MY ACCOUNT
CONTACT
BLOG
A PROJECT ?
In the economics of a professional brewery, every point of brewhouse efficiency gained translates immediately into direct financial savings.
Extraction yield — meaning your ability to extract the maximum amount of fermentable sugars from your grain — is one of the key indicators of your profitability. Increasing its efficiency allows you to design identical recipes while using fewer raw materials, and at the same time reduce your logistical and storage footprint.
To optimise your processes, explore our catalogue of high‑performance malts for professional breweries.
1. Why does extraction yield directly impact your margins?
The calculation is purely mathematical. If a brewery has an overall yield of 68% and, through technical adjustments and the choice of higher‑quality grain, manages to raise it to 78%, the impact on the production cost of the final volume is immediate:
- Raw material savings: You reduce by roughly 10 to 12% the total amount of malt needed to reach the same original gravity for the same batch size. Over a full year of production at the scale of several dozen or hundreds of hectolitres, the savings amount to several thousand euros.
- Space and handling efficiency: Fewer bags to order, carry, mill and dispose of as spent grain.
- Optimised lautering space: By extracting more sugar with less material, you reduce the thickness of the grain bed in your lauter tun, limiting the risk of stuck sparges and speeding up your transfer times.
2. The 5 kg format: The strategic choice for freshness and cash flow
The profitability of a brewery does not depend solely on base malts (Pilsen or Pale Ale) purchased by the pallet. It also relies on the smart management of specialty malts (roasted, caramelised or heavily kilned malts).
The classic management mistake is ordering a standard 25 kg bag of a very specific malt (such as Carafa Special or Roasted Barley) only to use 800 grams of it in a 5‑hectolitre batch. The rest of the bag then sits in your storage area for months, exposed to humidity, losing freshness, losing enzymatic power and risking rancidity.
- Preservation of aromatic profile: By taking advantage of our offer of specialty malts packaged in 5 kg bags, you buy exactly according to your production schedule. You guarantee absolute freshness when the grain enters the mash.
- No dormant stock: You avoid tying up cash in passive grain volumes and reduce the risk of losses or exceeding optimal use‑by dates.
3. Technical levers to boost brewhouse efficiency
To support the quality of our partner malts and extract every last kilogram of available sugar, make sure to regularly audit these four pillars of your process:
| Technical lever | Impact on yield | Pro tip |
|---|---|---|
| Crush fineness | Allows better hydration of starch and optimal enzymatic access. | Find the sweet spot: crush the endosperm without destroying the husk, which is essential for lautering. |
| Mash pH | Ensures the ideal environment for alpha‑ and beta‑amylase activity. | Measure and adjust your hot pH between 5.2 and 5.5 using lactic or phosphoric acid. |
| Sparge temperature | Thins heavy sugars so they flow efficiently toward the boil kettle. | Never exceed 78°C during sparging to avoid extracting astringent tannins from the husk. |
Rolling Beers Pro Technical Team Insight
Choose base malts with strong diastatic power! If you use a significant proportion of unmalted grains (such as oat flakes or raw barley for your Stouts or Witbiers), your overall extraction yield can collapse if your base malt is not vigorous enough. Rely on high‑end base malts (such as Soufflet Pilsen or Weyermann Pale Ale). Their excellent natural enzyme richness will efficiently convert not only their own starch but also that of the adjacent grains, keeping your yield at its maximum level.
Have a technical question about our malts or need a quote?