We have some upstarts in Ohio too, and I've tried pale malts from two of them, both made from the same variety of Ohio-grown barley. One maltster runs a small, manual floor-malting operation and makes a very wide variety of products. The malt performed quite poorly, and I can't comment on the taste, because there just wasn't much taste there to comment on. The other maltster, just opened, runs an industrial, German drum system and makes just base malts (Pils, Pale, Vienna and Munich,) with a capacity of nearly 1400 metric tons per year. It is truly some of the best malt I've ever used. And since I can get a bag for cheaper than Briess or Rahr, it may become my go-to. So it's interesting to see what a difference malting, rather than barley variety, can make, and also that "artisanal" or what not isn't necessarily best.