Well, I bought a 25 pound bag of tall fescue seed from Lowe's, which I believe was called Kentucky 51 and was NOT Pennkoted (some moisture retaining coating that most seed brands apply so you don't have to water your lawn as much).
I filled up a 1 quart mason jar with seed (which is about 3/4 lbs) and kept it topped with water, which I changed twice a day. After about five days I moved it to a stainless steel mesh silverware rack from Walmart, where I still kept it moist by wetting it twice a day. The seeds formed a bed about 3/4 inch thick in the silverware rack. A couple days after that it started to sprout. I think I might have caught it a little two late given that the acrospires were a bit longer than the seed length, but in any event the sprouts looked good.
Next I used a 1300W electric space heater arranged to blow air up through the bottom of the silverware rack by fixing some books and other random objects between the space heater and the rack. I'm sure I could come up with a far better system, but it worked fine given the small size of the experiment. The output temperature of the space heater was about 130F, and the thermometer in the grain bed said it was running about 90F. I periodically stirred the grains to get them to dry evenly, and the process only took a couple of hours. This should have given me the equivalent of a pale ale malt.
I may have screwed up in the next step by not getting a little rough with the grains to break off the acrospires, which may have contributed proteins and other undersirable components to the malt.
Anyway, then it was into a small pot for mashing, which at 150F seemed to take about 90 minutes to completely convert the starches, possibly indicating that my malting technique needs work or that tall fescue malt doesn't have a whole lot of enzymatic power.
I sparged with a kitchen strainer (given the tiny size of the experiment) and got about three pints of wort. I then boiled with a little Columbus hops and made a tiny batch of beer (two bottles! I've never done something so small before.)
Side notes:
The fescue seed has a good husk, much like barley.
References are hard to find on the web, but fescue seed seems to be high in carbohydrates and low in protein, compared to other grass seeds. It's also larger and thus easier to grind with conventional methods, unlike some of the really tiny seeds like Bluegrass or Bent.
The ground fescue malt smelled just like barley malt, looked like a small version of barley malt, and the wort smelled like regular barley wort, though either due to failings in my method or properties of the fescue, the wort was a bit hazy and the beer is a bit cloudy, too. Given the crude nature of the little experiment, I'm not worried about that yet.
If the beer is drinkable, or at least palatable, I'll continue with a larger scale experiment, perhaps also making some crystal malt.
Anyway, that's all I have for now, but it is at least fun to try malting grains!
ETA: I read up on wild grass seed and it all seems to be edible. Indians used to collect wild grass seeds to add to bread and other foods, while Africans still collect almost a dozen wild grass seeds for cooking.
