Prepairing for an all home roast brew -

So I have have bulk marris otter on hand and about 8 or 9 pounds of hops. Not much else.

As an interesting experiment I want to brew a batch using only my maris otter and a few pounds of which I will home roast into some toasted malt (amberish?) and some crystal 40. I plan to use this write up http://barleypopmaker.info/2009/12/08/home-roasting-your-malts/ as a guide for home roasting.

My only question is will roasting maris otter make a difference compared toroasting 2-row? I've never really been to sure on what the difference is between marris otter and 2-row other than that one is more expensive than the other.

One of my projects for another day is a MO vs 2-row smash (all other things bein equal) but for now I just thought I'd ask if it makes a difference for roasting purposes.

Cool! If you look around here, Laughing Gnome Invisible had a thread on roasting malt by hand - and maybe even making crystal malts.

Maris otter is a kind of two-row malt, i believe. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure

Here are my efforts for what its worth: (Third post on this page)
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/happiness-home-malting-107409/index12.html
I've used all the home roasted and smoked malts in a couple brews and they produced what I expected comparing them to commercial roasts. This is the way to go in my opinion.

Keep on brewing my friends

I can attest, (or attesht, depending on how many beer I have had) making your own crystal is easy. Getting your target colour is nearly impossible - but who cares. It is like making anything from scratch - imperfections add character.

I made an ESB using homemade crystal (about 95Lish) and it is WICKED. Its so delicious.

And while many say the suggestion to allow your malt to age for at least a week is a myth...

I made a beer using freshly made toasted malts and crystal - and I got HUGE astringency/tanniny which faded after a month. using the same batch of grains, I made a second batch 2 weeks later (before the first was ready). No astringency/tanniny on batch 2. Same process.

To be safe I will allow my hometoasted malts to relax for at least a week before using them if I have the time.

jjones17 said:

And while many say the suggestion to allow your malt to age for at least a week is a myth...

I made a beer using freshly made toasted malts and crystal - and I got HUGE astringency/tanniny which faded after a month. using the same batch of grains, I made a second batch 2 weeks later (before the first was ready). No astringency/tanniny on batch 2. Same process.

To be safe I will allow my hometoasted malts to relax for at least a week before using them if I have the time.

Click to expand...

Yeah, wasn't sure about this. Some say it matters and some say it doesn't matter whether you let the grain sit for a week or not.

I toasted the malt before I went on vacation last week and its sitting in a paper bag "mellowing" now. I decided to let it age more out of convenience than anything. Had time to roast the grain one evening so I did that. Hoping to brew this up this weekend. The grain is ready to go and will have sat for 2 weeks from date of toasting assuming I can get around to brewing this batch up this weekend.