The Merits of Malt Totes
In the past few years, I’ve come across many startup and existing breweries that didn’t know the benefits of buying base malt in one ton totes or they didn’t even know the option existed. A tote contains 2000-2200lb of malt depending if the base malt is domestic or imported.
This packaging option offers breweries a convenient way to save money. Why deal with forty bags of base malt on a pallet when you can just scoop from one giant plastic tote and measure out the volume you need? Afterall, the same labor of lifting a fifty pound bag is the same as scooping malt out of a tote.
Here are some insights how you can use totes in your brewery.
Many brewers ask how do I measure the malt weight when my recipes are built around quantities of 50 pound bags?
Option One: Buy a basic industrial scale that can weigh fifty pounds or more. Use a couple five gallon buckets for scooping and weighing.
Option Two: Buy a self installed plastic spigot that cuts directly into the side of a tote if you’re looking for a less labor intensive way of drawing your base malt from the tote.
Option Three: Buy a pallet jack that has a built in scale on it.Place an empty tote bag on a pallet and fill it with your recipe for the day. Super sacks have hoops built into them on the top so you can forklift lift them above a mill and a dump from below with a pull string.
Option Four: Buy a one or two ton plastic silo and attached mill to the top of it. You can even add a chain bay or auger motor to the bottom and funnel grist over to your mash tun. Check out Bonar Plastic Flowmaster.
Option Five: Buy a super sack rack from malthandling.com which is pretty tricked out with an in-line dosing machine called a Feed Pro. Look at this option closely as a long term investment for housing another possible base malt like a pilsner or wheat.
Here are is the breakdown and savings for you to think about:
Buying totes offers an instant $0.10 cents savings off CMG’ tier 1 price level per pound. Overtime the cost savings will pay for a new fermentation tank. Figure $200 stays in your pocket. If you average 4-5 MT of base malt per month that’s a $1000 savings that can go towards operating costs or that new shiny fermentation tank that every brewery needs to grow.
One last added perk when purchasing totes is territory managers at Country Malt have the discretion to set up a customer’s account to default to our tier 5 price level on all malt in our portfolio. Another $0.06 cents savings per pound of bagged malt. Now when you buy that one bag of Fawcett Black Malt to make your porter you’re saving another $3 per bag. Every penny counts when running a brewery.
Hope this breakdown helps. Please feel free to email me or call to discuss options best suited for your brewery in the long run.
Santé,
Jonathan Plise
![endif]--![endif]--![endif]--![endif]--