Page 28 - Food&Drink Magazine August 2019

BEVERAGE PRODUCTION
Malting Powerhouse
malting and milling technology. The build was by Ahrens Group.
Stewart says he was “very lucky” that Tim Cooper brought him into the project. “I’d seen a range of different styles of malt houses and opportunities to do things differently – and potentially better. A lot of it was unproven, but we had an active research group along with the University of Adelaide and we were able to apply a lot of different theories to how we could do things better.”
One of the big developments was a pre-steep process for the barley. Stewart believes Coopers is the only maltings plant in Australia that does it. While it is quite common in North America and Europe to eliminate mycotoxins, Coopers is doing it purely for quality.
“We wash the barley and then put it into a warm pre steep at around 25-30 Celcius. After about two hours, the barley goes from having about ten per cent to twenty five per cent moisture, which is fantastic.”
This pre-steep process means the grain is under a lot less pressure when it goes through the traditional steeping phase. “We can shorten that time by about fifty per cent,” Stewart explains.
BUILDING ENVIRONMENTAL CREDENTIALS
Water used in production comes from saline aquifers underneath the brewery which is desalinated on site.
Power comes from its onsite cogeneration plant, which also provides recovered heat for the kiln. Coopers was looking at the steam being vented into the atmosphere from its water- cooled turbine, but modelling on how to capture it didn’t add up. Stewart says the kilning process
In late 2017, Coopers Brewery opened one of the most technically advanced malting plants in the world. Almost two years on,
Kim Berry caught up with the company’s malting manager Dr Doug Stewart.
THE Coopers Brewery malting plant sits on 13,000 square metres at its Regency Park brewery in Adelaide, South Australia. The $65 million investment by Coopers means that at capacity, the plant can produce 54,000 tonnes of malt a year, giving the company full control over one of the most important raw materials. Coopers uses about 17,000 tonnes of that output, the rest going to domestic and export customers.
In March this year, barely a year after coming into operation, it was awarded joint 2019 Maltster of the Year at the Global Brewing Supply Awards with Swaen from the Netherlands.
But Coopers malting manager Dr Doug Stewart didn’t start his career intending to make award winning malt. He was originally completing postdoctoral study in the American Midwest when beer came into his life, in this case, craft beer. “I was working in the biochemistry department at Michigan State University, so nothing to do with brewing. But I was researching starch, which lent
itself to helping a few little craft brewers out on the weekends.”
It was on his return to Australia and working at the University of Adelaide where Stewart got involved in a micro brewing project. About three years later, Coopers managing director Dr Tim Cooper offered him a job “and that was really the start of it”.
A BREWER’S
MALTING PLANT
The malting plant at Coopers is unique in that it was designed by brewers. It meant the malting process was shifted away from the agricultural sphere and set squarely as part of the brewery. Stewart says it represented a “real investment” in malting but also in the brewery’s future. “The malting is as much an ongoing concern as the brewing,” he says.
The investment in the plant was sizeable. Full stainless steel construction, enclosed conveyors and advanced process control and monitoring. Malting equipment came from Swiss-based company Buhler, regarded as the world leader in
28 | Food&Drink business | August 2019 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au