GF Grains Malt, Mash, Wort Experiment

I malted most of the grains myself (hopefully correctly or close to it). I can post that process in a follow up comment if desired.

1.5oz of each then used a fine grind:
1) Malted Sorghum (likely over modified a bit). From Nutsonline.com
2) CO Malting Company Malted Bucket (with hulls).
3) Roasted Malted Buckwheat Groats. From Altan Alma, 25 mins at 325F.
4) CO Malting Company Red Millet (with hulls).
5) Roasted Malted Millet. From Altan Alma (German/white?), 25 mins at 325F.
6) Malted Millet. From Altan Alma.
*See attachment for the image of the grains prior to grind. Second from the right is the CO Malting company buckwheat w/ hull removed.

General Process:
Malted, some roasted, ground up, smelled, added 1 cup of ~100F water to each in separate bowls and put in oven (oven at 120F) and let that sit for 25 mins. Then I heated the oven to about 145 let sit for 10 mins and heated back up to 140. let that sit for 25 mins. Then I heated to 170 let sit for 10 mins and heated to 160 and let that sit for 45 mins. I then added 2oz of boiling.

The Buckwheat groats soaked up all the water, so I added another 1/4 cup of water.

One by one, I filtered and then boiled for about 2 mins.
Let cool and my wife and I noted:
Ground Dry Smell, Wort Smell, Wort Flavor, Wort Color, Gravity, General Comments

Sorghum: bread smell,, Bread/yeasty,, Sweet/earthy/slight sour/slight spicy,, light ,, 1.039. Overall, good smell and flavor ok, best observed diastatic potential.

Buckwheat w/ hulls: None,, None,, Oatmeal like,, Pale,, 1.014,, Overall, not bad, not great, not bad, poor observed diastatic potential, slimy/gelatinous

Roasted Buckwheat: Earthy/Nutty,, Bread/Earthy/tart,, Spicy/Earthy,, Golden,, 1.014,, Overall, spicy was not good but nice earthy flavor, very gelatinous

Red Millet: Sweet/Sweet Potato,, none/sweet,, sweet/tart,, Pale,, 1.021,, Overall, ok, nothing great or bad, this was the middle of the road for this experiment.

Roasted Millet: sweet/popcorn/fresh warm bread/nutty,, toasted nutty/bread baking,, nutty/popcorn/kettle corn/toasted nuts,, light amber,, 1.021,, Overall, excellent color and flavor, my favorite.

Millet: oatmeal/slight sweet/nothing,, oatmeal/slight sour,, sweet/malto-meal/slight oatmeal,, light pale,, 1.032,, Overall, the light flavor is good and observed diastatic power was fair (better than Red Millet from CO Malting Co.).


Notes: 1) All were fairly gelatenous still, especially the Buckwheat and without the hulls, the groats had way more raw material causing it to soak up all the water I allowed. 2) I didn't stir the grist while steeping and this could have allowed better conversion. 3) I didn't hot or cold break so the wort was VERY cloudy and there was still particulate in it even though I did filter it. 4) malting grains is a long process and more expensive than CO Malting Company charges per pound, so for the products they supply I recommend trying them... with shipping I don't know the final cost per lb. 5) Sorghum is hard for me to find and is expensive but offered great diastatic power and might need to be used in part in most recipes to take advantage of this. 6) Millet offered the best flavors for what I had done. 7) I suspect that roasting Buckwheat needs to be done longer and probably hotter than what I did for a similar roast to what I achieved with the millet.

Excellent experiment pow, the malting of the millet would be good to know. I'm in Australia so don't have access to CO Malting Co. so I have to do my own.

whole grain... with hulls.
Rinse well to remove other stuff and clean it.
Soak 8-10 hours (overnight) in filtered water (water needs to cover by at least 5 cm).
Transfer to sprouting device and rinse.
Rinse every 8 hours thereafter.
Dry to original weight.

Roast to your liking, 25 mins at 325F produced a light amber color wort.
You will need a sprouting tray/bucket/etc... Mine was a large tupperware container with small holes in the bottom for drainage and holes on all four sides up high for air movement and a lid (no holes). Ensure complete drainage of water every time and movement of the grains so they aren't always in the same spot, leave in a well vented room. You should see sprouting in just a day after soak. Fully modified in about 2 days depending on ambient temperature. I have been told (by the guy I bought my millet from) that you can sprout that in the refrigerator too, which would take longer based on my experiences. Dry outside or in a dehydrator to the extent that the original moisture amount (same weight) is present. The guy I bought the grain from said to use a bucket, he has brewed with millet before too... So you can malt a lot at one time, for me the issue is drying it all, my dehydrator is small; however, where I live is pretty dry, so I could utilize nature for 5-7 months of the year but would need a large screen to get good air flow... Good luck.

Also, look up Andrew Lavery (Eureka Brewing I think)... he has a GF brewery there in Australia. I have seen a few PDF docs from him and they are the best resources I have seen to date on the entire process.

Yeah I've been in contact with him and drink his beer regularly. Even he says its a pain to malt large quantities so i was wondering if you had any tips that I could combine with other methods.

Depends on what you mean by "Large" qnty? If I were doing a 5 gallon batch then the quantity would look like 12 lbs, which is a lot but not crazy. A 10 gallon batch would be a very large amount of malting. Depends on where you live too, if it is humid then you will need a large dehydrator, if it is a hot dry climate, then you could use window screens or even linen and a fan for the drying stage. As for sprouting... I would buy buckets. I just did a 3 gallon batch and used tupperware trays as described above, which each handles about 1-1.5 lbs of grain. each time. Then used a small dehydrator.