Does home malting produce good beer

[Boek]

I'm thinking about giving it a try. I know some folks have elaborate set ups but I think I could malt some barley with equipment I have laying around. My question is, has anyone had any homebrew made from homemalt? Is it any good? Is the eff any good of homemalt? Trying to decide if it is worth the effort.

 

[Ezekielsays]

I've done this once : I malted barley and wheat from my father's farm for a basic American style wheat. It worked well for me, my efficiency was around 75% if I remember right. However, I did do a protein rest and then a decoction to bring it up to 151. I was operating under the assumption that my grains were not properly modified, and that the protein rest would help with that.

Fwiw, the beer was quite tasty and well received by both my family and home brewing friends.

I didn't have anything elaborate set up. My equipment for malting was buckets, window screens, and a ceramic heater with fan. I did only a few pounds at a time.

 

[Boek]

Cool. What kept you from keeping it up? If it works well it sure would make brewing cheap/almost free. Did you build some sort of hot box around your screens to keep the heat in when drying?

 

[Ezekielsays]

I basically made a tunnel out of reflectix insulation for drying. it seemed to work well, everything dried well, no mold. Aster it was all dry I toasted it in the oven for a bit.

I haven't continued with it for both time and space reasons. I did make quite a bit more than I needed, and for several brews I replaced a couple pounds of two row with home malt. Now that it's gone, i'm thinking of malting a bit more. Even if it doesn't replace purchased malt, I like being able to add some to each brew.

 

[jdhendricks]

I malted some wheat using a 1 gallon jar. Took me two batches to make enough for a five gallon batch. But the beer turned out quite well; I had several wheat beer fans raving about it. So yes, it can be done, and more easily than you might think.

 

[ruralbrew]

Does the grain need to be dried after the malting process, or could it be used green and put right in the mash tun?

 

[COLObrewer]

Does the grain need to be dried after the malting process, or could it be used green and put right in the mash tun?

You could but one of the the reasons for drying is to remove the chits (rootlets) that are high in protein, another reason is to be able to kiln it which gives most malts their flavor, even the lightest malts have been kilned to some degree. Most maltsters also give the malt a "mellowing" phase that lasts at least a couple of weeks after kilning, information on why this is needed is sketchy. Crystal/Caramel type malts are typically the only malts that are mashed while green, but they in turn are also kilned to get the different lovibond crystals. That being said, you could try it and report back.