Conditioned Malt FTW!

[Coastarine]

Today I brewed my Kieran American Amber recipe (available in my recipe pulldown). As an experiment I tried conditioning my malt as outlined in the wiki: Malt Conditioning - Home Brewing Wiki

It was extremely easy, just add 3oz of water per 11lbs of grain. I used a spray bottle which has oz markings on the bottle. I gave a few sprays, tossed the grain, gave a few sprays, etc, until I had added 2.5oz for my 9.25lbs of grain. I kept my pound of crystal dry in case I needed to use it to clean any dough off my rollers. After I added the water I gave the grain an hour to sit and make sure the water was uniformly absorbed into the husks. Crush was no problem, no mess.

The benefits? I got incredibly fast runoff, and great lauter efficiency. I usually have a pretty slow first runnings and tolerable sparge runoff speed. Today it was all fast. I'll do this from now on, it was very easy. I can even tighten the gap on my crusher a little now and not worry about extracting anything nasty from the husk or getting a stuck sparge.

 

[lamarguy]

Thanks, I may try this tomorrow when I brew my traditional bock just to avoid the amount of husk dust produced from crushing 15 pounds of grain.

 

[pjj2ba]

I don't even both with the spray bottle. I just measure out about 80 ml and drizzle it in while mixing with my hand. I also don't wait for one hour, maybe just 5 minutes. More intacts husks with a smaller gap, and less dust too.

 

[lamarguy]

I sprayed 3 oz of water on ~14# of grain and the crush went smoothly with little dust and no doughing.

The biggest benefit is I was able to tighten the gap on my barley crusher to 0.5mm (from 0.75mm) with little husk breakage. The only issue was I developed numerous dough balls when mashing in, due to the tighter crush.

 

[Saccharomyces]

Thread Prost'd.

Never heard of this technique. I will definitely give it a try next brew day!

 

[Saccharomyces]

I used this technique when I crushed the grains for 20 gallons worth. It kept the dust down to a minimum, and I saw a little less shredded husks. Whether it makes a huge difference or not only time will tell.

 

[WortMonger]

Wish my mill had stainless rollers. I bought a Crankandstein and they have cold rolled steel for the rollers. What could I do to use it for conditioned malt milling?

 

[Denny]

I tried conditioning a few times years back and didn't find that it did anything for me. YMMV.

 

[Coastarine]

Wish my mill had stainless rollers. I bought a Crankandstein and they have cold rolled steel for the rollers. What could I do to use it for conditioned malt milling?

I can't make any promises but there isn't extra moisture on the grain. If there were, it would make dough. My rollers were not damp after the crush.

 

[WortMonger]

Good to know, I read in the wiki article, but wondered from a personal use standpoint. I'm going to have to try this. This with steps and decoction mash out should get me great extraction.