Home roasting experiments

I got in on a grain buy recently and decided to play with some malt. My wife home roasts coffee beans, so I decided to try our Gene Cafe out on some 2-row (if you want to see the Gene Cafe in action, ).

I loaded up the hopper with 1/4lb of 2-row. I should be able to do 1/2lb at a time, but I decided to keep the experimental batches small.



I did two batches - one with the machine set for 400F and 10 minutes, the second at 400F for 20 minutes.

While those were cooking, I heated my oven to 400F and put 1 1/2lbs of grain on a sheet pan and popped it in the oven.



After 15 minutes, I gave them a stir with my grain rake (also usable as a pasta fork).



And here is the result. Left to right is the 10 minute roaster batch, 20 minute roaster batch, and 30 minute oven batch. And of course unroasted 2-row across the bottom for comparison. I'm really surprised at how unevenly everything roasted up. I expected a lot more consistency from the roaster, since it tosses the grains around the whole time.



-Joe

This is awesome! I don't have a roaster but I've been thinking about doing some grains in the over for a while. Are you going to brew with them? If so, it would be even cooler if you'd post the results on their individual flavors.

I meant oven...

I'm very interested in knowing how these roasted grains brew up! I'm wondering if the heat from roasting will harm the starch/sugar conversion during mashing...

Stauffbier said:

I'm very interested in knowing how these roasted grains brew up! I'm wondering if the heat from roasting will harm the starch/sugar conversion during mashing...

Click to expand...

Yes the at 400 degrees the enzymes are denatured but that is the same for all roasted malt, that is why you have to mash them with a base malt that has enzymes to do the conversion.

Clem