I brewed an ale with the buckwheat that I malted.
Here is my malting process;
I wrapped 1kg of buckwheat in a square of cheesecloth, tied a knot in the top and soaked in water. I have a two bucket system, the insdie bucket has lots of holes in it to let the water drain out and sits inside a bigger bucket with room at the bottom for an aquarium heater. This allows me to keep the soaking water at a constant temperature, in this case it was ~28C.
I soaked it for 2 hours then rinsed them off and changed the water, then left overnight ~7 hours. I rinsed them again and then laid them on my malting tray.
This is a three part system, the bottom part has a container of water that I put the aquarium heater in to keep the air warm and moist. The middle layer is wire mesh and I lay the grain on this. Then there is a lid with an extractor fan on it to help with drying the grain after malting.
This is the buckwheat after 3 days.
I was going to use my malting box to dry this but decided to use the oven instead. I put it into trays and put it in the oven on the lowest setting. This took several hours to completely dry.
Then I stuck it all in a pillow case, tied the top, and put it in the clothes dry on cold cycle for 3 20 min cycles to help remove the roots and shoots.
This didnt' work very well and I still had quite a few roots and shoots in the final product. I might try roasting them lightly next time to help make the roots even more brittle.
In the end I had about 750g of malted buckwheat, and it smelled and tasted great, sweet and nutty.
I ground it quite fine - not quite to a flour, then mashed with 3L of water as follows;
15 min at 35°C
15 min at 45°C
40 min at 65°C
30 min at 72°C
10 min at 78°C
This absorbed a lot of water after the 65C step and I had to add another couple of litres because it was basically a really thick porridge. I will probably mash with twice as much water next time.
Lautering and sparging was a nightmare.
I don't have a proper lauter ton so I put it all on a cheesecloth in a big sieve and let it drain through. It got stuck alot and took over 2 hours to go through. This is an image of a smaller sieve that I started with then moved to a larger one.
After that I had about 2 litres of wort at about 1016.
Here is the recipe I followed on the 7th of October.
Malted Buckwheat Ale
~2L buckwheat Wort ppg 1016
3L water
300g sorghum syrup
50g Dark Candi Syrup (SRM 82)
8g Pacifica hops (60 mins)
5g Cascade hops (12 mins)
4g Cascade hops (0 mins)
Irish moss (10 mins)
OG - 1026
This was bubbling away nicely the next morning, and has stopped bubbling now exactly a week later. I will leave it in the primary for another week or so and then bottle.
Here it is next to my
Modified Amercian Brown Ale. Can't wait to taste them both.