Happiness is: Home malting

[COLObrewer]

Some interesting reading: http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?seq_no_115=175232 It talks about a specific winter barley cultivar, but it has some interesting general info as well- namely that pretty much all malted barley is from spring barley.

That IS very interesting, looks like it's cultivar 'Charles' for me, but then I would need one of these.

Edited, 03-10: It's amazing how many different cultivars of barley there are, but I guess what would one expect from a grain that's been manipulated by all manner of drunkards for 5000 years or so.
By the way, this helped me figure out why a bunch of my pics were smaller, they should all be regular size now, thanx for all your help guys SHEEESH!

 

[Seabee John]

Was thinking along the same lines, a dryer drum may be too big, but. . . wait . . . maybe one from those small over/under washer dryer units? I was thinking of building some from round plywood disks on each end, with screen wrapped around, the dried roots would fall right out the screen holes. Even a manually operated one would be a step up from hand turning the malt on trays, wouldn't even have to open the door. Sweet!!!

you really wouldn't even need a washer/dryer unit... you described it pretty well... two plywood discs with wire screen around them, on a through and through shaft with a sprocket or pulley and driven by a small electric motor. To get the most out of your fridge-kiln, make em about 12 to 14 inches in diameter and stack em two wide and 3 high.... run em off of one chain. figure about 15 to 20 lbs a cylinder that will get you 90-120 lbs a load...

 

[Corkster]

definitely cool Man!

I'm not even doing all grain yet and I would love to malt now!

 

[eriktlupus]

this thread has me wondering where's fifelee?

looking good there colobrewer.

 

[WortMonger]

Wow, I am loving this thread. Can't wait for more information towards home malting do's and do-nots.

 

[dibby33]

i am getting encouragement from here. You are mad. I love that. Keep the story going

 

[COLObrewer]

03-10 update,
Well I modified the heater last night, and picked up some more propane since I ran out sometime during the day yesterday. The temperature in the kiln this morning was 98F, not bad since ambient temp says 32F.
Inside Kiln temp pic.

If you look closely you can see the rootlets sticking through the bottom of the hoard above the temp unit.

The malt has actually grown in the kiln since I ran out of propane (Didn't have a full tank to start with) I estimate appx. 5% is over modified in this second half, I may have to keep them seperated for testing, but we'll see tomorrow as it's darker than the inside of a cow right now and I have to go to work. Here's a pic of the malts inside the kiln.

If you look closely here you can see some of the acrospires that are sticking out from the seeds (or maybe not?), over modified, should still be workable malt.

The modification to the heater was simply cutting slots in the duct at the heater end and flaring them out so they are outside the heater rim and kindof closed up the hole I made in the aluminum duct, seems to be working.

I will still need to modify it probably with a larger duct before I can do 176F for curing. That's right we have 3" of new heavy wet snow this morning, . . . Last night the weather man says "What little snow, if any, will be melting as it hits the ground because of the high temperature of the ground" WAY TO GO WEATHERMAN!!!:rockin:

More in next post.

 

[COLObrewer]

Here's another snowy pic.

And another.

And another.

That handle looks cold, I don't want to touch it.
Thats all for today folks have a goodun!
Vern.

 

[IowaHarry]

Great thread. As to increasing the heat in the system block the discharge of the squirrel cage fan to reduce the amount of air moving through the system. Close the holes you made on the draw line from the heater as this is allowing cold air in. By blocking the discharge of the fan you will see a drop in amps used by the fan, less air moving through the kiln which should lead to a higher temp in the kiln. By adjusting the amount of air you allow in you can optimize the temp in the kiln. You may want to insulate the draw line from the heater as well. Or move your heater closer to the kiln to reduce heat loss in transit. You should be able to throttle down the airflow to the point where you are no longer blowing the flame out.

Hope this helps.

 

[COLObrewer]

Great thread. As to increasing the heat in the system block the discharge of the squirrel cage fan to reduce the amount of air moving through the system. Close the holes you made on the draw line from the heater as this is allowing cold air in. By blocking the discharge of the fan you will see a drop in amps used by the fan, less air moving through the kiln which should lead to a higher temp in the kiln. By adjusting the amount of air you allow in you can optimize the temp in the kiln. You may want to insulate the draw line from the heater as well. Or move your heater closer to the kiln to reduce heat loss in transit. You should be able to throttle down the airflow to the point where you are no longer blowing the flame out.

Hope this helps.

I will try this first, it is still 29F here so it's gonna be refreshing tonight. THANX!

 

[IowaHarry]

Is the chimney on top of the kiln open? If so you could be loosing heat out of that as well or possibly drawing cold air in from outside.

The "Y" on top of the kiln. I presume you are using this just as an adapter to transition between the two line sizes? Is the un-used leg open? If not you could open that to draw after the kiln to reduce draw through the kiln to slow the air down and keep more heat inside.

Interesting project you have going there.

Dress warm.

 

[McKBrew]

Totally awesome project.

 

[fifelee]

this thread has me wondering where's fifelee?

Totally missed this thread for some reason.

The differences between malt and feed barley are plumpness and protein level. Maltsters typically want better than 75% plump and less than 13% protein. Higher plump means more starch and therefore more fermentable sugar. Lower protein also mean more fermentable sugar as protein can displace starch, but it also effects other parts of the malting/brewing process. For example high protein can mean inconsistent germination during malting and hazy beer during brewing.

As listed in an article previously posted there are other minor differences such as alpha amylase activity, diastatic power, beta glucan, and soluble/total protein, but I don't have any knowledge of these specifics. On a homebrew scale the main difference is just plump and protein, so if you have feed barley you may have poor efficiency and possibly cloudy beer. Not the end of the world and you still have beer when you are done. Great job COLObrewer


Info on barley varieties

Info on plump and protein %

That IS very interesting, looks like it's cultivar 'Charles' for me, but then I would need one of these.

You can borrow mine any time

 

[COLObrewer]

Fifelee thanx for the info. And I'll have to pass on the combine as this is all I have planted so far:

Here's an update, on 03-11 I got all the malt "cured" in the kiln, I was able to get the temperature up to the desired 170-212F so from the beginning to end of pale malt took me 10 days total (Should be able to reduce this time by at least one day once the system equipment is refined). The kiln needs major re-thinking as the temperature is drastically inconsistent from top to bottom, a difference of almost 100F. I believe some sort of mesh cage inside with a shaft through the walls to allow turning would be ideal, I'll also remove the shelf in the middle. A next step up from what I had would be rigid hoards that one can swap from top to bottom easily, mine were supported with bricks between each layer, quite inconvenient. Here is a close-up of the last run (The overmodified half) after kilning, all that is left is to remove the dried hairs and acrospires and waiting appx. 2 weeks for "mellowing".

Some of the roots, etc came off during the mixing of the malts during kilning as seen in the bottom after removal of the hoards.

Next post for more.

 

[COLObrewer]

Just a couple more pics of the overmodified malts, the first shows the amount of overmodified kernels that came out of the shown sample size, probably 5% at most.

I am keeping this separate from the fully modified malt just to see what I can get from the best effort first.

And here is a closeup of only the overmodified malts, see the acrospires sticking out past the end of the kernels, very undesireable. I'll have the kiln process "up to snuff" before the next batch so this doesn't happen.

I'll post some results of the first brew made with this (The correctly modified batch that is) in two or three weeks, let me know if there is something else you would like to see pic's of or more descriptions of, The next testing will probably be to make crystal and/or rauchmalt.
Vern.

 

[bendavanza]

love to see some crystal, and some brewing with your grain.

 

[Brew-ta-sauraus]

Post pics of yopur next home malting go round as well if you would. Have followed this thread from start to end. I want to see your upgrades and changes on your next go round. I don't live on a farm or large property per se, but i could probably do home malting in my garage with a small investment. Your post has been a ton of info. Just goes to show how deep into this hobby one can go. Wherer bouts in CO are you?

Brew on !

Parker, CO

 

[COLObrewer]

OK fellows (& Misses), I'll be testing the home malt next week and I'm looking for a simple recipe to test it with. A fellow HBTer that I work with suggested a SMASH. I think it is a good idea, I'll supply the malt and maybe he'll supply the centenial or cascade hops. I want him to make a batch as well because he has a "better" setup that he can keep track of the variables with, I have no idea what my system efficiency is. I was just going to post some basic info, (Recipe, OG, color, flavor, etc, etc). What are your thoughts? Should we make the same recipe or alter hops? Yeast? What are the minimum variables/readings we need to track in order to make an initial test of this malt for beer?
Thanx for your input, Vern.

 

[BeerCanuck]

Tre cool

Cheers
Steve

 

[JPicasso]

What we need is a "control" to compare against. Since we're (... uhm, well you're) not trying to compare your setup vs another's setup. I'd suggest you both make some SMASH recipe with your home-malted grain and with some 2-row, whatever brand you normally use.

Then, you'll be comparing how your home malted grain tastes vs another grain done on the same system. Not how one setup/brewer makes beer vs another setup/brewer. Then, you could each make a separate recipe, twice and get two kinds of SMASH data.

That would be ideal, but whatever you do, this is a totally awesome thread, so if you make drinkable beer, consider it a success! Hell, even if you don't it's been fun, right?

 

[COLObrewer]

What we need is a "control" to compare against. Since we're (... uhm, well you're) not trying to compare your setup vs another's setup. I'd suggest you both make some SMASH recipe with your home-malted grain and with some 2-row, whatever brand you normally use.

I plan to do this, with 2 row Rahr, any other suggestions or recommendations?

 

[Clayton]

This is really cool , i have been planing to do this for a long time,
on friday i ordered 100lbs of barley from my buddy that owns a feed store.

its alot like your story, all i know for sure is that it is whole untreated barly from north dakota and it was harvisted last fall makeing it summer barley,,
i dont know how many rows it is but at 20$ for 100lbs i dont know how i can go wrong.

the hope to just make a butt ton of pale malt, anything over that will be gravy

 

[boodyrischous]

It may be boring at first, but to really test the flavor of the malt, you could use a very neutral hop during the boil. Then after sampling, you could dry hop to round out the flavor to be what you want. Or blend the final product with another batch. Whatever you decide, let us know how it turns out! Very impressive!!

 

[bobsstory182]

so how is the project coming along?

 

[COLObrewer]

so how is the project coming along?

Got caught up in irrigation and turkey hunting, etc, etc, maybe next week I'll brew.

 

[COLObrewer]

Greetings fellow brewers,
So I decided to brew some beer today, those are great words aren’t they? Anyway, before I use the home malted barley, I still have to finish it. This means taking off the remaining chits (rootlets), I did this by simply placing the malt on a hoard used for kilning in 5 lb increments, then “squashing” them against the screen with my hands and rubbing them between my hands etc.

Here's a pic of what came off under the screen. Rootlets and Acrospires, this is the properly malted half of the batch, the acrospires are breaking off and falling out when the hulls break I suppose, some of them curled out of the hulls, these are not needed, they add protein and probably off flavors.

This worked pretty good, however, while feeling quite exuberating at first on my hands, after 15 pounds it started feeling like rubbing sandpaper over a sunburn. I will have to make the rotating kiln chamber(s) for the rest of the 50 lbs. But 15 lbs is enough for my brew.
The screen it turns out is perfect size for sieving out the rootlets and acrospires, here is a picture of what I got out of the 15 lbs.

I believe these would all fall off in the kilning process if there were some rotating means of stirring it, etc. After this I took the malt to the lawn & threw it around on a bed sheet to let more of the rootlets and mainly empty hulls float away (winnowing I think it’s called? Usually done after harvest to separate the chaff?)
Note: I didn’t do this as well as I should have, there was very little wind, but I could have rigged up a fan, etc. It turns out this step in the process is cumbersome and time consuming, needs to be modified/automated.
More to come.

 

[COLObrewer]

This is the basic recipe which is what I call a SMATH (Single Malt And Two (Or three) hops), there will be two brews today, one with home malts and another with 2 row Rahr, all other ingredients are identical, like this:

SMATH1
14.25 lbs of home malt. (Because that’s all the Rahr I have to match, might as well use it ALL, right?)
1 oz of Willamette 5.5%AA for 60 min’s. Pellets (Because that’s all I have)
½ oz of UK Kent Goldings 5.0%AA for 10 min’s. Pellets (You get the picture)
Secondary dry hop with Chinook? (hand picked loose leaf, unknown AA) (Again, that’s what I have)
Washed Lager yeast from 2-28-09, (Saflager)

1. Mash in at 170F, projecting a 150F mash for 60 min’s duration, using appx. 2-2.5 gals of water (CO tap).
2. Sparge at 185F with 4.5-5 gals. Probably double sparge. (Batch sparging)
3. Imersion Chiller, Funnel to carboy, aerate, pitch, pray to ninkasi.

Here's some pictures of the grind.
First is the home malt. There is noticeably more, or larger hulls in this than the rahr. Don't know if you can tell from the pics.

And the Rahr.

And the mash of home malt. The top thermometer says 150F and the floater inside says 154F after settling out.

Mmmmmm, wort.

More to come. . . .

 

[COLObrewer]

Boiling wort, Yay!

The only picture of the hydrometer that turned out, almost. I think this one was before boil on the home malt, I think it is 1.038, lowest reading I got.

Here's some readings for yous guys:

Home malt, after boil:
Refractometer= 11.8
Hydrometer1 = 1.044
Hydrometer2 = 1.046
This is lower than I expected, should be around 1.07ish?

Rahr, after boil:
Refractometer= 13.8
Hydrometer1 = 1.054
Hydrometer2 = 1.056

Is this telling me my efficiency is like 40%? I've not tested it or looked into how to even do it yet.
Ah well, it smells like wort, tastes like wort, must be wort.

Here's a bottle o yeasties (2nd half for the Rahr), looks like it was 02/23/09 instead of what I said previously. I split this evenly between batches after I warmed it in my pocket, maybe it will work.

More to come later . . .

 

[COLObrewer]

Here's the Home malt:

And the Rahr:

What else do we need, I got more pics?

 

[Revvy]

FTW!!!!!!!

Good job!!!

I vote for stickyhood!!!

But I'll at least prost.