Crystal 60 -> Crystal 120 in the oven?

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Piotr

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I'm short of Crystal 120. I'm going to put some Crystal 60 into the oven and keep in in 120*C until it darkens to ~120Lov, I think it will take an hour or so.
Has anybody tried it before?
 
It's worth a try, but I'm not so sure it'll work. Crystal malts are roasted before they've been dried, which is what develops that sweetness and the dextrines. This stuff is dry. It'll be interesting to see what does happen -- and it could be quite good -- but I wouldn't count on it being just like C120.
 
You may want to dampen it so that it just doesn't turn to roasted. Should be interesting but chances are it won't end up like 120L.
 
From what I understand, if you are going to roast your own grains, you should store them for a few weeks before using them in a recipe. John Palmer's "How to Brew" talks about home roasting.
 
From what I understand, if you are going to roast your own grains, you should store them for a few weeks before using them in a recipe. John Palmer's "How to Brew" talks about home roasting.

That makes sense. Sort of like when you roast green coffee beans yourself you should wait a couple days before brewing with them.
 
Thank you for your suggestions.
Now I'm a bit confused; I was inspired by this page, where it all looks very straightforward:

Home Grain Roasting

Author makes all kinds of crystal malts, roasting Carapils to desired degree of color,without wetting it. He also suggests using freshly "baked" grains right away, to get fresh flavour.
 
Interesting read. I think it will take some significant tweaking/experimenting to get the various ˚L crystals (he only talks about light crystal and dark crystal). He does suggest waiting overnight with the grains rather than use "right away" which is closer to the 1-2 days suggested with coffee beans so I'd probably go along with that.

Let us know how it works out, I might have to do that myself for some of the specialty malts that are harder for me to get.
 
That is very intersting. I'd made brown malt before as well as toasting flaked oats. Interesting that I could take the caravienna I never plan to use and turn it into something similar to crystal 40... would be somewhat hard to know what crystal range you are in. Seems like for making crystal malts you basically re-wet them to continue to turn them into darker crystal.
 
I wonder about re-wetting, though. Wouldn't you have to get them to a certain moisture content and then hold them for some amount of time (I have no idea how much it would be)? This would allow the sugars to dissolve as necessary. Also, I think the amount of moisture is pretty important, though I'm no expert.
 
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