MattTimBell
Well-Known Member
Hi all (or any interested)
For Christmas break, I've decided to try an experiment: brew (almost) entirely from scratch by malting all my own grain. Making this more "extreme" yet is that I haven't been able to find a source of barley, so I'm (perhaps ill-advisedly?) going with all wheat, oat and rye. I'll post my plans here, as well as developments as they occur.
First, mostly to make sure I could use the whole grains from the health food section of my grocery store, I bought about 2 lbs. of hard winter wheat and 2 lbs whole rye, then sprouted it and let it grow until just slightly overmodified. (I tried to dissect the seeds as they grew to see when the acrospire was at full-modification, but never managed to figure out how to tell the difference between the acrospire inside the seed and the rest of the seed. It has occurred to me since then that the seeds look largely huskless, even though they are sprouting, and the acrospire might have been "outside" from the get-go.) I then tried to figure out how to use my mother-in-law's (yes, she's supportive!) oven to turn this into a light crystal malt. The result was something that smelled good, in any event: lightly nutty, and lightly sweet.
Second, having figured out that the above would work, I've bought 4 lbs of hard winter wheat and 4 lbs oat groats, and am repeating the sprouting process. My plan is to use the proofing setting on the oven -- designed to hold temps warm but below 125 deg F -- to dry out the grain and make something pale-malt like.
Third, I plan on taking my four pounds of crystal, made earlier, wetting it slightly, and putting it on my father-in-law's (he's even more supportive) Traegger smoker with some mesquite pellets, re-wetting the grain occasionally until it is dry and fairly smoky.
Finally, I plan on taking the roughly 12 lbs of grain, crushing using a KitchenAid grain mill on a low setting, and mash. Because of the high percentage of wheat and oats (lots of protein and beta glucan), I'll do a multiple-decoction, starting at 100 deg F for a glucanase rest, stepping up to 120 deg F for a protein rest, up again to around 140, then to 157ish, and finally to 170 for mashout. If all went well with making the pale malt, from what I read there should be sufficient diastatic power to convert, and I hope the multiple rests and decoctions should help with efficiency given the non-professional (hence, lower PPG) nature of the malt produced.
If all goes well by the boil, I'm aiming for something with an OG between 1.055 and 1.065 (expecting it to be close to 1.055 because of the lower anticipated efficiency) for a 4.5 gal. boil. I'll take a small portion of the wort out of the main boil and try to caramelize it over the stove, then add it into the main boil. I'll use a very small amount of a potent Chinook hops from my local HBS, aiming for around 20 IBUs. Fermentation will be with S-05 at house room temps, which tend to be between 65 and 69 deg F.
Comments welcome!
For Christmas break, I've decided to try an experiment: brew (almost) entirely from scratch by malting all my own grain. Making this more "extreme" yet is that I haven't been able to find a source of barley, so I'm (perhaps ill-advisedly?) going with all wheat, oat and rye. I'll post my plans here, as well as developments as they occur.
First, mostly to make sure I could use the whole grains from the health food section of my grocery store, I bought about 2 lbs. of hard winter wheat and 2 lbs whole rye, then sprouted it and let it grow until just slightly overmodified. (I tried to dissect the seeds as they grew to see when the acrospire was at full-modification, but never managed to figure out how to tell the difference between the acrospire inside the seed and the rest of the seed. It has occurred to me since then that the seeds look largely huskless, even though they are sprouting, and the acrospire might have been "outside" from the get-go.) I then tried to figure out how to use my mother-in-law's (yes, she's supportive!) oven to turn this into a light crystal malt. The result was something that smelled good, in any event: lightly nutty, and lightly sweet.
Second, having figured out that the above would work, I've bought 4 lbs of hard winter wheat and 4 lbs oat groats, and am repeating the sprouting process. My plan is to use the proofing setting on the oven -- designed to hold temps warm but below 125 deg F -- to dry out the grain and make something pale-malt like.
Third, I plan on taking my four pounds of crystal, made earlier, wetting it slightly, and putting it on my father-in-law's (he's even more supportive) Traegger smoker with some mesquite pellets, re-wetting the grain occasionally until it is dry and fairly smoky.
Finally, I plan on taking the roughly 12 lbs of grain, crushing using a KitchenAid grain mill on a low setting, and mash. Because of the high percentage of wheat and oats (lots of protein and beta glucan), I'll do a multiple-decoction, starting at 100 deg F for a glucanase rest, stepping up to 120 deg F for a protein rest, up again to around 140, then to 157ish, and finally to 170 for mashout. If all went well with making the pale malt, from what I read there should be sufficient diastatic power to convert, and I hope the multiple rests and decoctions should help with efficiency given the non-professional (hence, lower PPG) nature of the malt produced.
If all goes well by the boil, I'm aiming for something with an OG between 1.055 and 1.065 (expecting it to be close to 1.055 because of the lower anticipated efficiency) for a 4.5 gal. boil. I'll take a small portion of the wort out of the main boil and try to caramelize it over the stove, then add it into the main boil. I'll use a very small amount of a potent Chinook hops from my local HBS, aiming for around 20 IBUs. Fermentation will be with S-05 at house room temps, which tend to be between 65 and 69 deg F.
Comments welcome!