When beer lovers in the Inland Northwest order a pint at a local craft brewery, they might not realize the grains used to make what's inside their glass were probably not only grown nearby but also malted by a world-class, local craft malthouse.
During the recent 2025 Craft Maltsters Guild Malt Cup, the only international competition of its kind, malts produced by three Inland Northwest-based malthouses — Cascadia Malts, LINC Malt, and Cold Stream Malt and Grain — all took home awards.
Malting is the process of germinating, drying and roasting raw barley or other cereal grains, which is essential for brewing beer and distilling spirits. While historically brewers have malted their own grain, the rise of commercial malthouses with large-scale production capacity made it more cost-effective to buy as well as get consistent products.
The Malt Cup judges malt quality through a rigorous three-round process. The first round involves labs analyzing the quality of each malt. The second and third rounds are sensory, and judges perform hot steep evaluations prior to the annual Craft Malt Conference in Colorado. The top three malts in various categories are then awarded gold, silver or bronze medals.
On the flight back to Spokane at the beginning of March with three awards between them, Cascadia Malts founder Corey Freuen and Brian Estes, the malt enterprise director of LINC Malt, got to talking about how to raise awareness of the Inland Northwest's local craft malt industry.
"I think people want to support local. They really do, but sometimes there are barriers in the way, and one of those barriers is cost," Freuen says. "Slowly, I think it's about raising awareness and hoping that people decide to value it more."
For years, malting has been dominated by large corporations that source from growers across the U.S. Mirroring the craft beer boom of the last two decades, however, smaller malthouses have popped up as an attempt to connect brewers and distillers to local farmers, making malting a craft industry, too.
"I am not aware, outside of maybe Colorado, where there are a good number of malthouses," Estes says. "It's pretty unique to have such a geographic density of awardees" in the Inland Northwest, he continues. "I think that speaks to the character of the grain that we get to work with and then I think also the quality of the malting."
Much like how wine has a terroir, "Washington is uniquely situated for grain," Freuen says. "It's because most grain is grown without irrigation, it's dry farmed, so you need a wet spring so that those roots can grow deep and get an early boost. But then you need a pretty dry summer so that you don't get disease growth."
At malthouses like Cascadia, LINC and Cold Stream, raw grains are first soaked to increase moisture content and activate natural enzymes. The grain is then transferred to a controlled environment where it begins to germinate and grow little rootlets, which breaks down the cell walls and makes sugars and enzymes needed for fermentation more accessible.
The germinated grain is finally dried in a kiln and roasted to develop different flavors and colors, with lighter roasts used for brewing beer like pilsners and darker roasts for stouts and porters.
Cascadia Malts' warehouse is located next to Freuen's home in Nine Mile Falls. The company traces its roots to his family's farm, McKay Seed Co., which has been cultivating grain since the 1870s near Grand Coulee Dam in Central Washington's Columbia Plateau.
Not a farmer himself, but raised as a city boy in Spokane, Freuen wanted to be more involved in the family venture. Ten years ago, he thought about opening a brewery and making beer using his family's grain.
"In doing that process of studying the [brewing] industry and what it would take to do that, I taught myself malting, you know, YouTube and Google and everything, just using Rubbermaid bins and food dehydrators," Freuen says.
He eventually took a malting course from Virginia Tech University and shifted away from the brewery plan, deciding to open a malthouse to connect local craft brewers and distillers to his family's grain. Cascadia Malts launched in 2024.
Freuen's operation is small but mighty, and in just its first year, Cascadia earned silver in the Pilsen category and bronze in the Distiller's Malt category at the recent Malt Cup.
"[Pilsen is] a very delicate and nuanced category, and I truly believe that it's only the quality that it is because of the barley, just because of what it came from," he says.
Throughout the past year, Cascadia has worked with about 15 brewers and distillers, most in Spokane, like Humble Abode and Whistle Punk breweries, but also Westland Distillery in Seattle.
LINC Malt operates under LINC Foods, a farmer and worker-owned cooperative based in Spokane Valley. Established in 2014, LINC aims to create direct market opportunities for regional producers.
Seeking a year-round industry (unlike seasonal produce) to expand into, LINC entered the malting industry in 2016.
"We looked at that and said, 'Oh, there's a place where we could go with our high value grains, where the producer wanted to be part of that supply chain, and that's what got us into what we do," Estes says.
In 2022, two of the farms that LINC works with, Horlacher Farms and Clearwater Farms, decided to vertically integrate and partner with LINC as a separate entity called Cold Stream Malt and Grain.
Cascadia Malts: Silver for Pilsen; Bronze for Distiller's Malt
LINC Malt: Gold for Wheat
Cold Stream: Bronze for Pilsen (in partnership with Montana Craft Malt)
Cold Stream uses its own grains, working with LINC to do trial batches before completing the bulk of the malting process with another partner, Montana Craft Malt. The malt is then shipped back to LINC's warehouse in Spokane Valley.
"The LINC-Cold Stream partnership malts are primarily what are referred to as base malts, which comprise the vast majority of malted grains that go into any beer of any style," Estes says.
These co-branded malts are used by most of the breweries that the two companies work with, which they say is a majority share of brewers in the greater-Spokane area. Some of LINC's regular, higher-volume clients include the Grain Shed, YaYa Brewing Co., Wildland Cooperative, Lumberbeard Brewing and Precious Things Fermentation Project.
At the Malt Cup, LINC landed gold for its wheat malt, while Cold Stream won bronze in the Pilsen category.
"We're just this little pocket of producers in this area, and we're beating the globe," Freuen says, referring to Washington state's world-class industries: hops, grains, malting, brewing and distilling, and even wine grapes.
So next time you raise a glass of your favorite locally brewed beer, take a moment to appreciate the malt behind the magic.
