Growing malted barley

A friend gave me a bucket of grain that he had not labeled and had no idea what it was. After it sat a couple of years in my garage I mixed it with bird seed and fed it to the birds(my birds (NM birds don't like malted barley). Barley sprouted under the bird feeder so I did a quick experiment. At the edge of my garden I planted a short row of Weyermann's Pilsner malt using about a cup. Some of it sprouted so I'll have a very small barley crop this year.
What puzzles me is that the malting process requires the malt to germinate so how can it germinate again? Or does the malting process at large maltsters just allow a certain percentage of kernels to not germinate.
Obviously Weyermann makes great malt so it doesn't affect beer quality but it makes me wonder.

My guess is that the germination process is just halted during malting and that the seed is capable of continuing the germination process under the right conditions, just a guess though.

The only way you would get some malt to germinate would be if some of it failed to germinate during the malting process. Pretty much, once a seed starts to germinate, there is no going back. If you dry it (especially) in an oven, it is dead, an ex-seed.

pjj2ba said:

The only way you would get some malt to germinate would be if some of it failed to germinate during the malting process. Pretty much, once a seed starts to germinate, there is no going back. If you dry it (especially) in an oven, it is dead, an ex-seed.

Click to expand...

That was my thought also, but I'm a geologist not a biologist. So my question is still what percentage of the barley we brew with is actually not malted.

corkybstewart said:

That was my thought also, but I'm a geologist not a biologist. So my question is still what percentage of the barley we brew with is actually not malted.

Click to expand...

A very tiny amount. One of the requirements for selling malting barley is it has to have a very high germination rate, in mid to high 90s.

I wanted some maris otter to grow at home so i planted some malted grains and guess what.



Was quite skeptical but i got 10 plants from a few hundred seeds (very approx). Who would've thought