Sprouts in a mash

[paraordnance]

was brewing BIAB last night and looked in my brew kettle during mash and saw little barley sprouts floating with a grain freaked out because I thought they were a little maggots for a second. Didn't take a picture but they looked like on a picture below. Very small, about half the grain lenght and I din't seen them when milled the grains so I don't even know where they came from. Checked my RAHR 2-row (bulk) and could not see a thing, even tasted some, may be they came from 1# of Munich I also used in a recipe, have to investigate it further. Will it ruin my batch? Do I have to discard sprouted grains?

 

[theredben]

Few things to say here:
1. If the barley sprouted it means that it was not malted proplerly. After the malter recieves the grain from the field it sprouts it and then immediatly kills it off with heat. This obviously did not happen. Did you malt this at home?

2. Why is the grain not crushed?? Intact grains will not really allow for the sugars to escape.

3. That is a very cool photo.

 

[HoppyGus]

I notice the same thing after sparging some of them tend to settle on the top. I always thought it was the start of the sprout that appears only after crushing the grain.

And OP stated that his grain was milled that the pic was a rep for what he was seeing. I think.

 

[paraordnance]

yes, the picture is just for reference, so it doesn't reperesent what I actually saw. Sprouts were separated from grains probably during milling and floated to the top. I buy my grains bulk, I have a sack of 2-row, Pilsner and few pounds of speciality grains. When I weighted grains for my recipe I didn't seen any sprouts, I didn't even seen them after I milled grains and I was checking for crush couple times. It really weird that they become obvious only during mash. I used 2-row, Munich, Honey malt and Carapils in my recipe. 2-row RAHR is from local malting plant and other grains from LHBS

 

[Pivovar_Koucky]

I've seen that several times. I think its just from a larger (i.e. less fine) crush.

 

[Pilgarlic]

What you're looking at in the picture appears to be not sprouts, but rootlets. During malting, which is an induced and then arrested germination, an "acrospire" grows, but only to about 3/4 of the length of the grain. This is what, if it were allowed to proceed further, would become a "sprout". Rootlets, on the other hand, normally occur during malting, though there is a stage of the process that is intended to knock them off of the malted barley and wash them away. I have never heard that they have any ill-effect on the wort when present in the mash.