chase
Well-Known Member
Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher, is probably the best book on brewing I've ever seen. It has great info on the history of beer styles, great recipes, and is a hilarious read. I highly recommend this book to anyone that loves making beer and making stuff for making beer.
On that note, I'm preparing to make a couple recipes out of the book, and so I thought I would try out his instructions for making my own specialty grains for those beers.
I made an amber malt, which is approximately 65ºL and a brown malt at about 175ºL. I used Maris Otter for the grain. I figure I'm going to be making english style ales, so why not use the best english malt.
The amber malt is soaked in water for about 1hr, spread in a cookie sheet and put in the oven at 350º for 30 min.
Here it is before:
And then after:
The color is a lot different on the outside, but it should provide some nice color once milled and mashed. This stuff popped like crazy in the oven. It sounded like popcorn towards the end. It also smelled great; like wort in the kettle.
The brown malt is not soaked first. You just put it on the sheet and bake at 450º for 50min.
It gets a lot more modified than the amber:
It was starting to stink at the end. It smells exactly like burnt popcorn, which I hate. As Mosher notes, it tastes like "it's on fire", or as Ralph Wiggins says, "it tastes like burning." It should smooth out a little overtime.
Both were then put into ziplock bags and will be stored for a minimum of two weeks before brewing with.
I'm going to use these for a Bitter and a Brown ale. I'll take pictures of those as I do them, and update this thread with them so you can see the color and my tasting notes.
On that note, I'm preparing to make a couple recipes out of the book, and so I thought I would try out his instructions for making my own specialty grains for those beers.
I made an amber malt, which is approximately 65ºL and a brown malt at about 175ºL. I used Maris Otter for the grain. I figure I'm going to be making english style ales, so why not use the best english malt.
The amber malt is soaked in water for about 1hr, spread in a cookie sheet and put in the oven at 350º for 30 min.
Here it is before:
And then after:
The color is a lot different on the outside, but it should provide some nice color once milled and mashed. This stuff popped like crazy in the oven. It sounded like popcorn towards the end. It also smelled great; like wort in the kettle.
The brown malt is not soaked first. You just put it on the sheet and bake at 450º for 50min.
It gets a lot more modified than the amber:
It was starting to stink at the end. It smells exactly like burnt popcorn, which I hate. As Mosher notes, it tastes like "it's on fire", or as Ralph Wiggins says, "it tastes like burning." It should smooth out a little overtime.
Both were then put into ziplock bags and will be stored for a minimum of two weeks before brewing with.
I'm going to use these for a Bitter and a Brown ale. I'll take pictures of those as I do them, and update this thread with them so you can see the color and my tasting notes.
