First Post from an about to try the first time brewer!!

Hi everybody. I am SOOOO excited that I am taking the plunge to do some home brewing.

I have an initial question being an ultimate DIY guy. Is it possible to purchase the barley in cheap, raw format and do your own roasting? I ask to offset paying high prices for malts from retailers. I am always trying to get an angle. Anyway thanks for letting me post, and fire away on any input or experience you could enlighten me with. Cheers!

Mike

Welcome.

I think you might be mixing terms up.

Taking raw barley and making it into a brew ready grain is called malting. Provided you had the space, facilities and time you could malt your own barley.

You could buy plain 2 row malted barley and roast it to create specialty grains. Again certain tools (for example a coffee roaster) to roast barley.

Either method would probably be more expensive than buying because of the equipment you would need to do it on a regular consistent basis.

The best way to buy brewing grains is in bulk. A 55# bag of 2 row is usually quite a bit cheaper than buying by the pound provided you shop around.

Good luck and welcome again.

As long as you are buying US 2-row, malted barley is pretty cheap. English Pale malts will run you a little bit more. Most of us can get our brew prices pretty low buying in bulk and milling our own grain. I use the Barley Crusher, but there are DIY options available. The Corona mill is a popular DIY mill. Some people here have been looking at modding pasta rollers for a grain mill too. I think thats the best DIY approach I've seen. It would be perfect if you found somewhere to get the rollers knurled too.

Hey eddculus, are you seeing any of the upcoming Phish shows. I'll be hitting Shoreline and Alpine myself. I'm an old school Phish head. Started seeing them back in 1993.

This is great. I am trying to get my terms learned and speak the lingo quickly. I really hope to make porters and wheat beers someday. Will 2 row produce some nice roasts for me? What is recommended to brew with roasted 2 row? Any good suggestions? Again --- Thanks folks!!

Here are some general guidelines for home roasting... you can even create your own crystal malts from this process. I have not made the crystal yet; but, I did roast some of my own which I used in a batch... turned out great. Here ya go:

Barleypopmaker -Home Roasting Malts

nealf you are awesome> great link I will absorb it tonight!...

I highly recommend checking out the book Alaskan Bootleggers' Bible for some easy explanations about malting your own barley and generally making beer (or wine) on the cheap without typical equipment. The book has plans how to fashion raw lumber into a bottle capper, free fermenter ideas, and many other low [no] budget tricks to make your own brew.

It also contains some distilling information for explanation/entertainment purposes, but most information is brewing/vintning fundamentals.