Hi everybody. First post for me.
I decided to try malting my own barley, so I picked up 50 pounds of two row from a co-op in Idaho. After malting about 9 pounds I tried a mini mash which turned out terrible. The wort, if you could call it that, was gray in color and had a grassy flavor. There was a hint of sweetness but nothing like I get with commercial malts.
Does anyone have any ideas where I went wrong?
Here's the process I followed.
- Cleaned grains to remove all dust, bugs, etc...
- Soaked grains for 8 hours in large pot
- Drained and let sit for 2 hours
- Repeated this 3 times.
- Spread out grains on top of paper towels and stored in drawers.
- Stirred the grains, replaced paper towels, and sprayed to keep moist 3 times daily for 3 days. Rootlets were growing rapidly.
- After 3 days germination I cut open 20 grains and the average shoot length was 94% of the grain.
- Put grains in bucket with holes and blew ambient air through them for an hour.
- Transferred grains to pillow case and put in clothes dryer on low temp setting (100F) for several hours. Weight was now back to original dry weight.
- Knocked off all roots.
Then I crushed them and did a one hour mash at 152F resulting in the nasty wort described above.
I decided to try malting my own barley, so I picked up 50 pounds of two row from a co-op in Idaho. After malting about 9 pounds I tried a mini mash which turned out terrible. The wort, if you could call it that, was gray in color and had a grassy flavor. There was a hint of sweetness but nothing like I get with commercial malts.
Does anyone have any ideas where I went wrong?
Here's the process I followed.
- Cleaned grains to remove all dust, bugs, etc...
- Soaked grains for 8 hours in large pot
- Drained and let sit for 2 hours
- Repeated this 3 times.
- Spread out grains on top of paper towels and stored in drawers.
- Stirred the grains, replaced paper towels, and sprayed to keep moist 3 times daily for 3 days. Rootlets were growing rapidly.
- After 3 days germination I cut open 20 grains and the average shoot length was 94% of the grain.
- Put grains in bucket with holes and blew ambient air through them for an hour.
- Transferred grains to pillow case and put in clothes dryer on low temp setting (100F) for several hours. Weight was now back to original dry weight.
- Knocked off all roots.
Then I crushed them and did a one hour mash at 152F resulting in the nasty wort described above.