Grain Source and Acceptance
This is the first handoff in the trust chain, and the cheapest place to stop a problem. A rejection here costs a rail car. The same contamination found after malting, brewing, and packaging costs a recall. Qualify the grain before it becomes anyone's inventory.
What "acceptable" means
The house standard comes first: the grain is a gluten-free cultivar handled to stay that way — no wheat, barley, rye, or oats in the field, rotation, harvest, or transport chain. See Truly Gluten-Free and Cross-Contact Prevention.
Beyond that, each lot is measured against a written grain acceptance worksheet before it is accepted. The Bard's production standard used a single sorghum cultivar (Ivory 7) and the criteria below. Treat the numbers as a worked example from commercial practice — each operation sets its own specifications, limits, and rejection rules for its product and its maltster.
| Criterion | Ideal specification | Reject when |
|---|---|---|
| Bushel weight | 57 lb/bu @ 14% moisture | < 54 lb/bu |
| Moisture | 14% (discount schedule above 14%) | > 15.5% |
| Germination | 90% @ 4 days (discount below 90%) | ≤ 85% @ 4 days |
| Vomitoxin (DON) | Free of / below limit | Detected above limit |
| Aflatoxin | Free of / below limit | Detected above limit |
| Gluten | None detected by a suitable method, with certificate | Detected |
| Grade | Grade A food-grade sorghum | Below grade |
| Cultivar identity | Confirmed (e.g., Ivory 7) | Unconfirmed / mixed |
Germination matters here even though malting is a later gate: dead grain will not malt, so viability is an acceptance criterion, not just a malt-house problem. Mycotoxin screening (vomitoxin, aflatoxin) belongs at raw-grain acceptance as prevention — it does not replace hazard-identified verification of the finished malt lot later in the chain.
Identify the lot before you accept it
Traceability starts at Gate 1 and every later gate inherits its identifier. Assign a grain source ID at harvest — farm plus bin — and carry it forward:
- Grain source ID (bin):
Farm_Bin01 - Malt-house shipment (rail car):
Farm_Bin01_RC1_2007-02-02 - …which then extends through malt product, extract, and finished-beer batch IDs.
If a lot cannot be tied back to a specific farm and bin, it has already failed acceptance — you cannot investigate a contamination you cannot trace.
Sample it right
A result is only as good as the sample behind it.
- At harvest: pull a representative sample as each bin is filled, label it with the bin ID, and process it against the acceptance worksheet before the grain is committed.
- At shipment: have the rail car sampled by an impartial official service (FGIS) using established probe/stream procedures, and clear the results before releasing the shipment to the malt house.
Who tests what
| Test | Typical source |
|---|---|
| Grading, moisture, protein (N × 6.25), sampling | Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS) |
| Germination and purity | State seed laboratory (e.g., ND State Seed Lab) |
| Gluten (positive/negative, ppm if positive, with certificate) | Allergen lab (e.g., FARRP, University of Nebraska) |
Keep the certificates. The gluten-free claim on the finished beer is reconstructed from records like these, because — per FDA — fermentation defeats direct testing of the finished product. Evidence gathered here is not replaceable later.
The boundary rule
Test the lot before it leaves. Test it when it arrives — or sign acceptance of the shipment and its commercial risk. Record who controlled it in between. Without boundary evidence, every custodian can blame the next one and nobody can prove where contamination entered. See Safe Transport and Custody.
The receipt: Bard's actual acceptance numbers — grade, moisture, germination, test weight, and mycotoxin limits, with the FGIS four-way split — are published as a worked example on What Makes Good Malting Sorghum. The upstream risks these gates exist to catch are owned by Agricultural Cross-Contamination.
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