Extreme Experiment Log: Brewing Entirely from Scratch

Hi all (or any interested)

For Christmas break, I've decided to try an experiment: brew (almost) entirely from scratch by malting all my own grain. Making this more "extreme" yet is that I haven't been able to find a source of barley, so I'm (perhaps ill-advisedly?) going with all wheat, oat and rye. I'll post my plans here, as well as developments as they occur.

First, mostly to make sure I could use the whole grains from the health food section of my grocery store, I bought about 2 lbs. of hard winter wheat and 2 lbs whole rye, then sprouted it and let it grow until just slightly overmodified. (I tried to dissect the seeds as they grew to see when the acrospire was at full-modification, but never managed to figure out how to tell the difference between the acrospire inside the seed and the rest of the seed. It has occurred to me since then that the seeds look largely huskless, even though they are sprouting, and the acrospire might have been "outside" from the get-go.) I then tried to figure out how to use my mother-in-law's (yes, she's supportive!) oven to turn this into a light crystal malt. The result was something that smelled good, in any event: lightly nutty, and lightly sweet.

Second, having figured out that the above would work, I've bought 4 lbs of hard winter wheat and 4 lbs oat groats, and am repeating the sprouting process. My plan is to use the proofing setting on the oven -- designed to hold temps warm but below 125 deg F -- to dry out the grain and make something pale-malt like.

Third, I plan on taking my four pounds of crystal, made earlier, wetting it slightly, and putting it on my father-in-law's (he's even more supportive) Traegger smoker with some mesquite pellets, re-wetting the grain occasionally until it is dry and fairly smoky.

Finally, I plan on taking the roughly 12 lbs of grain, crushing using a KitchenAid grain mill on a low setting, and mash. Because of the high percentage of wheat and oats (lots of protein and beta glucan), I'll do a multiple-decoction, starting at 100 deg F for a glucanase rest, stepping up to 120 deg F for a protein rest, up again to around 140, then to 157ish, and finally to 170 for mashout. If all went well with making the pale malt, from what I read there should be sufficient diastatic power to convert, and I hope the multiple rests and decoctions should help with efficiency given the non-professional (hence, lower PPG) nature of the malt produced.

If all goes well by the boil, I'm aiming for something with an OG between 1.055 and 1.065 (expecting it to be close to 1.055 because of the lower anticipated efficiency) for a 4.5 gal. boil. I'll take a small portion of the wort out of the main boil and try to caramelize it over the stove, then add it into the main boil. I'll use a very small amount of a potent Chinook hops from my local HBS, aiming for around 20 IBUs. Fermentation will be with S-05 at house room temps, which tend to be between 65 and 69 deg F.

Comments welcome!

What is the process for removing the sprouts from the malted grain (without driving yourself crazy with a pair of tweezers)

I have heard people put the grain in a pillowcase tied up and throw it in the dryer to knock the sprouts loose.

Sounds awesome, good luck!

Plumbob, with the first four lbs (the crystal/caramel wheat/rye) I made, I put them in a large sieve and stirred them around for a couple minutes. All the roots and sprouts broke off and fell through the sieve, leaving the grain. Worked like a charm!

MattTimBell said:

Plumbob, with the first four lbs (the crystal/caramel wheat/rye) I made, I put them in a large sieve and stirred them around for a couple minutes. All the roots and sprouts broke off and fell through the sieve, leaving the grain. Worked like a charm!

Click to expand...

Hmmm, this will be attempted.

very cool keep us posted. i've heard those kitchenaid grinders aren't good for grinding grain. but now if you REALLY wanted to brew entirely from scratch you'd grow your own hops and harvest yeast from the air or fruit

This sounds awesome, I look forward to seeing more of this. I'm still doing extract brewing and I'm already discussing plans with a friend to use his farm to grow grain and hops to make beer from the most basic forms (hell I might even try to harvest my own yeast)

I tried kilning my own grain. I had good success, except for higher kilned malts. I had a really hard time keeping them from burning, which produced an undesirable acrid flavor. With those crystal malts make sure you give them plenty of time to soak at mashing temperatures to develop the sugars you want.

Keep us posted on how this turns out.

Sounds like an awesome undertaking!
But a note on the malting of oats, from The Homebrewers Garden:
"Germinating oats tends to attract butryfying bacteria. The butanol isomers that these bacteria produce are poisonous, as are the microbes themselves. We consider oat malting a risky business and advise you not to try it"
I have no idea about the accuracy of this claim, so take it for what it's worth.

Well a first update: the wheat is well on its way to being malt, but I had to throw out the oats. Even though they were labelled "raw whole oat groats", they didn't sprout. A bit of Google searching and an inquiry at the grocery store indicates that maybe the label was wrong, and the oats were actually heat treated to prevent them from spoiling :-( Oh well....I'll have to go back to the drawing board on grain for the grain bill. That should be easy enough to do.

Update no. 2:

Given the epic failure of the "raw whole oat groats" to sprout, I'm sticking with just wheat. My 4 lbs of hard winter wheat have now reached what looks like full-modification (acrospire is the length of the seed), so they're in the oven drying out at about 100 deg F for the next day or so. Meanwhile, the 4 lbs of light caramel wheat/rye that I made about a month ago is sitting on a Traegger smoker with Alder wood pellets.

That gives me a bizarre looking ingredient list of 4 lbs Alder smoked light caramel wheat/rye and 4 lbs wheat pale malt. I'm not that concerned about having an overly-crystal malt flavor, as I've tasted the caramel malt and it seems very balanced, almost on the pale malt side itself. More of concern is whether this mash will convert sufficiently. Perhaps I should bend a little more from the "self-made" direction and get a lb of 6-row? (Experts out there?)

Meanwhile, as far as recipe I've decided to aim for something Ebulum-like and Old Ale like:

Mash 4lbs pale wheat, 4lbs smoked light caramel using the mash schedule described earlier. Boil down to about 4.5 gal. Add about 1/2 lb. Belgian candi syrup, made over the stove using the requisite sucrose, dextrose and pinch of DAP. Ferment with S-05 in primary for 5 to 7 days. Rack to secondary over 6 ozs of dried elderberries. I'm considering soaking the elderberries in some whisky beforehand.

Meanwhile, there's the drying grain to watch...

If you check out the gluten free forums, they are essentially doing the same thing with gluten free grains. I have done what you are proposing with GF grains like quinoa, millet, etc– buying at whole foods, sprouting, kilning, roasting, milling, mashing, and on. It's a real PIA, but you have an empowering control over the whole process. It is very gratifying. I look forward to hearing your results.

Probably depends on what kind of beer you're trying to make, huh?If you're looking for a modern "traditional" beer bending and getting a couple pounds of 2 or 6 row will probably help you out. If you're looking for whatever you can make DIY style, go without I would say. Good luck either way!

A side note here. Butanols are in many of the foods we eat. Indeed they aren't good for you, but neither is alcohol, and in fact they are in every alcoholic beverage is some extent. They are also produced by deep frying in hot oil, and are also found in many fruits and cheeses.

Conveniently, most butanols begin to boil at about 100C, so the roasting and kilning should drive off much of any butanol produced during malting.

Overall butanol is about twice as toxic as alcohol in rats, and is probably a carcinogen as well (alcohol is definitely a carcinogen). I personally wouldn't let it keep me from malting my own oats, but thats is something to decide for yourself.

You're BUYING hops? How many jobs you got, lazy american? Just kidding. It's a shame you couldn't find any barley, but it does sound interesting. Hey, as long as beer's been around, the first brewer was more or less a caveman, so, no pressure, but if you can't do it, you're officially more primitive than a caveman.
I'll be curious to see how it works out.
Hoppy brew year.

Thanks for the note on butanol, plumbob!

And, here's another update:
The attempt to use the proofing setting on my mother-in-law's oven was an EPIC failure! If I were more of a biologist, I'd attempt to figure out the species of what looked like mold growing a veritable forest underneath the surface of the drying grain. The sight nearly brought me to tears: the top looked like it was drying nicely. Once I looked underneath, here was this massive growth of white cillia tipped with glistening, black spore pods. (I tried to take a picture, but my camara wouldn't do it justice.)

So, I'm now back to almost square one. I say almost because the smoking of the crystal malt worked perfectly, as did, apparently the use of the KitchenAid grinder. As to the diastatic component, however, I'm momentarily lost. I'm going to research a different way of drying grain. One thought has occurred to me. You know those collapsable clothes hampers? I'm wondering about taking some window screening and setting up some shelves inside one, spreading the grain on the "shelves", then setting up a space heater in the bottom of the unit. My only hesitation is I don't want to spend money on making a device that might do nothing.

Any thoughts?

Did you use a screen in the oven or a flat sheet?

Sounds awesome, I'm thinking about doing an all from scratch brew this summer. I intend to grow my own barley, which should be interesting in itself, but my dad used to be a farmer in good ole Kansas so I've got a one up on the average guy. I've also started a hop vine last summer that will hopefully take off next year, it didn't do exceptionally well this year due to a combination of heat and dog gnawing. I wish you the best of luck I'll be seeking this for a reference for this summer.i may try to grow some rye and wheat also, although my dad expressed concerns in dehusking the wheat, I guess it has some rough husk different from barley.

Alright, folks: another update....

I'm now having more success with the proofing setting. What I did was 1) decrease by half the quantities I was trying to dry and 2) be more careful about how much water had been absorbed by the seeds beforehand. The result is cutting the drying time by half and allowing greater exposure of the grain's surface area to the light and heat of the oven -- which, in turn, inhibits mold growth. (BTW, in answer to the question about the screen, I'm doing this on a flat sheet.)

I've been able to malt about 4 lbs of wheat "pale" malt, which, assuming it is still diastatic (and it should be), should be able to self convert. Here will be the recipe, for now:

2 lbs 2-row, from the store, to bump up enzymes
2 lbs pale malt made from hard winter wheat
2 lbs pale malt made from soft spring white wheat
2 lbs smoked rye crystal
2 lbs smoked wheat crystal
1/2 lb. dark candi syrup
probably 2 ozs dried elderberries.

Hops???? Probably just some Chinook for bittering only. I don't want any hop flavor or aroma to obscure the smoke, elderberries, and malt.

Because the wheat is without hulls, I'm going to make liberal use of rice hulls.

We'll see how this turns out! I'm hoping for an amber colored ale of some sort.....

Could you give a step by step if your malting process and maybe what you would change next time?

First, an answer to gstrawn's question, then an update:

How I malted: For the batches that worked, I took about 2 lbs of seed at a time and soaked them in water for 2-3 hours in a large metal bowl. Then, I drained them in a seive and returned them to the bowl, letting them rest without water for 6-8 hrs covered to keep them from drying out too dramatically. Repeat. After repeating once or twice, the seeds had visibly begin to sprout, at which point I just let them grow until the acrospire (that's the little, embryonic plant) grow until it was between 1/2 the length of the seed to the full length. Once it reached that point, I put it in the oven on proof (temp. between 90 and 125degF) for about three days, checking them several times each day to stir them and to let excess moisture out of the otherwise closed environment of the oven. Once they were dry, I cracked them with a KitchenAid attachment on a medium setting.

That's what I did for the pale malt. For crystal, I baked the grains at about 150degF while still green and wet, then raised the temp to about 325 and backed them like cookies until dry and crunchy. I then sprayed them with a bit of water and put them on my father-in-law's smoker for 6 hours on a "tray" made of a metal window screen material, to allow the smoke to penetrate but not to allow the grain to slip through. Once smoked and cooled, I cracked them using the aforementioned KitchenAid attachment.

And for the update: mashing went *perfectly*. I was half-dreading this step, really rather expecting the enzymes to be too low. Starch water was in my nightmares. Instead, the wort drained off at a fairly high gravity, an iodine test showing full conversion! I've now got the beer fermenting in primary using WLP545, churning away happily. This is definitely something I'll do again.

Wow that's really impressive. Ill be trying this this summer if im able to get enough barley production. It sounds fun, and it would be awesome to have a beer made entirely from your own hands

This might be worth looking into this brewery called Tundra in NYS is greenmarket certified and grows or makes everything that goes into their beer

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tundra-Brewery/215241468495290

I think the beers themselves are a bit thin flavor wise but it is a cool concept and a guy that might be worth reaching out to

A final report and update:

The beer is now bottle conditioned and very satisfying! The wheat character came through very strong, with a smart, but not overpowering, amount of space from the yeast, and the homemade candi syrup lending a nice, caramelly kick that, together with the hops, nicely balances the whole. It's very clear, and a beautiful reddish brown. The smoke is near non-existent, despite being really strong in the mash. Overall, I'd describe the beer as having a quality in between a dubbel and a dunkelweizen.

The one major surprise was the final gravity. I was expecting it to finish high because the mash temp was around 158degF, but it plummeted to 1.008 by the end of secondary. (The OG was about 1.066.)

This is definitely something I'll do again. Actually, one of my best mates is getting married in July and has asked his brother-in-law to be and myself to craft the libations, so I might try for then.