Diastatic malt powder is used in baking to help convert some of the starches in flour into sugars that the bread yeast can eat. In theory it can give you more a more active rise and better texture in the bread.
In practice, however, I've found that this stuff just causes my bread to overproof and become flabby and hard to form. Thus it just sits on my shelf. I was glaring at it the other day, resenting what I'd spent on it when the words diastatic and malt lit up my little grey cells. Duh! These are the same diastatic enzymes used to convert starches to sugars in the mash. Man, I felt like an idiot. Sure enough, Ingredients: Malted barley flour, wheat flour and dextrose. So I've got a bag of malted barley with active enzymes, some wheat flour and some corn sugar. Any reason not to stir a pound of this into my next mash? I've got some poorly crushed grains that could certainly use a little more diastatic oomph, the wheat would probably add a little mouthfeel and body and the dextrose is just a fermentable sugar.
There's a risk of a stuck sparge with adding what is physically very much like a pound of flour to the mash, but other than that does anyone see a reason this wouldn't work?
Thanks,
Chad
In practice, however, I've found that this stuff just causes my bread to overproof and become flabby and hard to form. Thus it just sits on my shelf. I was glaring at it the other day, resenting what I'd spent on it when the words diastatic and malt lit up my little grey cells. Duh! These are the same diastatic enzymes used to convert starches to sugars in the mash. Man, I felt like an idiot. Sure enough, Ingredients: Malted barley flour, wheat flour and dextrose. So I've got a bag of malted barley with active enzymes, some wheat flour and some corn sugar. Any reason not to stir a pound of this into my next mash? I've got some poorly crushed grains that could certainly use a little more diastatic oomph, the wheat would probably add a little mouthfeel and body and the dextrose is just a fermentable sugar.
There's a risk of a stuck sparge with adding what is physically very much like a pound of flour to the mash, but other than that does anyone see a reason this wouldn't work?
Thanks,
Chad