The craft beer scene is exploding across the U.S., but the popularity of home- and micro-brewing has uncovered a gap in the supply chain when it comes to malting. To date, malt — a critical ingredient in beer — has been dominated by large industrial malting operations. While it’s easy to get standard bulk malts, brewers looking for local malted grain sources and new flavors have been out of luck.
A new “personal malthouse” from Minneapolis-based Sprowt Labs aims to democratize small-batch malting, 
Thanks to the Cool Idea! Award, this small-batch home malting machine by Minneapolis-based startup Sprowt Labs will soon be launching to market. Sorce: Protolabscreating a supply chain from local farmers to craft brewers, while maintaining the quality and precision of large-scale malt houses. Unlike industrial operations, the malthouse from Sprowt will produce malted barley in small, customizable batches and significantly automates the malting steps of steeping, germination and kilning.
Sprowt Labs co-founders, Brian Hedberg and Christopher Abbott, knew they had a winning design for craft brewers but wanted to make sure their product was built to last. While developing parts and equipment, the founders applied for and won a Cool Idea! Award from Protolabs. The award offers up to $250,000 of the company’s manufacturing services, which include industrial 3D printing, CNC machining, sheet metal fabrication and injection molding each year to be used to develop prototypes and low-volume runs of production parts.
Sprowt’s personal malthouse, called the Acro, is sized to produce 10 to 35 lbs. of finished base and specialty malts. Protolabs worked with Sprowt Labs to create an injection-molded humidifier box for the Acro and, in doing so, helped the company reduce its cost per product. With the humidifier box and other components in hand fast, Sprowt Labs will be launching a better, more efficient product to market.
After a series of design iterations, Sprowt is getting ready to launch the Acro later this summer.
