More than 1,300 participants paraded for hops in Poperinge. Meanwhile malt — a hundred times heavier in the glass — stays anonymous. Time to give it a name.
On Sunday 20 September at 3 pm, more than 1,300 participants marched through Poperinge for the great Hop Procession, the high point of the Beer and Hops Festival held every three years in the small West Flanders town. A Hop Queen was crowned, marching bands crossed the market square, and for three days, from 18 to 20 September, an entire region celebrated a climbing plant. Watching from our malthouse in Dinant, the spectacle stirs admiration — and a small twinge of envy. Because in the glasses the crowd was raising, hops weigh almost nothing. Malt does nearly all the work, and nobody has ever organised a procession for it.
A festival for 181 hectares
Belgian hops are a tiny, much-loved crop. According to Belgische Hop, the growers' association, Belgium today counts 23 hop farmers working 181 hectares, 155 of them around Poperinge. That is not much: a single large arable farm can cover a comparable area. Yet those 181 hectares have their triennial procession, their queen, varieties that beer lovers quote from memory, and local beers that print "Poperinge hops" proudly on the label.
Nothing of the sort exists for malting barley. It occupies far more ground in the Belgian countryside, from the loam plateaus to the Condroz, and it ends up in the same glasses. But between the field and the brewer sits a step almost nobody sees: malting. And what has no face gets no festival.
In the glass, the ratio flips
Run the numbers on a brew. For one hectolitre of pils, a brewer uses roughly 17 to 20 kilos of malt and one or two hundred grams of hops. By weight, that is about a hundred times more malt than hops. Malt supplies the sugars the yeast turns into alcohol, the colour, the body, the head retention, and much of the background flavour — cereal, fresh bread, crust, honey, depending on the kilning.
Hops are the spice. A magnificent spice, able to carry a whole beer in hop-forward styles, and nobody at the malthouse will argue otherwise. But a spice all the same: it seasons a dish that malt has cooked. When a taster praises the "roundness" of a dubbel from Namur or the "crisp" finish of a pils, they are describing malt, usually without knowing it.
How hops took centre stage
Hops have a story that tells itself. Seven-metre poles, pickers in costume, varieties with singing names, a spectacular September harvest: the plant is photogenic, and Poperinge has cultivated that memory for centuries. The wave of heavily hopped beers did the rest — for fifteen years now, brewers have printed Citra, Saaz or Hallertau on their labels the way a winemaker names grape varieties.
Malt, meanwhile, became a quiet commodity. Most of the malt used in Europe comes from large industrial maltings — efficient, consistent — that blend barley from many origins. The product is good; it is also anonymous. On most Belgian labels the mention stops at "barley malt". Which variety, which field, which year, which kilning curve — silence. You cannot love what you cannot name.
What malt has to say, when you let it speak
A malt has as much to tell as a hop. The malting barley we will work with in Dinant is Belgian and organic, grown partly on the founder's own Demeter-certified farm and partly by a Belgian cooperative of organic growers. The same barley variety grown on two different soils does not give exactly the same malt; two kilning curves turn the same grain into a pale pils malt or a munich with notes of bread crust. It is a living material, not a standard powder.
Naming your malt also means choosing a supply chain. A brewer who knows where their malt comes from also knows how it was dried. At our malthouse, kilning will run without fossil fuels: the heat comes from biomass-fired hot water, the electricity is renewable. Our first batch — one five-tonne drum, roughly one batch a week — goes into germination in mid-October. Brewers and bakers in Belgium and the neighbouring countries — France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg — will then be able to put a place, a farm and a season behind the word "malt".
When malt is not the star, and that is fine
Let us be honest: not every beer is a stage for malt. In an IPA built around hops, malt mainly has to stand up straight and leave room. Some styles call for highly specialised malts — heavily roasted, smoked — that a young craft malthouse will not produce in its first campaign; we are focusing on base malts, pils and pale ale, plus munich, vienna and Belgian-style malts. A brewer can perfectly well combine a local base malt with speciality malts from elsewhere: often that is simply the sensible choice.
We are not out to dethrone hops. We want malt to step out of anonymity, the way Poperinge hops did before it. So that in ten years, someone tasting a saison from Wallonia or a Flemish blond can say which Belgian malt gives it that golden colour and that fresh-bread base. The procession can wait; the curiosity can start now.
If any of this intrigues you, the malthouse door in Dinant is a short walk from the Meuse and opens gladly. Come see the drum before it fills with barley in mid-October, or write to the malthouse team via mad.be to talk malt, barley and brewing. We do not have a Malt Queen yet, but the coffee is on.