I almost started brewing about 25 years ago and just recently started again with extract brewing. Came out very well at least I think so. My question is when I quit about 25 years ago I stored all of my equipment, but also stored in a dry area about 40 pounds of 2 row grain.
Is this still usable or should I just use it for bird seed.
I would brew it up, I would do something like a braggot, saison, sour. Something with strong flavors outside of the malt. maybe just do a small test batch to try it out.
Welcome back. This makes me chuckle a bit, because there’s been several threads about people asking if grain is good after a year or so. If it was 5 years old, I’d say go with it. 25 years old, yeah, feed it to the winter starving animals. Aside from the question of it being stale or not, grain has come a long way as far as quality goes since the 80s.
Dumping is the safe move. But who else has brewed a beer with ingredients that old? It might be awesome and before you know it homebrewers will be paying top dollar for aged malt.
How does it taste? First I would chew on some kernels. If things are still promising, I would mix 1 pint of water with 2/3 of pound and heat to 155 F. After 20+ minutes taste the wort. If still good, I would consider using it in a beer with strong flavors like stout. It might be interesting in a beer that is supposed to be aged like a barleywine or an old ale.