home made barley malt syrup (extract)

Hya folks! My first post here, glad to be onboard.

I've been experimenting with mashing and making home made malt extracts.

My purpose is not to make beer but to eat these as sweeteners. Ok so I had to say it. Sorry if it's blasphemy! You can now ban me from the board.

But before doing so may I ask a couple of questions.

I'm mashing my barley malt in 3 steps - protease rest for 20 mins, beta-amylase rest for 30~50 minutes and alpha-amylase rest for 60mins.

In order to obtain the sweetest syrup possibly, with the lesse bitterness, is there one type of enzyme that I should favour? I understand beta-amylase turns the starch into maltose and glucose whereas alpha-amylase turns it into dextrins. Or is it that alpha-amylose turns the glucose and maltose into dextrins?

Which one would I rather favour in order to obtain a very sweet and tasty product?

Also, which kind of barley malt is less bitter? Right now I'm mashing with 2 row organic pale malt, EBC 5, that I got from a local supplier.

Looking forward to reading your answers! Thanks in advance. Best regards.

bidule said:

Which one would I rather favour in order to obtain a very sweet and tasty product?

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Those might be conflicting requirements. As you are aware resting at a lower temperature will produce the highest levels of maltose while higher rests will leave a higher proportion of higher molecular weight sugars. I'm guessing that some of the interesting flavors may come from the longer sugars but when the molecular weight is too high sugars are pretty flavorless. I'd want to experiment (I always do) before settling on a procedure and I'd start with low saccharification rest temperature. How you cook the "wort" will have a big effect on the flavor profile.

bidule said:

Also, which kind of barley malt is less bitter? Right now I'm mashing with 2 row organic pale malt, EBC 5, that I got from a local supplier.

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No "base" malt should be bitter. It's only when you get into the burnt stuff that bitterness arises (and even there we now have products like Sinamar (means "without bitterness") made from barley which has been de-husked before roasting.

Hi there!

Looks like I've come to the right place. Thanks for your reply, very informative!

So I'm going to start experimenting with beta-amylase. Do you suggest I leave it to rest at that stage for a period of up to 90 minutes, never going higher than 65°C (149°F)?

Also it would be interesting if I could get my hands on isolated enzymes, now that would rock! :rockin:

No "base" malt should be bitter. It's only when you get into the burnt stuff that bitterness arises (and even there we now have products like Sinamar (means "without bitterness") made from barley which has been de-husked before roasting.

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Ok great!
Since you mention that. I also understand that the husks have a fair amount of tannins. Do you think it would help if I ground my base diastasic barley to a fine flour and sieve it like a white flour, managing to leave most if not all of the husks out? I've been thinking of this, but have no clue if it could be a good idea. My understanding is that the more you grind the grain, the more available it is for the enzymes to degrade the starch. Did I get this right? That way i would both be leaving bitter-producing husks out and making the mash work better?

Another question, if I may. Before I was sprouting my own barley. Then I mashed it up without kilning it. Of course, acrospires and rootlets ended up being thrown into the mix. Are these known to impart undesirable flavours to the wort? I realize when the barley is kilned these are left off so I don't know if it's an easy question to answer.

Anyway, thanks again!

They do but those tannins would contribute puckery mouthfeel more than bitterness in a beer and I think we worry more about them for their haze causing potential than flavor effects. But we like to keep them as they form a filter bed which makes it possible to separate clear wort from the spent grains. It is true that the finer you grind the more access the enzymes have and the more sugar you will get but it becomes then a question of how you will get it. So I'd say no - don't pulverize. The goal for a brewer is to crumble the interior of the grain as much as possible while damaging the husk as little as possible.

As to acrospires: plenty of them wind up in the mash tun because most maltsters go to the kiln when the acrospire length is about 3/4 the length of the kernels. They don't seem to contribute to flavor. The chits? I have no idea. There must be a reason they knock them off so I'd assume they aren't so good.

ajdelange said:

They do but those tannins would contribute puckery mouthfeel more than bitterness in a beer and I think we worry more about them for their haze causing potential than flavor effects.

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Gotcha!
Well in my case I think puckery and bitterness are all undesirable hehe. So I will do some experimenting with this.

But we like to keep them as they form a filter bed which makes it possible to separate clear wort from the spent grains.

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I realize this, but in my case i'm not using standard brewing equipment since I'm not really making beer (well, not at all actually ). So I have been straining it through filters and cloths which is quite hard but i have realized the more I can get those hazy bits out of the mixture the more clear my reduced syrup is and the better tasting it is, too.

As to acrospires: plenty of them wind up in the mash tun because most maltsters go to the kiln when the acrospire length is about 3/4 the length of the kernels.

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Good point. Thinking of which. I never really understood how you measure the ideal acrospire length. Since the acrospire starts from deep down the bottom of the grain, inside the husk, do you mean by 3/4 length you never actually see it popping out of the husk or you mean it measures 3/4 length from the point where it sticks out? I'm sure this is a basic question that people ask all the time.

The chits? I have no idea. There must be a reason they knock them off so I'd assume they aren't so good.

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I thought it was pure coincidence, since they dry out and the malt is turned they just fall off.

Brewers want to leave that stuff behind as much as you do and lautering on the grain bed has proven a way to get bright runoff involving nothing more than the mash itself as a filter (and, of course, something to put it in). We control tannin extraction by monitoring the runoff pH and/or extract content. Keep runoff pH below 6 and the tannins are not extracted even though you are using the husks as a filter.

If you look closely at barley corns you can see the acrospire beneath the husk. Brewers examine some number of corns and note the percentage that have acrospire length, as a fraction of the corn length, in each of the quartiles and the fraction that is over. This is part of the malt spec.

As for chitting, it's more than the fact that they tend to fall off. The malt is tossed about or blown about with compressed air to make sure they do.

And I just remembered that chitted malt is used in some beers so I guess they aren't flavor negative.

Ok thanks for everything.
I did think that brewers wanted to keep a lot of bitterness unlike me, hence my questions.

I'll ask my final question for the time being. In my case, do you think a protease rest is important?

That's a good one. I guess if you digest the proteins thoroughly so that all peptide molecules are short they can stay in solution better and wouldn't render the syrup cloudy. OTOH you could argue that longer protein molecules would clump better and you could precipitate more out in the boil.

Right no easy choice then.

It's not the cloudiness of the syrup that bugs me, it's rather that I tend to think that what makes the syrup cloudy is what makes it untasteful too.

Any chance the peptides / proteins do anything to flavour?

If you continue to malt your own barley, you probably should keep on doing the protease rest as you may not have the control that the commercial maltsters do and your conversion may be incomplete. However, commercially available malts are nearly all fully converted and should not need a protease rest so you can avoid that step. If your bitterness is from extracting tannins (I can't think of any other source in commercial malts) you have, as mentioned above, not controlled your pH and have gotten the temperature too high.

Brewers do want bitterness in their beers but they try hard to only get this by adding a bittering agent, usually hops. The wort should be sweet before boiling the hops in it.

Hi

Ok thanks for the insight.
Regarding malting my own barley. It sure is a fascinating thing. When I was doing this, though, I didn't kiln it, I ground it fresh straight into the mash. Do you know if there is any inconvenience in doing this and do homebrewers that also malt their own barley skip the kiln drying stage and start mashing straight away?

Regarding what I call as bitterness.
Maybe what I call bitterness is not the same thing you are thinking of.
My wort tastes very sweet, not bitter at all. But the final syrup tastes a lot of beer, it has very complex flavours that are somehow not exactly what I'm trying to achieve. I don't think I got the temperature too high. My guess is that I need to filter the wort better.
Today I did a couple of testings.
I made some wort doing the usual multi-step method. Then I rinsed the first bit without sparging. Pressed it through a fine cloth. I took half of it and I then reduced this first extract. The other half, I pressed through an even finer cloth. Then I reduced it too.
The wort that was better filtered produced a very clear syrup, very very sweet with little aftertaste. The other one was a lot darker and had a quite strong beer taste. The sweeter one is very, very close to my ideal and I think if I can filter it better I'll achieve the goal I've got in mind.

I can upload photos if you want, for the sake of curiosity.

I'm going to try and do some research on enzymatic starch conversion on the sweetening industry (not beer making) as I would like to know how industrials filter their wort.

Anyway Then I sparged the remainings, filtered and reduced but unfortunatly by that stage I didn't keep an eye on the thing for a glimpse and it overburned. I think this final batch was a bit stronger in taste than the first ones, though, as it was darker.

I'm just guessing but if you are concentrating the extract by boiling off some of the water, you are darkening the extract. Do a search on maillard reaction and see if this doesn't describe what you are seeing and tasting. To avoid the maillard reaction you would have to reduce in a vacuum so the water would boil off at a lower temperature,

I'm aware of the maillard reactions and yes to a certain extent you are correct, there is some form of "caramelisation" that occurs. But it's not the same thing I'm describing.

What I see as being shady is clearly some particles that are not soluble in the sugary syrup. I could try to make a macro zoom photo so you can see what I mean.

To avoid the maillard reaction you would have to reduce in a vacuum so the water would boil off at a lower temperature,

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It's funny you should mention this as I just read about this earlier on today. It seems this is what is done on the industrial level. But i didn't really understand what it is - is this done in a pressure cooker? If so, how the hell does the water evaporate?

Not a pressure cooker, a vacuum chamber of some type such that a pump that creates the vacuum also expels the boiled off water.

If you have particles in the extract that can be controlled with filtering. You would need a liquid pump to get it through the filter I would assume.

Right on!

Yes I think filtering is my main issue. What I did think is that regardless of filtering if I could already identify and eliminate the undesirable flavours then filtering wouldn't be such an issue. Anyway thanks for all your insights, it's helped me a lot.

Today I'm mashing some sticky rice with minced ginger, the inside of a banana peel and some malted barley. Just had these laying about, had a banana for breakfast, so I thought what the heck