Tim Matthews wishes brewers were thinking more about malt. As the longtime head brewer of Oskar Blues Brewery, and now the director of brewing operations for CANarchy—the brewery collective comprised of Oskar Blues, Cigar City, Three Weavers, and several others—Matthews has long been trying to get the most out of his malt, especially in Oskar Blues’s flagship, Dale’s Pale Ale.
Matthews has experimented with using craft malt in the past. When Oskar Blues released Beerito, a Mexican lager, it used about 5 percent craft malt for the 12,000-plus barrels the brewery produced.
Now Matthews has gone a step farther and started tinkering with the grain bill for Dale’s Pale Ale. At the brewery’s location in Austin, Texas, they have swapped out a percentage of base Munich malt, which had been coming from a commercial maltster, for some grown locally.