Malts from The Malt Miller

The Malt Miller was started in 2010 by Rob Neale. We’re an independent family business that prides itself on supplying home brewers and breweries with premium ingredients and equipment. As home brewers ourselves we know how important it is to get the freshest ingredients possible and so all of our malt is milled fresh to order, our hops are nitrogen flushed and cold stored, there are over 250 yeast strains to choose from and you can even make your own bespoke Recipe Kits through our website.

Just as a brewery would, we order our malts in uncrushed 25kg sacks. These arrive weekly by the tonne pallet – some weeks we can receive over 20 tonnes of fresh malt. These are sourced from the finest maltsters available from many different countries around the world to ensure you have access to the widest range of products to make the best beer possible. At any one time we will have over 100 different malts and adjuncts to choose from, covering many different style of malt and EBC.

When selling malts to our home brewers everything is done totally to order, so if you want 25kg of malt or 100g of malt, if you want it crushed, uncrushed or fine crushed it’s all only done as you order it. This ensures that the product is as fresh as can be and packaged up totally for you.

In 2019 we launched our refreshed site which we hope will help to make the shopping experience even better for our customers and the way that ingredients – especially malts – are ordered is central to this update.

So what’s new then?

The way you view the ingredients is the main change – we have our new ‘card-based’ view. This allows you to see all of our products in their individual categories and to order from this screen without the need to dip into the actual product page, just like having a pack of cards spread out over a table. Fewer clicks backwards and forwards was the goal and to make finding what you want easier. We also wanted to make the site more mobile-friendly whilst improving the larger desktop view at the same time.

How has ordering Malt changed then?

You can now see all of the Malts on one page, you can type in the grams that you would like to order in multiples of 50g, you can select if you want it Crushed, Uncrushed, or Fine Crushed and add them straight to your basket. You can see more information like the EBC and a short description of the malt by hovering the cursor over the product name. You can of course still dive down into actual product page for the full details and description just by clicking the product name on the card.

What volumes can I order malt in?

When we started to break malt down for home brewers we worked out the time to weigh the product, bag and seal the product and the materials and equipment required. The smallest volume that we could offer was 1kg due to how the website software worked and how it allowed us to cost and create bespoke products. That’s how (and why) we started breaking malt down into multiples of 1kg.

We were, however, contacted by customers who wanted less than 1kg as they hated seeing product go to waste at home that they didn’t need and wanted to be able to order smaller amounts. We then introduced a 500g bag but the cost to produce this is pretty much the same as 1kg due to the time and materials needed, making this the same price as the 1kg pack. Most customers were fine with this as it reduced their wastage and that is how it has been for years.

But we always wanted to improve on this further, so with our 2019 website upgrade we wanted to allow customers to order their malt in smaller packs – anything from 100g upwards, with increases in 50g amounts. This gives much more freedom to choose exactly what you want to order as we now price malt by the gram and then add on a bagging fee.

Please explain the bagging fee?

Ok, so the bagging fee is probably easiest explained with an example. If we sell 1kg of Maris Otter the price is (lets say) £1.74. If, however, you want just 900g, the price for the malt remains at £1.74 per kg but the work to produce this remains the same as that needed to provide 1kg. The bagging fee allows us to cover the cost of weighing and bagging your malt in a bespoke quantity but means we can still retain the same price per kg at those smaller amounts.

So as an example on the old site if you’d wanted a 500g bag of Maris Otter you would have been charged £1.74 – the same price as 1000g of it. On our updated site the price for 500g of Maris Otter would be 87p (50% of the per kg price) plus a 50p bagging fee, so a total of £1.37 which is 37p less than before. The bagging fee operates on a sliding scale and increases on the smaller amounts of malt to cover the time to create these bespoke sized packs for you. We think this makes sense, and we hope you do too.

How is my product packaged?

If you order 4000g of Maris Otter you get a single bag of 4000g of Maris Otter malt. If you order over 5000g the website is pretty smart, it knows that we have different bag sizes available to pack malt into – a bag for up to 1kg, one for up to 3kg and one for up to 5kg. It will automatically print the labels and split your order into the smallest number of bags possible to reduce the amount of environmental waste generated.

Can I order this to be split into multiple bags of different or same weights?

Afraid not, as we’re already splitting a bulk bag to create a smaller product. If you order 2000g and then increase this by 2000g it will be packed as a 4000g bag. To get 2 x 2000g bags you’d need to make two separate orders (and you’d then pay two delivery charges).

Do you still offer malts by the 25kg sack?

Yes, if you press the toggle switch in the malt page header you can choose to have loose (less than 25kg) or you can choose 25kg sacks. Then on the malts available in sacks you can also choose if you wish to have that 25kg sack split into 5x5kg bags:

In the example above, select the ‘C’, ‘U’ or ‘F’ icons to choose to have your malt Crushed, Uncrushed or Finely Crushed. The 1×25 and 5×5 icons allow you to choose whether you want 1 x 25kg sack or 5 x 5kg bags (an additional fee of £3.00 is charged for the latter).

Can I still sort the malts by the type of malt I’m looking for?

Yes, you can use the on page filters to view all the malts (this is the default), or you can choose Base Malts, Caramel Malts etc. and you can then sort the view by Title, Price or EBC. You can now also search by keyword for a specific type of malt (i.e. pilsner).

I only wanted 110 grams of malt but it’s added 150g to my basket – how come?

All of our malts are sold in multiples of 50g, so if you order outside of this amount the site will round the order up to the next round 50g weight, it will highlight this with a pop up to advise on this and give you a choice to add or cancel.