We have been serving Scottish breweries since the early 1800s.
Back when we had a brewery on the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal in Glasgow, we would also sell malt and hops to local breweries and distilleries. We were also one the first Maltsters in Scotland to produce roasted malts and the canal was used to send malt across to Guinness in Dublin and to brewers in the North of England.
After 1850 the demand for malt increased as beer production steadily rose and brewers were no longer able to produce enough malt themselves to meet their demands.
It wasn’t until the 1890s that we expanded our Glasgow Maltings to meet the growing demand and a decade later when we added a pneumatic Maltings – one of few to be built by a ‘sale-maltster’.
In the early 1800s when there were still over 200 brewers, the vast majority would malt for themselves and only buy marginal quantities from independent maltsters otherwise known as sales-maltsters. By the end of the period we were one of the leading sales-maltsters of the time and still are to this day.
A lot has changed in the near 200 years we have been in the industry and we have always grown and adapted to meet our customer needs. Back in 2013 we founded Brewers Select in recognition of the growing demand of the craft brewing sector and the need for a comprehensive one stop shop of craft brewing ingredients.
Our Scottish Ale malt – is a new malt that we introduced after feedback from our craft customers North of the border. As we don’t bag and mill in Scotland these days, it’s important to us that we’re still able to offer our customers malt with a Scottish provenance. Our Scottish Ale Malt is Sown, Grown and Malted in Scotland and can be ordered through our pals at Brewers Select. With a typically lower nitrogen content than standard base malts, you can expect high extracts from our malt. It is an ideal base malt for use in Lagers or light colour ales and is used as a base malt in nearly all of Pilot Brewery’s beer in Leith.
With so many of our friends across the pond with Scottish heritage we find a lot of our Scottish Malt finds its way over there also. A fellow Scot, now living in the U.S. runs and owns a brewery called Little Thistle in Rochester, MN. Quite often he will be brewing beer styles that pay homage to his homeland and the base malt he’ll chose will be our Scottish Ale Malt.
