Breweries
Malting
Transforming raw barley through steeping, germination, and kilning — with over 60 years of experience in comprehensive malt production.
Transforming raw barley through steeping, germination, and kilning — with over 60 years of experience in comprehensive malt production.
Lambton Kunstwerk delivers end-to-end malting systems that analyse moisture content, grain quality, and enzymatic activity to enhance malting outcomes. Our technology maximises flavour development and product yield across every stage of the malting process.
From barley intake and pre-cleaning through steeping, germination, kilning, and deculming — each stage is precisely controlled for consistent malt quality and full traceability.
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A complete, integrated workflow engineered to take raw barley through every malting stage to finished malt — with precision control at each step.
Barley is unloaded from trucks or rail, weighed on hopper scales, and sampled for quality grading. Rejected or sub-standard barley is segregated at intake. Accepted barley is then elevated to pre-cleaning before being conveyed to intake silos for temporary storage.
A Universal Cleaning Machine removes impurities including dust, stones, straw, and broken kernels. A Destoner (gravity separator) eliminates dense stones and clods. Cleaned barley is then conveyed to steeping vessels, ready for the start of the malting process.
Barley is soaked in water within steep vessels, alternating between water immersion and air rest cycles. Precise aeration during air rests promotes uniform moisture uptake throughout the grain mass. The steep process raises grain moisture from approximately 12% to 44–46% to trigger germination.
Steeped barley is transferred to germination boxes where it germinates over 3–5 days under carefully controlled temperature, moisture, and aeration conditions. Turning equipment keeps the grain bed aerated and prevents matting. Enzymes develop during germination, breaking down cell walls and proteins to create modification.
After steeping or germination, grain is moved through the production facility via wet transport systems. Belt conveyors, screw conveyors, and chain conveyors handle wet, heavy grain mass with care — minimising mechanical damage and maintaining grain integrity before kilning.
Germinated green malt is spread on perforated kiln floors and dried with controlled heated air. A programmable temperature profile gradually removes moisture while preserving enzyme activity. The kiln stage fixes malt colour, flavour, and aroma characteristics targeted for the final beer or spirit product.
After kilning, rootlets (culms) that developed during germination are removed by a deculmer — a rotating cylinder that breaks off and separates rootlets from malt kernels. A final cleaning pass removes dust and fine particles, delivering bright, clean finished malt.
For specialty malts, high-temperature drum roasters produce the colour and flavour compounds required for dark beers, stouts, and flavoured spirits. Precise roasting profiles control the degree of caramelisation and roast character — from pale crystal malts through to black patent malt.
Our combined expertise in food technology and engineering delivers malting solutions that maximise yield, consistency, and traceability.
Automated malting systems deliver repeatable results across every batch — eliminating variability and ensuring consistent malt quality for your brewery or distillery customers. Programmable process controls for steeping cycles, germination conditions, and kilning profiles ensure every batch meets the target specification.
Process reporting and monitoring deliver full traceability from barley intake through finished malt dispatch. Quality data including moisture, modification, enzyme activity, and colour is recorded at each stage — providing the documentation required by major brewery and distillery customers worldwide.
From pilot malthouses to large commercial malting plants — our engineers design and deliver complete systems.
