Does home malting produce good beer

Boek · 01-31-2012, 09:44 PM

I'm thinking about giving it a try. I know some folks have elaborate set ups but I think I could malt some barley with equipment I have laying around. My question is, has anyone had any homebrew made from homemalt? Is it any good? Is the eff any good of homemalt? Trying to decide if it is worth the effort.

**Ezekielsays** · 01-31-2012, 09:57 PM

I've done this once : I malted barley and wheat from my father's farm for a basic American style wheat. It worked well for me, my efficiency was around 75% if I remember right. However, I did do a protein rest and then a decoction to bring it up to 151. I was operating under the assumption that my grains were not properly modified, and that the protein rest would help with that.

Fwiw, the beer was quite tasty and well received by both my family and home brewing friends.

I didn't have anything elaborate set up. My equipment for malting was buckets, window screens, and a ceramic heater with fan. I did only a few pounds at a time.

Boek · 01-31-2012, 11:16 PM

Cool. What kept you from keeping it up? If it works well it sure would make brewing cheap/almost free. Did you build some sort of hot box around your screens to keep the heat in when drying?

**Ezekielsays** · 02-01-2012, 12:31 AM

I basically made a tunnel out of reflectix insulation for drying. it seemed to work well, everything dried well, no mold. Aster it was all dry I toasted it in the oven for a bit.

I haven't continued with it for both time and space reasons. I did make quite a bit more than I needed, and for several brews I replaced a couple pounds of two row with home malt. Now that it's gone, i'm thinking of malting a bit more. Even if it doesn't replace purchased malt, I like being able to add some to each brew.