives coffee, chocolate and eventually ash. So the flavour ladder below is really a ladder of heat.

The pale end: grainy, bready, biscuit

Grainy or cereal. Like uncooked oats or the smell of a sack of grain. Common in pale lagers made with pilsner malt. You will also find it in Indian lagers that use rice or maize alongside barley.

Bready. Fresh white bread, the soft inside rather than the crust. Typical of German helles and many pale ales.

Biscuit and cracker. Drier and a little toasted, like a plain digestive or a water cracker. English pale malts such as Maris Otter are known for it. Munich and Vienna malts push further towards bread crust and light toast.

These notes are subtle. Smell the beer slightly warmer than fridge cold, around 8 to 10 °C, or they hide behind the carbonation.

The middle: caramel, toffee, dried fruit

This is the territory of crystal and caramel malts, which we cover in more depth in crystal and caramel malts. The words change as the malt gets darker.

• Honey and light caramel. Pale crystal malts, as in many amber lagers and bitters.
• Toffee and butterscotch-like caramel. Medium crystal, common in English bitters and American ambers. Do not confuse this with the buttery diacetyl fault, which is slick on the tongue rather than sweet and roasty.
• Raisin, prune and burnt sugar. Dark crystal malts, found in old ales, barleywines and some Belgian dark beers.

A good test: does the sweetness smell like the top of a crème caramel, or like stewed fruit? That is the difference between medium and dark crystal.

The dark end: chocolate, coffee, roast

Roasted malts are taken to high temperatures, so their flavours are sharp and easy to spot once you know the order.

Cocoa and milk chocolate come from chocolate malt and pale chocolate malt, often in brown ales and porters. Espresso and dark chocolate come from darker roasted malt and roasted barley, the backbone of a dry stout. Ash, burnt toast and acrid are the far end. A little reads as character in a stout. A lot is harsh. A dry, puckering finish here is usually roast astringency rather than hop bitterness.

Putting words to a real glass

Pick one beer and work through it in steps. Smell first and name the family: grain, bread, caramel or roast. Then pick the closest word inside that family. Finally give it an intensity from one to five.

A tasting note like "bready, light biscuit, intensity two, no caramel" tells a brewer far more than "nice malty taste". It also lets you compare beers properly, which is where most people stall. Words drift from day to day unless they are anchored to reference samples. That anchoring is exactly what a sensory course trains with real malt teas, spiked beers and a panel to check against.

Try the ladder on three beers in one sitting: a pale lager, an amber or brown ale and a stout. Taste them in that order, lightest first. You will feel the rungs.

Malt tea: the brewer's shortcut

Brewers check malt by making a simple tea from it. You can do the same at home. Crush a tablespoon of grain from a homebrew shop, pour over about 250 ml of water just off the boil, leave it for ten minutes, then strain and let it cool to warm. The method is close to the hot steep test used to evaluate malt in quality labs.

Make three cups: a pale base malt, a medium crystal and a chocolate malt. Smell each, then sip. The pale cup smells of porridge and bread. The crystal cup smells of caramel and dried fruit. The chocolate cup smells of cocoa and coffee. Our guide to base malts explains why the pale cup is the foundation of nearly every beer.

Now go back to a finished beer. The malt notes that seemed hard to name will often match one of the cups. That link between grain and glass is what turns a word list into a working vocabulary.

Common questions

What does malty mean in beer?

It means flavours that come from the grain rather than the hops or yeast. They range from grainy and bready in pale beers to caramel, toffee, chocolate and coffee in darker ones.

Is caramel flavour the same as diacetyl?

No. Caramel from crystal malt is a sweet, toffee or burnt sugar note. Diacetyl is a fermentation fault that smells of butter and leaves a slick feel on the tongue.

Why do dark beers taste of coffee?

Roasted malts and roasted barley are heated far beyond normal kilning temperatures. The same browning chemistry that roasts coffee beans creates coffee and chocolate notes in the grain.