Adventures in Gluten Free Malting and Roasting - A Photo Story

I decided to try malting this week while I was off with the kids. Here is what I did, and the results I got. I'm currently kilning my last batch before I roast so I will update this with the rest of the pics as they come.

I started on Thursday AM by soaking 8.5 lbs of buckwheat in my mash tun. 4/28/11 9:05 am

Buckwheat a few hours into my 8 hour soak.

I drained the mash tun, then transferred the buckwheat to a cheesecloth lined Rubbermaid container. That allowed me to easily rinse the super starchy liquid off the buckwheat every few hours. 4/28/11 pm soaked millet for 4-5 hours.
4/29/11 12:55 pm 27 hours later, We Sprouted!

4/30/11 9:50 am 49 hours after starting the buckwheat. At this point I decided to dry it. Almost all the buckwheat is spouted with 1/2 to 3/4 inch roots. A few you can see the acrospire.

A Better shot of how long the roots are.

Rinsing the Buckwheat in a colander before spreading it on towels to dry.

My Buckwheat took up 4 towels! I had a small fan on them to facilitate drying.

After about 6 hours of drying I started my first batch kilning. This took 6 hours at 170 deg. (The lowest my oven would go!)
Here is the partly dry buckwheat.

I wanted to track how much weight was lost during drying. 2 lb. 4 3/4 oz. before kilning.

Into the oven they go! 2 trays at a time.

A finished Tray!

Another batch goes in as another comes out. One towels worth of buckwheat fits onto 2 baking trays.

Finished buckwheat all "Malted and Kilned"
There is a nice color to it and it tastes neutral and nutty. I can tell that it tastes sweeter and is crunchy. It crumbles easily when squeezed.


Millet after 48 hours of malting. About 30-50% have sprouted to some degree. about 15% have a long enough root to be considered "malted." I used about 2.2 lbs of Bob's Red Mill hulled millet. I was concerned about it starting to mold, so I erred on the side of caution and dried at this point. I will be using it with the buckwheat (fully modified...as far as I can tell) and got additional amylase enzymes to use in the multi-step mash.

looks freaking good man..

That buckwheat looks good. I can't wait to hear how the product turns out.

Brilliant, this is a big help for me!

Hello, I looks like this project was undertaken a while ago, but I thought I'd ask for an update on how the brew turned out.

1. How did you adequately remove the roots etc from the dried grain? I've used a mesh strainer, but it tends to be a long process for just a few pounds of buckwheat.
2. How much amylase was used? It seems, from my reading, that the enzyme contribution from buckwheat and millet is fairly poor and a teaspoon or so of amylase is nearly essential.

Hope someone sees this...this thread hasn't had a comment in a while...

Thanks!