I'm getting some free ingredients...What/how to use?

I posted something similar in the General forum just asking if it can be used and the general consensus was yes it can be.... Now I just need to know the how and how much... The thread died before anyone could help me out with conversion factors, so I thought this might be a better spot to ask.

A friend of mine's dad owns an Italian restaurant where I live. He has hundreds of pounds of diastatic malt (not sure yet if it's barley or wheat). Anyways, he has hundreds of pounds but only uses it by the teaspoon and he has told me plenty of times I am more than welcom to have as much as need. Normally, I'd stick to the grains and the extracts but it's free so I might as well try it for a batch and see what happens.

Now mainly, I know it still needs to be mashed because it is not converted to sugar yet.... But at what rate can I replace grains with this stuff. For example, if a recipe calls for 12lbs of pale malt, how much diastatic would I use in place of the pale malt? Also, because it's fine like flour, would I be best to do two separate mashes? What I mean by that is, if I'm doing a stout that calls for 12lbs pale malt (which will be replaced by diastatic), 1lb flaked barley, .75lbs of roasted barley, and a few other specialties, to avoid mess and what not would I be best off to mash the specialties and diastatic separatley then combine or possibly one after another in the same wort....? I've only done a few partials and no complete AG's yet so I'm not fully expirenced in the techniques but I am capable and willing to try.

Mainly if someone can help with the conversion of how how much diastic I could use in place of grains I can mess around with the rest until and figure out for myself what is the most effecient and works the best in terms of mashing.

If its crushed as fine as flour, it might be tough to work with. You might be able to get away with using a BIAB bag and tossing the diastatic malt in there, but I would think if might just turn to mush. Plenty of rice hulls would probably help.

Otherwise, it might be tough to get a good number on it, although I would think that you could pretty easily just sub it for pale malt. What you might want to do is get a pound of the malt and mash it in a gallon of water. Since its already crushed fine you should get great efficiency, and that would tell you the potential you could expect. That would also tell you how well it was going to mash, and you could just taste it afterwards to make sure it tastes sweet like it should.

+1 on the stovetop experiment. I'm not really familiar with the diastatic malt. But, it will matter if it's wheat or barley. If it's barley, what kind and how well modified is it? And yes it could end up just being a gummy mess.

The only to know for sure is to try a sample mash and compare the gravity and taste to that of a similarly mashed sample of 2 row.

erikpete18 said:

What you might want to do is get a pound of the malt and mash it in a gallon of water. Since its already crushed fine you should get great efficiency, and that would tell you the potential you could expect. That would also tell you how well it was going to mash, and you could just taste it afterwards to make sure it tastes sweet like it should.

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Hahaha, yeah that's a good idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that. I'm pretty sure, it is like 70% barley, 20% wheat, and 10% dextrose or something close to that. If it's wheat diastatic then I think it's the same just the barley and wheat switched. I'll find out what it is and do the expiriment soon. I am moving for an internship soon so hopefully I can get the expiriment done in the next week or two then when I get where I'm going (depending on the results) I might give it a try in a stout.