Storing conditioned malt?

I plan on brewing after I get of of work this afternoon, and in order to get the upper hand on it later, I decided to try and mill my grain beforehand. I usually condition my malt, and today was no different, so I did 2% by weight added water. To my dismay, my drill died on me before I could finish the batch (note to self: by a corded drill).

Is it okay to leave this grain for about...8 Hours? When I come back to it am I going to have to recondition it to get the same benefits?

You should be ok, Barley is considered dry and will store at under 13% moisture (before malting). Malt is probably down in the 5% range after malting and kilning, so adding 2% by weight would still keep it under 10%. The extra moisture should just even itself out through the kernel, so you might have to add a touch more water, but I would test this first.

And if you can, keep it cool, refrigerator cool, or cold basement. Stuff will go bad faster if it is wet and warm.

Thanks. I don't really have space in any of those places (don't have a basement), so I just left it covered in a bucket. Hopefully I can be back before anything catastrophic happens. I'll post what I come to find.

Do you not have a hand crank for a backup?

Yeah I do, but I didn't have time enough before I went to work this morning to crank out the remaining 8 lbs. I just doughed in about 20 minutes ago after I finished grinding the rest of my grains by hand.

To update on this, everything was fine, although it had dried out a bit. Just to be safe I sprayed a little more water on it and let it sit for a few minutes before I crushed it. Mighty fine looking crush, if I say so myself.