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southpawbrasserie

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So, to lower costs (due to my future career path and still be able to brew) & to become more involved in the brewing process. I started malting my own grain. I found out that it's almost impossible to find barley in Arkansas, so I decided to start out with malting wheat.

After brewing a successful 100% pale wheat, I wanted to lean into different all wheat styles of brewing. I have malted a range of carawheats, chocolate, biscuit, base malts, Munich and even a roasted wheat. I haven't brewed with these grains yet, but I feel they will work out just fine. So after talking with my LHBS about this project, the owner told me that it's impossible to make these types of malt. I tried to explain to him that I have already malted these, but for some reason he wouldn't hear me out.

Anyway, what is everyone's thoughts? Have you home malted? Have you thought outside the box on it? And any other thoughts?

Last, before someone says i can't do it or it will be too hard due to the mash and stuck sparges. My first batch was a BIAB, which with calculating the recipe (using hopville, the style of grain I was using I had to calculate with barley and 78% efficiency) I was shooting for 1.048, after the brew I hit 1.054. I also have 50 lbs of rice hulls, so I should be good on the stuck sparge area. Thanks!
 
I have been malting with only home Malts for a full year now! Glad to see someone else doing it too. Luckily I can buy my unmalted grains from Colorado Malting.

People don't know what they are talking about. Every time I tell someone I do all my own roasting and malting, think my beer must taste bad. Then they drink em and they think I'm a liar! I believe if more people knew how big of a difference freshly toasted grains make in a beer, then they would do it.

Anyways, what kind of a rig are you using?
 
Well not sure what rig you're referring to, but for malting I just use a 3 gallon bucket for steeping. I was using a box I built for germinating, but after a batch ran through I closed it up and stuck it in the garage. Came back for it a few days later, when I had 5 lbs (pre-soak) needing to go in, to find that it didn't dry and had mold everywhere! So that time I used a cooler. It got probably to warm, but some of the research I found was wheat does better at warmer temps than barley. Anywho, I built an oast with 4 screen shelves, 3 ceramic light fixtures in the bottom and 3 250w heat lamp bulbs and a computer fan in the top. Then I use the oven and a homemade BBQ grill coffee roaster (home coffee roaster also).

My brewing system is a HERMS with HLT & MLT 10 Gott coolers and going to upgrade my 10 gallon fryer pot kettle to a keggle (just been lazy and haven't cut it out yet). And let's see...other than a freezer top fridge converted to a one chamber for lagering/3 tap kegerator, that's about it.
 
. . . . I found out that it's almost impossible to find barley in Arkansas, . .. .

Interesting, have you tried the local elevator? (Feed/seed store that does their own cleaning, buying, selling etc from local farmers)

After brewing a successful 100% pale wheat, I wanted to lean into different all wheat styles of brewing. I have malted a range of carawheats, chocolate, biscuit, base malts, Munich and even a roasted wheat. I haven't brewed with these grains yet, but I feel they will work out just fine. So after talking with my LHBS about this project, the owner told me that it's impossible to make these types of malt. I tried to explain to him that I have already malted these, but for some reason he wouldn't hear me out.

Anyway, what is everyone's thoughts? Have you home malted? Have you thought outside the box on it? And any other thoughts?

Last, before someone says i can't do it or it will be too hard due to the mash and stuck sparges. My first batch was a BIAB, which with calculating the recipe (using hopville, the style of grain I was using I had to calculate with barley and 78% efficiency) I was shooting for 1.048, after the brew I hit 1.054. I also have 50 lbs of rice hulls, so I should be good on the stuck sparge area. Thanks!

People are lazy naysayers, malt on my friend! :mug:
Also, we do 100% wheat brewing as well with no problems.
My malting journey is here if you haven't seen it yet: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/happiness-home-malting-107409/
 
I have been looking through your thread. This is a great source for me, thank you!! I like your germination set up, like I said my system with a wooden box got infected with mold so I have to come up with a new way. I like the concrete sheets. I am wondering if it is expensive though? And does it keep the grain cool in the summer heat? If I build this setup, I could only use it in my garage where te summer heat in Arkansas with my garage door closed it can get up to 130F easy. So I guess I will have to germ inside or in my kegerator. What's your thoughts on a build for me? Thanks again for that thread and the help! I have fallen in love all over again with brewing once I started malting. I grow hops and wash, reusing and harvest bottle conditioned yeast. So now I am producing closer to HOMEMADE beer! It awesome.
 
Since you have been malting longer than I have, can you share your temps, times and processes for the different kinds of malts you make? I have some information from internet searches and a few different books, but it seems that every resource I have is different from one another. So I'm not sure what to go with. If you don't want to share it, do you have anything on melanoidin malt, biscuit malt, vienna malt, honey malt, caramunich & caravienne, special b, and carafa I, II, and/or III? Thanks
 
. . . . I like your germination set up, like I said my system with a wooden box got infected with mold so I have to come up with a new way. I like the concrete sheets. I am wondering if it is expensive though? And does it keep the grain cool in the summer heat? If I build this setup, I could only use it in my garage where te summer heat in Arkansas with my garage door closed it can get up to 130F easy. So I guess I will have to germ inside or in my kegerator. What's your thoughts on a build for me? . . . .

You could build the same couching floor and silicone the boards to the cement backer board and use it inside, just be careful not to spill/spray any water outside of it. The best temp for germination is appx. 55F, there is no way I would try germinating above 80F, if it does grow it will bolt and there's no way you could keep up with it. I've done all my malting in the spring when the ambient temps are below 60F.

Anything will mold with the right temp/moisture, if you're going to do this at room temperature you should add a little bleach to all your water, maybe 1/4 teaspoon to 5 gallons, some use iodophor or hydrogen peroxide, but I haven't tried them.
 
. . . . . . it seems that every resource I have is different from one another. So I'm not sure what to go with. If you don't want to share it, do you have anything on melanoidin malt, biscuit malt, vienna malt, honey malt, caramunich & caravienne, special b, and carafa I, II, and/or III? Thanks

This is my finding as well, mostly the reason for this is that their processes are proprietary and they want to keep their secrets secret. I've not tried to copy any specific "highly kilned" malt, however there are sources for most of the process for these malts, I've taken the liberty to add some of the text from here: http://brewery.org/brewery/library/Malt.html below.

Other helpful links that used to be in my sig are:
http://www.mosquitobytes.com/Den/Beer/Hmbrewing/Malt.html See the kilning section.
http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/bmg/pauls.html Different companies different processes.

This dood built a countertop malting floor, it looks pretty involved but may help you:
http://www.nogy.net/malthouse/

And my process for making some of these malts: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/happiness-home-malting-107409/index12.html post #113.

From brewery.org library link above: . . . . .When the malt is fully modified, you need to "kiln" it. This is a 2-step process: drying and curing. In the first step, you are drying the malt at a low heat over a long period of time to drive off the moisture. This is typically done at 90 to 100 degrees F with constant air movement, and takes about 2 days. The grain is done drying when the moisture content drops into the 4 to 5% range.

In the curing stage of kilning, the temperature is raised to 172 to 220 degrees F for another day and half to 2 days (in the 1880s, the preferred temperature was 172, in the 20th century, the practice changed to use 180-220 F).

If you are producing lighter colored pale ale malts, your malt is now ready. However, if you want darker colored malts, you would increase the temperature during the curing stage to produce what are called "high kilned malts".

Some malt varieties would require some changes in the schedule. For a black patent malt, you would roast the malt in a revolving drum at over 400 degrees for one to two hours. For an amber malt, you would increase the temperature during the last 14 hours of drying time to about 140-150 degrees. To make a crystal malt, you would take the germinated barley and heat it to 150-170 degrees for 2 hours with no ventilation, and then increase the temperature to about 250 degrees F.
 
Hey SouthPaw!

I'm in the middle of malting both barley and wheat...can you share how you made carawheat? Have you tried a crystal wheat?

Grow my own hops, malting my own wheat, and if I'm feeling really gutsy, I might try culture my own yeast strain soon...grew some of the wheat in my backyard!

Any info is greatly appreciated!

-Boreal
 
I put the green malt in foil pouches and stew @ 60C for 1-2 hours with stirring and spraying every half hour or so. (Be sure to have it sealed up good) Any longer and I start to get lacto working. I had a batch of a crystal malt that I stewed 3 1/2 to 4 hours and when I pulled it out, it had an acidulated aroma to it. I didn't have it in near long enough to get acidulated malt so it didn't have that character but it definitely had the aroma! Anywho, I take it out of the pouches and dry it for about 8 hours @ 60C then I bump up the temp to 70C to finish it off for a light carawheat malt. I stew all my crystal malts from 60C to 75C depending on Lovibond and dry from 120C to 170C also depending on Lovibond. The carawheat (or a wheat version of caraPils, dextrine malt) I dry alot lower, like I would base malts. For the darkest caramalts like a Special B or Carafa malts, I use a coffee roaster. Lighter caramalts I have an oast I dry them in and for the mid caramalts I use the oven. So far these methods have been good to me.

That's awesome with the hops, I do the same thing here. I have 4 varieties of hops and plan on this next year to at least double my varieties and expand what I have growing now. I'd like to have about 1500 sq ft hopyard by 2014 with 10-15 varieties. That should cover my brewing throughout the year, lol!

I haven't gotten into yeast as much. I have done alot of washing and reusing with success. At the moment, I have been getting the expired White Labs vials from my LHBS for free and build them up on a 1000ml stirplate. I separate them out in a few containers and when I'm ready to brew, pull one out and build it up again the night before. I've been doing it with alot of success, especially nice getting the free yeast! I've only had one vial not build, must have been something to do with a 6 month old expiration date, lol. Wasn't worried about it though, it was free and I have one more label toward getting my Classic Beer Styles books :)

If you have anymore questions, please let me know. At least you can try my malting methods, if you don't like them, you can always tweek it to your liking. Email me (southpawbrasserie@yahoo) and I'll send you my Word document "Malting Regime" which contains all of the different malt varieties and processes. I conducted a pretty extensive search through the interweb and consolidated what I found. I know its hard to find the processes, since you have those "proprietary processes" people like COLObrewer mentioned.

Prost! to seeking a way to truely homebrew, from grain to glass, every step....
 
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