Excerpt:

Inside a former naval warehouse at Alameda Point, Ron Silberstein steered a custom-built wheelbarrow across a radiant-cooled concrete floor. Within weeks, a blanket of sprouting barley kernels would cover that floor and Admiral Maltings would soon produce its first batch of malt for local brewers and distillers.

But for all that floor will provide, the Alameda resident couldn’t stop glancing at the building’s original redwood ceiling, which stole his attention when he first scouted the site.

“It looked to me like a redwood cathedral, and I just thought this is so beautiful,” said Silberstein, who is also the owner of ThirstyBear Brewing Company in San Francisco. “What we’re doing is the traditional method of floor malting, and to do that in a building with this kind of historical character ... was so much cooler than any of the other warehouses I’d seen.”