A few people on this thread have mentioned malting. Considering the lack of any outlets for malted barley here in Guatemala, and considering that the vast majority of any grain bill in the majority of ales is malted barley, I decided to have a go at malting my own.
Pacayaforhops made an excellent post detailing different places for
the acquisition of material for brewing one of these was
Cenma. I visited that place yesterday and its pretty impressive as bulk wholesale markets go and well worth a visit. I found the barley guys in section 15 which will save you some shoe leather as its not a small place. I would recommend going by car, as its between Villa Nueva and the city, and wouldn't be fun to get to on a bus, although buses do go there. If you have lived in Guatemala for any length of time you will know of course that you need to haggle the price down from what they'll start you at.
In the end I bought a hundred weight (quintal) of barley just to get the best price I could, which was a full 70% cheaper than I can get it for here in the market in Antigua.
I've read a whole series of different articles on malting, but this
Beer Smith post and these videos
from a guy with the handle of tlgrimmy are the simplest and best explanations that I have come across. The tlgrimmy video is the first in a series of two, and when you watch the second one you will see he's built what he describes as an oast or kiln, and I would describe as a wooden food dehydrator. Either way I built my own one, and with my own limited woodworking skills and even more limited tool set, it was still relatively easy. Cheap plywoood and cheap wood in general is easy enough to come across in Guatemala, as are all the light fittings inside the box. I do have an advantage though; being a computer engineer I did have a computer fan to hand to put at the top of the box, and also had a twelve volt converter from an old phone at the office which I used to power it. That could be the tricky bit if you want to make one yourself, so that would require some research on your part. I would think that
Intelaf would be the best place to pick up a computer fan or two.
I will happily provide more details on that, and more on the dimensions etc if anybody is interested.
One more thing, Pacayaforhops also told me where to get some hose-pipe for racking.
Mangueras Jaguar can provide you with everything you want, and I got some reinforced PVC and silicon hose. In the Latin American tradition, that part of the city has a bunch of hose-pipe shops.
(I hope I'm posting in the appropriate place, this seems to be the general "Guate Brewing" thread, but please correct me if this is deemed "off-topic")
