Happiness is: Home malting

[passedpawn]

Drywall is a lot easier to repair than a sprung coolant line on a freezer. Be careful with that!

I love this thread. Keep it up!

 

[CtrlMaltDel]

There is beer!



Fermenting appeared to be complete by the three week mark. I'd seen bubbling at about a bubbled every two minutes on the second week mark, but things calmed down since then. Now, at three and a half weeks, I got in a tasted it.

After sanitizing my new keg, a few bottles, etc, I opened up the fermentor. It smelled like flat beer. I poured a glass, and the first thing I noticed was the light color. My "oatmeal stout" is actually an amber, but that's fine. The taste is a little fruity and a little sour, so something went sideways in the fermenting, but it's totally drinkable. Based on how I felt 20 mins after finishing the glass, there is plenty of alcohol in it.

I boiled sugar water, all carefully weighed out, and added it to three cans which I filled with beer and capped. Those are going to a cabin with us this weekend, where my buddy Joe will get to taste the beer he helped me make. The rest was poured into the keg, and sealed up. The keg is hanging out in the refrigerated kegerator-to-be. I'll have to put the line system in next week or after Christmas.

I'm very excited that it turned out okay! This is too much fun.

 

[homemaltster]

Great to hear that you're happy with the final product! You should be - you made beer from scratch!

I think roasting malts is one of those things that you're just not gonna get right on your first try. It's arguably the most skill-based part of the malting process. Roasting technicians need quick judgment that only comes from experience.

p.s. Dang, you are on top of your Christmas shopping!

 

[CtrlMaltDel]

Thanks homemaltster. The lightness of color is definitely from not getting the dark roast correct. I think the off-flavors are probably from the temp being too low for the first day and too high for the day after before getting to the correct range.

We tried to bottle a few last week and drank them this weekend, and there was zero carbonation. I very carefully sanitized everything and added just the right amount of sugar, and kept the bottles at fermenting temp for four days, so I'm not sure what happened. We still drank them, but it wasn't anything to write home about. It's a good think I've got a keg for the rest of it.

 

[babaganuj]

Thanks homemaltster. The lightness of color is definitely from not getting the dark roast correct. I think the off-flavors are probably from the temp being too low for the first day and too high for the day after before getting to the correct range.

We tried to bottle a few last week and drank them this weekend, and there was zero carbonation. I very carefully sanitized everything and added just the right amount of sugar, and kept the bottles at fermenting temp for four days, so I'm not sure what happened. We still drank them, but it wasn't anything to write home about. It's a good think I've got a keg for the rest of it.

Bottle conditioning often takes 2 weeks or more - some people have gone 5 weeks before the beer carbonated. That's part of the reason I started kegging after my first batch

 

[ain]

Hi guys,
I am a home malter myself, starting malt and beer production three years ago. Roughly I've made close to 120 kg (270 pounds) of malt and close to 400 L (100 gallons) of beer.
From my understanding, it is better to make malt at lower temperatures as those mentioned on this topic. I try to use values close to 10oC (50oF) as often as possible. I made the growing phase of malting in a cellar in those moment in the year when the temperature is closer to that value. In the rare case when the lack of malt determine me to make malt at higher temp (no more than 17oC, 62oF), the resulting malt has less enzyme, causing a significant decrease of the brewing yield (with something like 5%). For the next favorable temperature window (april-may) I will try to make malt starting to 8oC (46oF). The slower the acrospire growth, the higher will be the concentration o enzyme.
I have a different approach in making heavy roasted malt. I use a home bread machine which is designed to act during baking as of a thermostat. My Moulinex machine uses 225oC (440oF), value that I had measured. To obtain a light chocolate malt, I'm roasting for about 15 h (repeating the just baking program for 15 times). For darker versions, something like 25 h (in two consecutive days). The procedure is not efficient for roasting unmalted wheat.

 

[homemaltster]

ain, you raise a good point. Traditionally, grain was steeped and germinated at lower temperatures, often 50-55F, to keep germination slow and consistent throughout the grain bed. Germination could take a whole week or two at that rate.

Modern-day commercial maltsters try to speed up germination to produce malt as quickly as possible, so they germinate at higher temps (60-68F). This has cut germination times down to 3 or 4 days. Does that make the best malt? Probably not. But they have such tight process control that they can still make a consistent product.

If you're malting at home and don't have tight control over the malting process, you'll keep things more consistent by malting at lower temps (55-60F seems fine). At higher temps, some kernels germinate quickly and some putter along slowly, resulting in uneven modification. Your grain can really get out of control, as I'm sure some of you have experienced.

 

[CtrlMaltDel]

Howdy guys, I've been taking some time off for the holidays, and my beer has been chilling in a keg in a mini fridge for about a month. Luckily, I've had some days off work due to snow and I've finally made progress on setting up the tap system.

I wanted a tap coming out of the wall rather than out of the top of a fridge, for purely aesthetic reasons. To this end, I bought a length of 1" pvc, some insulation, and assorted joints. I needed to get a beer line out of the fridge, into the wall, out the wall at around eye level, attached to the faucet, insulated, and somehow have air circulating around it to keep it cool.

I decided on this: I'd insulate a length of pipe with elbows at each end, run an air tube and beer line through it, cut two holes in my bar's dry wall, get the pipe behind the drywall and attach it's end to either hole. The upper hole would need to have room for the faucet to attach, both would need to fix the pipe in place, and both would need to be airtight to help the air circulation work.

Here is the insulated pipe with the two tubes within it:



I arbitrarily cut a hole in the mini fridge, pushed into the back corner of the bar, and marked where on the drywall the fridge hole lined up and cut a matching hole there. Then I eyeballed where I wanted the faucet to be and cut a hole up top. This patch of drywall happened to back a built-in bookshelf, and there was only about 3" behind it. To push the thick insulated pipe through the upper hole behind the dry wall, the upper hole had to be quite large. I finally got the pipe through, and had the threads on the elbow just sticking through the bottom hole. I used a threaded nut on the outside of the wall to hold the bottom in place. The top of the pipe rests against a stud that boarders the upper hole:



With the bottom of the pipe attached, I used some pliers to pull the air and beer lines partially through, then pushed the fridge in place. Another threaded coupler on the inside of the fridge attached to the part of the nut that protruded into the fridge, holding the fridge to the wall and pipe. The ends of both tubes hung slack inside the fridge, and the top of the pipe was flush with the plane of the drywall so a faceplate would make a seal:



Now I just need to wait for the piece that connects the beer line to the shank, which I only just ordered after realizing I didn't have one, screw a face plate over the giant upper hole, attach the faucet, and run sanitizer through everything.

I'm almost there!

 

[CtrlMaltDel]

Here is a rough schematic:



The only correction I need to add is that the top elbow is in line with the outside of the drywall, not inside. This is important so that the air is circulating in a closed loop, and not being lost behind the drywall. I'm still putting together the circulation system, following these excellent instructions: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Beer-Tower-Cooler-to-keep-your-Kegerator-t/

This whole project, the tap system not least, has been a colossus of trial-and-error. Every few days I'd work on it a little and have to stop and plan a trip to Home Depot because something didn't quite fit or wouldn't make a seal. I'm glad to see it coming to a close.

I really enjoy a hefty nitro pour, and hopefully in a few days I'll be basking in the foaming chill radiance of a home tap system. The been on tap might not be perfect, but I've already deemed it drinkable and a thick head isn't likely to make it worse. I suppose the real payoff will be when I make batch two and can just fill up and connect a keg, instead of bottling or messing around with tubes behind walls

 

[CtrlMaltDel]

I've constructed the air circulator and the wooden face plate. Now I just need the slightly-longer shank to arrive and to sanitize the system.

Here's the project enclosure with fan, electrical plug, and hole for the air hose. I had to use a soldering iron to put this all together! It was super-simple, but it made me feel accomplished.



This piece sits inside the coldest part of the mini fridge and pushes cold air along the pipe with the beer line in it, so everything stays cold.

I'm not sure how much air is really moving, but the fan spins along quite well.

 

[CtrlMaltDel]

A few points about the air circulator: I used a 1/2 inch air tube after the 3/4 inch tube running through the 1" pvc pipe seemed to block it up and made it difficult for the beer to also fit in the pvc pipe. When I finished up last night I couldn't really feel air at the other end of the pipe, so the 1/2 tubing might not be wide enough to allow air to flow. If it doesn't work I'll try fitting the 3/4 inch tube back in.

Second, the fan ought to have been attached to the box with the electric plug, not on the removable door piece. As I made it, the door doesn't really separate because the wire from the fan attach it to the plug on the box. A minor mistake there.

Also, I originally screwed the fan in the wrong way! That was a simple fit, too.

The directions I followed is in my post from the 19th.

 

[CtrlMaltDel]

Yesterday I bought the last part I needed to complete my tap system. The nitrogen regulator I bought from a gas supply company in town did not use the same fitting as the hose and pin-lock set I bought from Kegworks, and Home Depot had nothing to marry the two. Going back to the supply store, they sold me a nipple that screwed directly onto their regular (cost me a dollar) and my problem was solved.

I'd already used sanitizer to clean off all the beer line equipment and attach the faucet to the face place via the longer 3" shank, get the nut on the shank, clamp the beer line to the nut, and then down in the fridge connect the beer line to the keg. Getting sanitizer down the beer line, which was in the lead wall at the time was a bit of a bother.

When I connected all the parts and clamps of the gas line and turned it on there was a leak at the regulator. A big wrench fixed that. I eased the pressure up to 30 psi to see if things worked, and they didn't.

From the inside of the fridge I pushed the beer line into the wall. I had fiddled with the faceplate while the line was attached to it, and figured it must have been pulled taught around a corner and kinked. Luckily, pushing the beer line into the wall must have relieved any tension that was there, because my second attempt yeilded a stream of cloudy, pungent beer. Even better, the second pull yeilded clearer, decent-tasting beer!

After a months of malting, brewing, and building, I have a working tap system with home made beer!

I set the pressure to 40 psi to hurry carbonation. On Friday we have guests coming for my wife's birthday, so I wanted everything in order by then.

 

[babaganuj]

Yesterday I bought the last part I needed to complete my tap system. The nitrogen regulator I bought from a gas supply company in town did not use the same fitting as the hose and pin-lock set I bought from Kegworks, and Home Depot had nothing to marry the two. Going back to the supply store, they sold me a nipple that screwed directly onto their regular (cost me a dollar) and my problem was solved.

I'd already used sanitizer to clean off all the beer line equipment and attach the faucet to the face place via the longer 3" shank, get the nut on the shank, clamp the beer line to the nut, and then down in the fridge connect the beer line to the keg. Getting sanitizer down the beer line, which was in the lead wall at the time was a bit of a bother.

When I connected all the parts and clamps of the gas line and turned it on there was a leak at the regulator. A big wrench fixed that. I eased the pressure up to 30 psi to see if things worked, and they didn't.

From the inside of the fridge I pushed the beer line into the wall. I had fiddled with the faceplate while the line was attached to it, and figured it must have been pulled taught around a corner and kinked. Luckily, pushing the beer line into the wall must have relieved any tension that was there, because my second attempt yeilded a stream of cloudy, pungent beer. Even better, the second pull yeilded clearer, decent-tasting beer!

After a months of malting, brewing, and building, I have a working tap system with home made beer!

I set the pressure to 40 psi to hurry carbonation. On Friday we have guests coming for my wife's birthday, so I wanted everything in order by then.

It might take longer than 3 days to carb up. Remember, beer gas is 25% CO2 and 75% N2. Since nitrogen isn't soluble in beer, you're pushing 10psi of CO2 into solution. 10psi takes a few weeks to carb up a keg under normal conditions (35-45f) so you're probably going to see something similar. You could 1) shake the keg every hour for the next day to reach equilibrium faster 2) get a carbonation stone 3) carb with CO2 at 10psi (again shaking) and then put it on Nitro before serving or 4) try it how you're planning and see what happens!

 

[CtrlMaltDel]

Thanks for the advice, baba. I cranked up the pressure and turned down the fridge temp, so we'all see where that gets us.

Here the finished product:



I'm happy about this, since the first batch of beer wasn't the best. I can still claim a victory for the keg set up, and look forward to serving the next batch!

 

[CtrlMaltDel]

There was some kind of leak in the gas line, because the nitrogen was reading zero on Thursday, after being plugged in only a few days. Never the less, the beer flowed from the tap on Friday (could the 50 psi in the keg have pushed it out by itself?) when party goers were over.

The faucet also started to malfunction and wouldn't turn off all the way, so I had to reach into the fridge and attach the beer line when I wanted to dispense beer, then detach it to stop, but things still worked out okay. The carbonation levels seemed fine, there was lots of cascading bubbles and a small head on each glass, which everyone liked watching.

The guests drank a lot of the beer, which was flattering. We agreed that I had made an aweful stout but a pretty good lambic or sour. The night was an excellent conclusion of my adventure with my first malting, homebrewing, and tap installation.

 

[farmersteve]

I'm a little late to the party here. As many, I stumbled on this thread looking for information on home malting. My plan is to make an "estate grown" beer. All ingredients grown on my property (including the yeast which is a separate thread somewhere I'm sure). I started brewing beer waaaay back in the 1990s in my early 20s. I was a BJCP early on and took a long leave of absence (kids, work, etc) and got back into over the past couple of years. I live on a couple of acres a few miles from Seattle, WA. I bought a 5lb sack of barley seeds from Johnny's Seeds to grow in a bed in my garden and quickly realized that wouldn't be enough to do much so my plan is to plant a fairly large bed to get maybe 50lbs of barley to malt. I'm a little late this year The hops are already climbing up their trellis as we speak.

Before I go hog wild, I'd like to get my hands on a 50lb sack of unmalted barley for me to play around with. Does anyone know where I can find some barley in Western Washington? We are blessed in this state with a large amount of barley and hop growers, but finding small quantities is always the issue. I can find wheat all day long, but barley is much harder. There is a lot of barley research up the road from me in the Skagit valley at WSU and a custom malting operation called Skagit Valley Malting

I found some a few pounds of wheat berries at the grocery store that I am currently sprouting to get a feel for how it goes. If things go well, I plan to scale up a bit but my main interest is estate grown barley and hops so it will never be a lot although I have a plot about 200'x50' I could plant which is probably way more grain than I could ever use. I have the space to malt under climate controlled conditions, I just need a way to kiln the malt. Is there anyone else in the Seattle area doing this?

 

[farmersteve]

Finally found some feed barley at a feed store in the Skagit valley about an hour north of Seattle. $10 for 50lbs. They say the barley is grown a few miles from the feed store, which is pretty rare around these parts. I'll be picking up a couple of bags in a week or so. I need a dehydrator

 

[sfish]

I suggest you ask the name and do a little research on the different types. You should use Malting barley. You have use johnney Seed and they sell 25 pound bag of Conlon 2 row malting barley.

If you look back in this thread the field pictured in post 388. It is about the same size as you are planning to plant. I used 5 pounds of the Conlon and it was over seeded by recommendation. I harvested about 70 pounds.

There is a store farmers use around here called The Mill. is was Southern Staes co op they do carry malting barley.

I have not malted mine it is sealed in buckets for now. I am well aware it may go bad. I spent the last year remodeling my home and now in the process of moving.

 

[farmersteve]

I plan on using the feed barley to try some malting. Actually, I ordered 25lbs of hard red wheat from Amazon for $13 and free shipping because we are Prime. So between both of these I am going to get my malting system down before I try and malt anything that I grow myself.

I planted a vegetable bed with Conlon from Johnny's Seeds a couple of weeks ago (I know this seems late in the year but it was in the 50s last week the 2nd week of June). I have already had problems with birds and maybe rabbits or rats eating some of the sprouts so I will need to deal with them too. I actually have about 1/2 acre I could plant, but not equipped to deal with that much barley. I've got a tractor and pto rotoliller, just need a seed driller to plant that much!

I think unmalted barley will last 2-3 years if keep cool and dry.

 

[farmersteve]

BTW, the Bread Lab is about an hour north of me and they are doing some really interesting research on Barley and Wheat. I'd like to get my hands on some Purple Barley. Not that it will turn my beer purple, but it would really cool! http://thebreadlab.wsu.edu/colored-barley-research-in-the-skagit-valley/

 

[sfish]

Wish you well keep in touch. do you have your hops planted as well

 

[farmersteve]

I planted some hops years ago and I don't remember what I planted. They are growing up the side of my barn. I just planted Willamette, Centennial and Columbus hops so I know what I have this time. This is WA state, it's not like we can't grow hops or anything here! (Don't ever get stuck behind a truck hauling hops to the dryer in the Yakima valley, I could barely breath!)

@sfish I see you are from Baldwin, MD. My sister lives in Bel Air and my brother in Baltimore. I grew up in MD but moved away years ago to take a tech job. Love MD , but don't think I can ever move back with the heat...

 

[sfish]

lol a small pond it is
my son moved out there for the job as well
I grew up in timonium
sfish

If I ever finish my dirt to glass project I'll send you a beer.

 

[farmersteve]

Same here! It will probably be some time next spring!

 

[farmersteve]

FYI, for anyone following this thread. I submitted a request to the admins to get our own forum called Growing and Malting Barley (or grain or whatever). He said it was a good idea and was going to bring it up with the other admins. Sounds promising so look for a forum dedicated to this thread!

 

[sfish]

FYI a beersmith interview with a new malting farmer

http://beersmith.com/blog/2017/03/1...ith-dark-cloud-malting-beersmith-podcast-144/

 

[Rhaop]

Wow i was just perusing this thread and when you mentioned the mill / southern states it caught my eye i grew up in jarretsville and still live in bel air, small pond indeed

 

[passedpawn]

FYI, for anyone following this thread. I submitted a request to the admins to get our own forum called Growing and Malting Barley (or grain or whatever). He said it was a good idea and was going to bring it up with the other admins. Sounds promising so look for a forum dedicated to this thread!

Yooper's a she. Now you've blown it

 

[farmersteve]

Yooper's a she. Now you've blown it

I'm new around these parts. Not new to brewing, but hanging around here for sure...

 

[sfish]

Wow i was just perusing this thread and when you mentioned the mill / southern states it caught my eye i grew up in jarretsville and still live in bel air, small pond indeed

maybe someday we meet