Happiness is: Home malting

COLObrewer said:

Did you keep them moist during the couching phase? Also, tell us about your barley grain, where did you get it? The temperatures you are talking about shouldn't be too hot to kill the grain unless your couching bed was too thick. The malt creates heat when malting but it sounds like this is where it stopped, I would think if it was moist and had chitted, it would bolt at those temperatures.

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I got the raw barley from the local feed store, yes I made sure it was moist but it never really started to dry out, maybe too wet? So the only thing I can point to is that it drowned. I read the nutrition profile of the barley and had a crude protein content of 10% I figured this is lower than briess at the LHBS.

ghohn said:

I was super stringent about the soak times but found a bucket with a few small holes really does the trick. I've got it in my bathroom so when ever I'm in there, ahem, about twice a day, I fill the bucket with tap water. It takes about 30-60 minutes to slow drain out. The grains are quite happy.



I've malted a lot of grain using the traditional malting floor. Absinthe I'm REALLY curious about your setup with the drum. Can you please post us some photos?

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how about a video?


the malt roller is the best.. i get much more even malting and with a timer i only need to check it once a day to see how shes malting

and to kiln i use a modified clothes dryer


and how i started malting (i still use the same soaking method just not malting on the floor anymore), also explaining the "hole in my bucket" method of soaking


i make ALL my own malt at home including crystal and roasted malts.. i might do a video on how i roast and make crystal malts

So I started another small batch using 3 2 hour soaks and 3 8 hours drains, I couched it last night and it is already more modified than my last batch. Thanks for the questions it helped me think about questions I didn't know to ask. First batch fail... second batch good so far. Some chits are starting to extend a little and I am religiously spraying and mixing every two hours and have a ceiling fan in the room on low for air circulation and cooling. At night I spray a little more water and turn off the fan until morning, I am hoping it is done modifying on tues.

dont bother spraying water its not required all it will do is make the risk of mold go up 100 times and add heaps more water to dry out when it comes time to kiln.. if you are turning every 2 hours then it wont dry out enough to cause problems.. but the fan is also not needed if you turn enough... watch some vids on floor malting and you wont see fans or any water added

With the temperature and humidity (lack of) in Arizona you are gonna have to mist (or sprinkle) your malt with water while couching or it will dry up, stop growing and die. do you have a cooler place to malt like in a basement, etc? You can inhibit growth of mold if you add a little bleach, maybe 1/4 tsp per 5 gallons, some have also used hydrogen peroxide and iodophor, I've never used either however. I've never tried malting over 70F either, hope this helps.

One of the benefits of being in the desert is that you can use the sun to dry your malt, I place mine on the drying hoards in the sun off the ground for the initial drying after modification.

Keep on malting my friend.

Edit: Jaellis, I thought it said Arizona on your location, doesn't matter nevada's about the same, maybe dryer.

Thank you colobrewer, everything seems to go well I couched the grain a little thinner this time and do add water when I feel no moisture when I am turning it. The room is a steady 74 F and the grain has stayed a steady 68 F. I am tinking partially because of evaporative cooling with the fan. We don't have a real mold problem out here. Food tends to dry out before it molds here, I am looking forward to drying in the sun it has been around 95-100 degrees lately with a very dry wind. I just gotta make a critter screen.

Right now acrospire is at 40-60% and rootlets are growing just fine, grain is at 68 F

Well my plans to airdry outside have been derailed with a week of 60 - 70 degree weather. Don't get me wrong I welcome the cooler weather, but now I have to dry the grain another way. I thought about leaving it spread really thin and having. A fan blow across it, but all I could do was imagine all my grain getting blown into the corner and that would have been too cold anyways, aroud 70 F. So I took a couple clip on lamps with 60 watt bulbs, tossed them in the oven on the bottom, and waited and 30 minutes, I checked every 10 minutes and being steady at 100 F I felt satisfied. So I put the grain on all of our baking sheets and put them all in. I calculate his is almost 10 lbs (dry weight) All but a 3 lbs fit(a little more than 2 lbs dry weight), I am going to experiment at making a crystal malt tonight.

Now I had a qurestion on kilning. One method I read said to just dry and it is pale malt, but others I read say kiln at 170 F - 212 F for two hours. What are everyones thoughts? Doesn't kilning it that high denature some or a lot of the amylase, I understood it denatures at around 170, am I just not understanding this?

Jaellis said:

. . . . Now I had a qurestion on kilning. One method I read said to just dry and it is pale malt, but others I read say kiln at 170 F - 212 F for two hours. What are everyones thoughts? Doesn't kilning it that high denature some or a lot of the amylase, I understood it denatures at around 170, am I just not understanding this?

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This is where you get into the different types of malt, it seems everyone has their own proprietary methods that they don't fully divulge. This site: http://brewingtechniques.com/bmg/pauls.html has the most complete information I've found for commercial temperatures at different steps for different malts. You may have to look around in there. Some handy info: Initial drying needs to be below 112F (for all malts) then up to 170ish for very pale malts (lager, pilsner, pale, wheat, rye, etc), However curing (for some kilned pale malts, biscuit, victory, munich, vienna, dextrin, etc) needs to be above 176F at different time intervals and other parameters.

To your last question I believe your speaking of the enzymes which are not activated until the mashing process which is after the malting process (in most cases). If I remember right you can kiln up to 212F before much damage is done. Of course crystal/caramel malt is a different animal since it is mashed prior to kilning. Also most of the darker roasted malts (Chocolate, black, etc) have no diastatic power due to the very high kilning temperatures (300F up to 500F in some cases) Roasted barley also uses these temperatures but of course has not been modified whatsoever and also has no diastatic power

COLObrewer said:

...
To your last question I believe your speaking of the enzymes which are not activated until the mashing process which is after the malting process (im most cases). If I remember right you can kiln up to 212F before much damage is done. ...

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Ok that make more sense that the enzymes need to be activated before they are denatured in the mash. That is where I was getting confused. Thanks.

So for a smaller batch of crystal about 2 lbs what about using a crockpot with a temperature probe that controls the temp for the mini mash? We got a big one for our wedding a few years ago and I was thinking that would be perfect to keep it at a steady temp for as long as I needed. Any thoughts or problems associated with that? Or has anyone tried this with success or failure?

if you have a good amount of moisture left in the grain then just pop the grain in a baking dish and cover it well with foil then put it in an oven at 150°f to make crystal. mashing it will just wash flavor and sugars away and it makes a sticky mess when it comes to kilning.

to stop from denaturing the enzymes you need to slowly work up to the kilning temp and make sure its completely dry before you get over 120°F ish. this takes almost all day (to dry and kiln) in my converted dryer and it took me 2-4 days without it and it was no fun at all.

Absinthe said:

the malt roller is the best.. i get much more even malting and with a timer i only need to check it once a day to see how shes malting

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That's right. I have seen this video. I'd like to build this but invariably I run into the problem of sourcing parts without be fluent in Korean (though the irony is that that motor you have there probably comes from Korea).

Up to this point, I've just been putting the malt in a large meter x meter tub. When they begin to chit, I turn them by hand and mist water on them and cover them up with a lid. It seems everyone here says that adding water isn't necessary at this point. Agreed?

I'm wondering if I should just take the operation out onto my veranda with the concrete flour where I air dry later in the process to do the growth process like COLObrewer (Do you find that the grains on the outside dry out?) I wouldn't have a wood form like he does but I'm quite diligent on rotating them every x amount of hours.

Absinthe said:

if you have a good amount of moisture left in the grain then just pop the grain in a baking dish and cover it well with foil then put it in an oven at 150°f to make crystal. mashing it will just wash flavor and sugars away and it makes a sticky mess when it comes to kilning.

to stop from denaturing the enzymes you need to slowly work up to the kilning temp and make sure its completely dry before you get over 120°F ish. this takes almost all day (to dry and kiln) in my converted dryer and it took me 2-4 days without it and it was no fun at all.

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I've wondered about the making of crystal, so what you're saying for crystal is that from the point you have full modification you go directly to kilning at mash temperatures correct? Then hold at that temp for different durations for the different lovibonds?

Your second paragraph is for base malts correct? The timeline you have is in line with what I have written in a detailed malting schedule for my machine. I have: . . . . Step 4, Drying at 100F - 112F with constant air flow and slow rotation for 1-2 days. Step 5, Curing at 112F - 176F depending on malt with constant airflow for 1-2 days. Step 6, Specialty malts, etc, etc. Step 4 would be also where you would diverge for crystal going directly to mash temp instead of drying

made some crystal last night and I followed the basic directions here

It turned out pretty decent I did this with 3 lbs of green barley. I had to spread it out on two aluminum foil racks in my oven to get in thin enough to dry. It tastes and smells like malt with hints of caramel .

I was thinking of building a budget drum roaster out of a keg, bike chain and gears a bbq burner, a small motor (Im thinking a repurposed ceiling fan motor (maybe another motor)), any thoughts? Maybe putting a burner under a cement mixer and call it good would work too? but seriously maybe that is not a bad thought?

It should be big enough for malting a 50 lb bag at a time with much less work. I'll draw up a sketch of what I am thinking and post it later. Use it for the initial soaks, and turning then drying and kilning without having to transfer it between vessels.

Maybe this should go in a different thread but I figured it was applicable here.

Update on my batch.

Still drying, keeping the oven at 105°F mixing it before work, after work, and before bed the top bit is dry enough to start kilning I am just trying to get it dry throughout. Today is day 2 of drying. I am hoping to brew Friday night, but we will see.

Jaellis said:

made some crystal last night and I followed the basic directions here

It turned out pretty decent I did this with 3 lbs of green barley. I had to spread it out on two aluminum foil racks in my oven to get in thin enough to dry. It tastes and smells like malt with hints of caramel .

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Lets expound on this process a little, did you happen to take a gravity reading of the steep water? Just wondering if any sugar was rinsed away, I would think very little since they are still in the hull and it was only 40 minutes. It would be nice to do some experiments of different steep times while checking the gravity of the water after separated to get the ideal duration of steeping while retaining the most sugar. Maybe also experiments with different durations kilning and testing the gravity after grinding/steeping, etc.

Jaellis said:

I was thinking of building a budget drum roaster out of a keg, bike chain and gears a bbq burner, a small motor (Im thinking a repurposed ceiling fan motor (maybe another motor)), any thoughts? Maybe putting a burner under a cement mixer and call it good would work too? but seriously maybe that is not a bad thought?

It should be big enough for malting a 50 lb bag at a time with much less work. I'll draw up a sketch of what I am thinking and post it later. Use it for the initial soaks, and turning then drying and kilning without having to transfer it between vessels.

Maybe this should go in a different thread but I figured it was applicable here.

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Sounds interesting, you may want to devise a way to move air through it for better temperature control? It may be hard to tweak temperatures without air movement. For steeping you would want a way to drain the water easily without loosing grain, maybe as simple as one drain valve with a screen on the inside and just stop the drum with it on the bottom, open to drain?

I really need to get going on mine, I see it eventually having a cooler, a heater, both with air flow, water inlet with spray capability, water dumps, electric water temp maintenance, electric air temp maintenance, adjustable rotation speed and smoking capability. I want it to be an all-in-one machine for any type of malt or specialty grains:rockin:

Jaellis said:

Update on my batch.

Still drying, keeping the oven at 105°F mixing it before work, after work, and before bed the top bit is dry enough to start kilning I am just trying to get it dry throughout. Today is day 2 of drying. I am hoping to brew Friday night, but we will see.

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Sounds great, keep us posted and pictures are always welcome. What beer are you going to brew?

Im gonna go with a fairly light summer blonde, something to cool off the 105+ summer we have here.

I tasted the wash to see if I could tast any sugar, but I gotta say it tasted like wet hay, kinda grassy. and no I didn't take a gravity reading.

Ill post pics tonight. And I agree about the airflow... hmmm Ill think about it.

give the crystal in the oven a go its much easier as it dries it at the same time.. i normally start a little high and back down when the grain starts to warm..

as for the motor and drum i think the windscreen wiper motor and an old computer power supply will do the job nicely as they are just about free and have heaps of grunt

So all done making malt, but the grain lost 1.2 lbs in the process, maybe due to moisture, dirt, some grain lost(I estimate 0.2 lbs), me tasting, my dog tasting some(she was interested in each step so I gave her a little here and a little there). At this point it looks and tastes like malt I can buy. We will see how it turns out when I get around to brewing. Not today though my wife said no brewing on our anniversary.

Just finished mashing out and I looks like my efficiency with 9 lbs pale 1.8 lbs crystal ~20L all home malted looks to be 72.22% og 1.020 @ 163F is about 1.046 at 59F yeah!! It loks smells and tastes like wort! Starting my boil now.

Wow!! I really want to get into this!

Do you think that a dryer could be used as both the malt roller and kiln? I want to do 25lbs. at time. Would the dryer be able to handle that?

billman said:

Wow!! I really want to get into this!

Do you think that a dryer could be used as both the malt roller and kiln? I want to do 25lbs. at time. Would the dryer be able to handle that?

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I don't see why not as long as you can set up a control system, for temp and a way to add water as needed.

Think of how heavy a load of wet laundry is. If it can handle that, probably not a problem with 25 lbs + 30% - 40% moisture in the range about 33 -36 lbs total heaviest weight. Others might say differently.

billman said:

Wow!! I really want to get into this!

Do you think that a dryer could be used as both the malt roller and kiln? I want to do 25lbs. at time. Would the dryer be able to handle that?

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What do you mean by malt roller? What part of the process are you talking about?

I probably would not be adding water to a dryer as it is designed to remove moisture, you might be able to design around that with a gas dryer, but an electric dryer would be a real pain.

the dryer i use can only handle about 6kg DRY barley (about 10-12kg wet). so 25lb would be to much

Also a drier turns way to fast and you will break all the rootlets.

I guess a better response would be to check your dryers max capacity.

Love this!! I'm in the early stages of learning the art of malting myself... Very useful!

Just poured my first glass made with home malted 6 row barley. It turned out great!! Hazy, but has awesome flavor, head retention and color. Ill post a pick soon.

Hey COLObrewer, how deep are your Hoards (aluminum screen frames)? and How much malt do you put in them?

billman said:

Hey COLObrewer, how deep are your Hoards (aluminum screen frames)? and How much malt do you put in them?

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About 2" deep, probably about 7-8lbs (wet weight) never weighed them though. That part of the process doesn't work to well with my current setup, they need to be more rigid.

I was thinking to make them more rigid you could use aluminum screen frames. They are cheap and you can get them at Home Depot or Lowes.

Hi everyone, so I've moved onto malting barley instead of wheat after an unsuccessful attempt. I've just received a batch of whole barley from brew2bottle and after washing it I noticed tiny black seeds floating around. Are these normal, are these beneficial, or can they jeopardise the malting barley? Hope someone can answer my Q.

Cheers

RickCov said:

Hi everyone, so I've moved onto malting barley instead of wheat after an unsuccessful attempt. I've just received a batch of whole barley from brew2bottle and after washing it I noticed tiny black seeds floating around. Are these normal, are these beneficial, or can they jeopardise the malting barley? Hope someone can answer my Q.

Cheers

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Everything that floats should be separated out, just scoop them out or let your bucket overflow, flushing them out, they are weed seeds and/or unviable seeds and/or chaff, etc.

I made sure i skimmed off the unwanted husks, chaff etc before hand but these seeds do not float so it's alot harder to remove them. if they are not damaging i may just carry on malting and remove them later.

RickCov said:

I made sure i skimmed off the unwanted husks, chaff etc before hand but these seeds do not float so it's alot harder to remove them. if they are not damaging i may just carry on malting and remove them later.

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I wouldn't worry about them that much unless there's a bunch of them. I'm wondering though why they weren't separated in the cleaning process, they could be bug seeds too but I wouldn't worry about that either, just separate as well as possible.

Was this barley cleaned for seeds or for feed?

It was advertised as "cleaned whole barley" from brew2bottle but tbh I wasn't too happy with what I had bought. I paid £1.50 for 500g and discovered when I opened it that it was approx 5 - 10% wheat grain! I searched the net far and wide for the stuff but that was the best deal I could find. On a lighter note the stuff is now 75% modified and I'm going to start drying it later.

Ok, so I continued with malting and brewing my batch and have just finished the boil. Ive cooled it and took a gravity reading and wait for it.. 1.008.

Heres what i did.. I steeped and dried the barley in 8 hour intervals twice (The acrospire was at 75% at this point) then i tumble dried for 2.5 hours. I then put them in the oven for 30 mins on gas mark 1/2 (120-130C / 250 F). The grains were dry to the touch and the rootlets came off easily at this point. I used a rolling pin to crush the gains and continued to mash for 60 mins at 154F. What am I doing wrong? I really want to get this right.

Hope someone can help

Cheers

RickCov said:

Ok, so I continued with malting and brewing my batch and have just finished the boil. Ive cooled it and took a gravity reading and wait for it.. 1.008.

Heres what i did.. I steeped and dried the barley in 8 hour intervals twice (The acrospire was at 75% at this point) then i tumble dried for 2.5 hours. I then put them in the oven for 30 mins on gas mark 1/2 (120-130C / 250 F). The grains were dry to the touch and the rootlets came off easily at this point. I used a rolling pin to crush the gains and continued to mash for 60 mins at 154F. What am I doing wrong? I really want to get this right.

Hope someone can help

Cheers

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Well, if the acrospires (not the rootlets) were close to full length of the seed that part should have been fine. It's hard for me to believe they were with only two 8hr soaks?

What temperature was the 2.5 hr tumble dry? Also rolling pin crush is borderline adequate, especially for home malt. Also you may need to do a step mash if it was not fully modified.

It was definately the acrospire that was 75%, not the rootlets.

I forgot to mention that after the second steeping phase, I kept the grain moist with a spray bottle of water for about 2 days then dried them. The only thing i can see wrong is the rolling pin but I actually crushed about 60% with a hand held blender (used for smoothies and stuff) which I also forgot to mention. Could I gain so much gravity by using a step mash method?

Sounds like it should have been modified, if so you should certainly be able to get more than 1.008 with a single step mash and batch sparging, what was the amount of malt used and your sparging method? Maybe post your entire recipe and process.

RickCov said:

then i tumble dried for 2.5 hours.

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If the tumble dry was too hot with too much moisture still it may denature the enzymes(but on the same note it would have started converting the starches that were available, maybe accounting for the .008 grav)

I had good luck drying in the oven for 2 days at 110f/43c (it is kinda funny that was the high yesterday here in las vegas). 2.5 hour drying doesn't seem long enough to me, but im still learning too so maybe it was fine. And for pale malt I didn't let the oven get over 170f/77c double check temps.

Jaellis said:

If the tumble dry was too hot with too much moisture still it may denature the enzymes(but on the same note it would have started converting the starches that were available, maybe accounting for the .008 grav)

I had good luck drying in the oven for 2 days at 110f/43c (it is kinda funny that was the high yesterday here in las vegas). 2.5 hour drying doesn't seem long enough to me, but im still learning too so maybe it was fine. And for pale malt I didn't let the oven get over 170f/77c double check temps.

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This is true, the malt needs to be slowly dried in order to preserve the maximum amount of enzymes, that means 3 days below 120F. The schedule I try to follow now is 90F for 24hrs, then 120F for 12hrs. similar to the schedule in the kilning section of this link: http://www.mosquitobytes.com/Den/Beer/Hmbrewing/Malt.html

RickCov, you may have killed the majority of enzymes by raising the temp to 250F before the malt was dry, it needs to be 3-4% moisture before the higher kilning temp's are used. Also I believe 220F is about the max for your paler malts with adequate enzyme preservation.

Keep on malting my friend

COLObrewer said:

This is true, the malt needs to be slowly dried in order to preserve the maximum amount of enzymes, that means 3 days below 120F. The schedule I try to follow now is 90F for 24hrs, then 120F for 12hrs. similar to the schedule in the kilning section of this link: http://www.mosquitobytes.com/Den/Beer/Hmbrewing/Malt.html

RickCov, you may have killed the majority of enzymes by raising the temp to 250F before the malt was dry, it needs to be 3-4% moisture before the higher kilning temp's are used. Also I believe 220F is about the max for your paler malts with adequate enzyme preservation.

Keep on malting my friend

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Aha. We may have identified the problem. Thanks alot guys. I'm going to give it one more try but use a different drying technique. Does it matter how long it takes to dry because the only other option I can think of is to sun dry them but I can't guarantee the weather. My oven only goes down to gas Mark 1/2 and I'm not sure what temperatures the dryer dries at. Are there any other amateur methods used?