Sourcing malt and hops for an Indian brewery

The raw material sets the ceiling

For an Indian brewery, buying raw materials is also a logistics problem. Much of what a craft brewer wants comes from overseas. It travels by sea, waits at a port in the heat and sits in a warehouse before it reaches the mill.

This guide covers what to buy, how to judge it on paper and how to store it once it arrives.

Domestic and imported malt

India has an established malting industry that mostly supplies the large lager brewers from Indian barley. Domestic base malt can work well for pale lagers and adjunct beers, with a shorter supply chain. Craft breweries usually import specialty malts and often their base malt from European or Australian maltsters through importers.

Much Indian malting barley has traditionally been six-row, which tends to carry more husk, more protein and more enzyme than European two-row. That suits brewing with rice or maize adjunct. It also means it mashes and lauters differently from a German Pilsner malt, so never swap one for the other without a test brew.

Read the certificate of analysis

Every lot should come with a certificate of analysis (COA). Ask for it before shipment, not at the gate. For a base malt, check:

• moisture, typically below about 5%, since anything higher is water you paid for and a storage risk
• extract (fine grind, dry basis), around 80% or more for a good Pilsner malt
• colour, usually around 3 to 4 EBC for Pilsner malt
• protein and Kolbach index, with about 35 to 45 the normal band for well-modified malt
• friability, ideally above about 80%
• beta-glucan or viscosity, where high values warn of slow lautering
• diastatic power, which matters most if rice or maize brings no enzymes of its own

Compare each lot with the last. A jump in protein or a drop in modification explains many batches where nothing supposedly changed. Our guide on why beer tastes different every batch covers the other suspects.

Hops: imported and perishable

India grows very few hops commercially, so almost every hop in a craft brewhouse is imported, usually as T90 pellets. Check two things on every delivery. The packs should be vacuum-sealed or nitrogen-flushed foil with no puffing or punctures. The label or COA should give variety, crop year, lot and alpha acid.

Recalculate bittering additions for each new lot's alpha acid rather than reusing last year's weights. For noble varieties such as Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, Tettnanger or Saaz, aroma is the point. Freshness matters more than the alpha figure.

Storage: heat is the enemy

Keep hops sealed, dark and cold, ideally in a freezer below 0 °C and at worst in a cold room under 4 °C. Reseal opened packs, flush them with CO2 or nitrogen if you can and use them quickly. Alpha acids and aroma oils degrade fast at room temperature. Indian room temperature is not European room temperature.

Malt wants cool, dry, pest-free storage: on pallets, away from walls, in a room that does not take on monsoon humidity. Rotate first in, first out. Use crushed malt the same day. Specialty malts that sit for months are the usual place weevils and moths turn up.

Planning orders around lead times

Sea freight from Europe, customs clearance and inland transport commonly add up to several weeks, sometimes two months when a port is congested or the paperwork is wrong. Import duty and the exchange rate both move your landed cost per kilo. Check current duty with your customs broker rather than relying on last year's numbers.

Hold safety stock of your core base malt and the hops for your best-sellers, sized to the longest realistic lead time. Buy specialty malts in smaller lots so they stay fresh. Where your importer offers contracts on core hop varieties, consider them, since popular aroma hops can sell out before the next crop.

Where local supply works, use it. Rice, maize, brewing salts and many processing aids are available domestically. A brewery that knows which inputs are critical and which are interchangeable plans far better than one that orders everything the same way.