"Micromalt" Homebrew

[nanobrau]

A little over a year ago, I planted Pinnacle barley in my yard. I harvested about two pounds by hand later that season (oops, couldn't find the pictures for this!). I then malted the grain by soaking, germinating, and then kilning in the oven. This was my first time malting my own barley, so I basically have no idea what I'm doing other than what I've read in literature or online.

Finished kilning pilsner (left) and munich (right).

Earlier this week I finally got around to crushing the malt.

And today I got to brew with it!
Recipe for this 1/2 gallon batch:
93% "micromalted" pilsner (307g)
7% "micromalted" munich (22g)

6.2% AA Kent Goldings @ 60 min (3.1g)

US-05 Yeast

Protein Rest @ 131F for 15 min
Sacc Rest @ 151F for 60 min
Boil for 60 min
Making a wild-ass guess, I used 1.035 potential for the pilsner and 1.025 for the munich, estimated OG is around 1.046.

Actual OG was 1.040! Not bad! I suppose I could have boiled it down more to reach the estimate, but I only took a reading after chilling.

I'll post updates when I have something to report on the tasting. It's currently fermenting at around 67F.

 

[nanobrau]

Bottled the batch yesterday. FG was 1.011, which gives about 3.75% ABV.

One mishap during bottling was the racking cane broke seal multiple times. I'm not sure if it was due to the new vinyl tubing I bought or something else, but I could not for the life of me keep the siphon flowing correctly. At least one of the bottles near the end got aggressively aerated as I tried to restart the siphon. Sigh. Fingers crossed that at least one of the bottles turned out good enough to get reliable tasting notes from.

Shooting for Sept 9/10 to do the first tasting.

 

[nanobrau]

Tasted two bottles due to the aforementioned cold-side oxidation issue.

One was clearly impacted. Moderate diacetyl and some carmely/sherry-like flavors. But otherwise had clean hop bitterness and was drinkable.

The second bottle was night-and-day different. Subtle note of acetaldehyde that quickly outgassed. Crisp and mostly clean. Maybe a hint of sulfur. Light and clean hop bitterness. It actually reminded me of Fruh or similar German lagers, which I found bizarre because US-05 has never done that for me before.

Visually, the beer was pale/golden with a nice white head. Kinda hard to tell from condensation on the glass, but the beer was mostly clear. It could certainly improve with longer cold conditioning.

Overall this was a huge success and I really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to malt this year’s barley batch which is currently sitting dry in the shed.

 

[Miraculix]

I'd love to grow my own barley as well. Great stuff!

Next time, remove the roots of the malt after drying, they shouldn't make it into the final malt.

 

[nanobrau]

Removing the roots was tougher than expected, but I did do it. Note the (mostly) lack of root content during milling. I did some reading after this and realized I probably germinated for a day or two too long. Next time I’m going to do it shorter and see if I get better results, which will also mean smaller roots.

 

[monkeymath]

Wow, what an awesome project! I imagine picking those grains of barley must be a real pain. I once tried to find barley I could turn into malt myself - mostly to have a properly "undermodified" malt that I could then decoct the living **** out of - but most of the stuff I found seemed to have been dry-roasted, which would make germination difficult. And the barley advertised as germinatable (is that a word?) or "Spriesskorn" was prohibitively expensive.

 

[nanobrau]

Cutting the barley with a sickle actually was pretty easy. It's the winnowing that is truly a pain. I didn't wear gloves when I started and ended up with these needle-like barley straw fragments all over my hands. It took me a couple hours to separate everything by hand. Mostly just by massaging (with gloves) and rubbing between my hands. Then using the wind to blow the chaff away.

If you want un-roasted barley, you would probably need to talk to a farmer directly. They should have plenty available in silos almost year-round.

And it's funny you mention decoction since it's not a popular brewing method anymore. I did a few decoctions in the past and was very happy with it. I want to try it using my homegrown barley at some point. Sounds fun.

 

[monkeymath]

If you want un-roasted barley, you would probably need to talk to a farmer directly. They should have plenty available in silos almost year-round.

And it's funny you mention decoction since it's not a popular brewing method anymore. I did a few decoctions in the past and was very happy with it. I want to try it using my homegrown barley at some point. Sounds fun.

I'm currently in Prague and I think it's still quite popular around here. They also get insane malt character from pilsen malt alone - which is probably the result of a combination of the local barley, the malting methods and the mashing in the brewhouse. With your homegrown, homemalted barley you're really making something truly unique, tied to the time and place where it's made as well as the people making it. Next level homebrewing

Anyway, I honestly don't know how to even contact one of the farmers growing barley in the vicinity of my apartment. And I can't imagine they'd care enough to sell me the tiny amounts I'd want to buy from them.