Malting Company of Ireland

[Spud395]

Took a tour of the facilities in Cork last week.
Totally forgot the Camera  :, but well worth a look around if you ever get the chance.

The interesting thing from our point of view is the new ale malt and the bagging plant.

They've landed a contract with an American supplier to produce an ale malt for the American market, in fact Irish ale malt can be bought by yankie homebrewers here, before any Irish company has it for sale. They are also supplying a number of the Irish micros with this malt.

They have applied for planning permission to install a new bagging plant and hope to go ahead with this next year, malt will be sold in 25kg bags uncrushed.

All very interesting I thought 

[Rossa]

Very positive. Do they use 100% Irish grown grain?

[Spud395]

They are owned by Glanbia and Dairygold. Both these companies have contracts with local farmers, so yeah they use 100% Irish malt.
In really poor harvest years they have had to import in the past, but this is a last resort.

The plant operates at full capacity, 24 hours a day 365 days a year with a batch size of 160 tonnes. As far as I remember there were 2 batches steeping, 2 or 3 germinating and 1 in the kiln.
Its a serious enough operation!

[Spud395]

They still supply Heineken with Lager malt

[Rossa]

If they get that bagging line in order it'll be worth looking into the next time we order.

[Dr Jacoby]

If they get that bagging line in order it'll be worth looking into the next time we order.

+1

[Spud395]

To be honest I reckon it'll be a bit down the road.
They dont seem to do things by half and the bagging line requires a new building, they're not thinking of a hopper in the corner of a shed.

Hopefully sometime next year I was told

[slippydog1988]

Hi Guys, new to all this brewing craic, recently built an all-grain brewing system and I'm going to attempt a Smithwicks clone for the first batch.  The recipe I've found requires the following:

6.5 lbs. pale malt
5.75 oz. roasted barley (300° Lovibond)
7.25 oz. flaked barley

Can MCI provide all three of these ingredients or will I only be able to get pale malt from them. If so where should I go for the roasted barley and flaked barley to get good quality stuff?? 

I don't really mind buying a 25kg bag of malting barley if I have to.  From what I understand MCI are manually bagging it on request at the moment. Is this correct?

Thanks in advance...

[Rossa]

I'm not too sure but you will get it off the homebrew shops. Some of which will give you a members discount too.

[johnrm]

Thread here covers Malting Company of Ireland.
http://nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,2417.msg28696.html#msg28696