Roasting Barley for Scottish Ale

[Bjornbrewer]

Hey guys and gals,

I'd like to make a Scottish Ale 80/- but I'd like to try roasting my own malt. Here's the issue, the recipe calls for .25# of roasted barley which I know is unmalted...will it make a big difference if I roast malted barley to get the same color/roasty flavor? Will the fact that it being malted have a huge impact on the beer?

The recipe is simple and looks like this:
9# pale
.25# roasted barley

20 IBU of East Kent Golding at 60 min

Mash at 156F

 

[rcrabb22]

From Daniels' book oven toasting creates a brown malt.

I don't think you will get the same roasted character as you would get from roasted barley or chocolate malt. Either of those are appropriate in a Scottish ale as long as the roasted flavor doesn't overpower the malt character of the style. A little goes a long way.

Some suggest taking the 1st gallon drained from the mash and boil down to 1/2 gal to caramelize and add that into the boil. 90 minute boil time is also suggested to increase malt character.

 

[Bjornbrewer]

^thanks. Yeah, I should have said that I already made this recipe and it turned out pretty good. I did a 2 hour boil to help with caramelization. I'm just not sure how roasted malted barley will effect it.

 

[Bjornbrewer]

Any other thoughts on this?

 

[Brewsmith]

Roasting malted barley will get you somewhere close to black patent malt. It will work but the flavor is not the same. If you know of anyone that has a coffee roaster to borrow, that would be the ideal tool to do it.

Flaked barley is unmalted, so you might want to try that instead.