I'm uncertain if this is the appropriate forum to post this subject. Mods, feel free to move it.
I live in New Hampshire. I recently saw COLObrewer's thread about malting barley (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/happiness-home-malting-107409/) and thought "why not go one further and grow my own grains too?" I did a search on the web and found that Chris Colby has been writing in BYO about growing his own barley. I haven't read through all his articles yet, but it seems like an interesting undertaking. I haven't found any threads on HBT about growing grains yet, if anyone can direct me to them I would appreciate it.
So, has anyone attempted to grow their own grains? The idea is fresh in my mind, so I know almost nothing at this point. I have plenty of garden space, so that shouldn't be an issue for the small scale I'd like to undertake. I figure if I could grow just 10lbs of barley or 4 lbs of barley and 6 lbs of wheat I could make a nice beer from scratch. I realize the amount of time and effort I'd put into it would make it far from practical, but obviously that's not why I got into this hobby. I'd like to pour myself a beer and know that everything in it was made at home (I'd probably still use commercial yeast though). The growing season up here is still a few weeks away so I'd like to start planning now if I'm going to make this happen. I'm interested to see what other people think of this idea.
I live in New Hampshire. I recently saw COLObrewer's thread about malting barley (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/happiness-home-malting-107409/) and thought "why not go one further and grow my own grains too?" I did a search on the web and found that Chris Colby has been writing in BYO about growing his own barley. I haven't read through all his articles yet, but it seems like an interesting undertaking. I haven't found any threads on HBT about growing grains yet, if anyone can direct me to them I would appreciate it.
So, has anyone attempted to grow their own grains? The idea is fresh in my mind, so I know almost nothing at this point. I have plenty of garden space, so that shouldn't be an issue for the small scale I'd like to undertake. I figure if I could grow just 10lbs of barley or 4 lbs of barley and 6 lbs of wheat I could make a nice beer from scratch. I realize the amount of time and effort I'd put into it would make it far from practical, but obviously that's not why I got into this hobby. I'd like to pour myself a beer and know that everything in it was made at home (I'd probably still use commercial yeast though). The growing season up here is still a few weeks away so I'd like to start planning now if I'm going to make this happen. I'm interested to see what other people think of this idea.