The Malt Production Process: Bagging Hall

 

We’ve been taking you backstage at our Tivetshall Maltings to learn all about the wonders of our malt production process.

After exploring roasting last week, we’ve reached the final stage in the process – the bagging hall. This is where our malts are packed up ready to be shipped throughout the UK and beyond to our lovely brewing customers.

Having outgrown our original bagging line, we introduced a new state of the art bagging plant facility and warehouse in 2017 to meet our increasing capacity requirements.

Keep reading to find out more about this significant part of the malt production process…


Bagging

All of the malt that comes into the bagging hall is transported by one of the five Simpsons Malt wagons that we have on site.

We use our vehicles to move and dispense the malt at one of the intake points to ensure our malt is still in tip-top condition as it nears the end of the malt production process.

Intake

We have three intake points at the bagging hall – one for base malt, one for crystals and one for black malts. Keeping them separate in this way makes sure that there is no cross-contamination between the types of malt, which is very important.

Cleaning

Before any bagging gets underway, the malt is cleaned through screens and a de-stoner. The screen is essentially a giant sieve, helping to remove dust, lumps, stones and any other small particles. We spend a lot of time ensuring our malt is of the highest quality possible when it reaches our customers, so this step is essential.

 The malt is then placed in intermediate storage before being transferred to the bagging line.

Bagging line

Our lovely end-product malt is now ready to be bagged up. We can either bag it in one-tonne or half-tonne bags or send it through the bagging line to be packed into 25kg bags. We supply a huge variety of brewers who have different requirements, so the different sizes of malt bags we offer is important.

On the bagging line, malt is packed into the 25kg bags before going through a palletiser (a machine which stacks the bags onto pallets) and a hooder (a machine which wraps the pallets in plastic) to ensure it’s all neatly and securely packaged prior to transport. Finally, the assembled stacks of malt bags are stored on pallet racks ready to set out on a journey to our brewing and distilling customers across the UK or to our international distributors.

That’s the last we see of our malt – until the next batch of barley comes in and we get to start all over again! All of our hard work is worth it when we see the beer-tastic creations of our brewers.

 

Have you enjoyed learning all about the malt production process? Leave us a #BrewersTip for what you do with your Simpsons Malt once it reaches you, or speak to us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram – we love to hear from our brewers!

Now that we’ve revealed all of our malty secrets to you, why not get in touch with our team to make an order?