I know I’ve had some weird topics lately but here’s one more.
A buddy gave me a bucket of grain that he had no idea what it was, might be 2 row, might be Carapils. A pro brewer friend of mine couldn’t help so I declined to brew with it and forgot about it for 3 or 4 years. recently I found it and mixed it with bird seed, but the birds don’t really like it either. I feed the birds in some old flower pots mounted on a tree stump, and last week I re-filled the pots with soil and planted bulbs. Today I look out and all the bulbs have been pushed out of the soil and and there are green sprouts growing. I dug some up and its the alleged malted barley germinated and growing in thick mats in my flower pots.
So how could malted barley sprout again? This is really gonna be messy because I’ve tossed that grain all over my back yard with the bird seed.
I don’t know this for sure but i am 90% percent confident that the barley was not malted.
Agreed. Malted barley is kilned to stop the germination process. Looks like you might be growing your own barley in the back yard. ;D
likely it was unmalted but i am not so sure. the kilning process may only arrest the germination and not destroy it. i have a bag of two row i will throw some in one of my garden plots and see what happens.
The birds will probably take care of it. And you need water or rain to get it really going. Still pretty dry up there in NM? Sprouts up? Just mow over the barley.
Malted barley should not sprout a second time. Part of the malting process is to soak the grain, let it germinate and then kiln it to stop the growth. Seeds don’t get a second chance once they start it’s all or nothing. I’m pretty sure you were given a bucket of raw grain.
Paul
I get what you are saying, but fully modified grains are not fully sprouted - the acrospire shouldn’t have penetrated the hull by the time it is kilned. Even without the rootlets, it might be able to start growing again. I think a test is reasonable. It might be unmalted, but maybe some malted barley would still sprout.
I think it’s likely you’re right, but I haven’t tried it and I’m not a plant expert.
IF it works I think it is more likely to work with pils than pale or ‘regular’ two row as pils is kilned at the lowest temp
I can’t imagine this guy having any reason to have a bag of unmalted barley or to have forgotten that he had it so I’m 99% sure it’s malted. I tasted it long ago, as did my brewer friend but we couldn’t decide whether it was 2 row pale or a very light crystal malt.
The birds won’t eat this stuff, they kick it out of the bird feeders and onto the ground so if it ever rains again(doubtful) I could have it coming up all over my yard.
As a test I planted a row of Weyermann pilsner malt in my garden today, I’ll know in a week or so.
Take a few grains of malted barley and put it between 2 pieces of wet paper towel. Place that in a plastic zip bag and wait a couple of days. You’ll quickly be able to see if it’s sprouting or not.
This is an old seed viability test.
I have grown Maris Otter in this manner. Believe it or not, I first thought to try it after I noticed a number of young, barley-like plants sprouting out of the spent grain pile in my yard. Yes, this is malt that went through the mash, and yes, it turned out to be barley.
I have had the argument on whether it was or wasn’t in the past, and I’m not looking to have it again. Just reporting my observations. Not all the seed gets killed, and apparently, some are just damn near impossible to kill. Is it highly successful? Well, no. Out of maybe 60 lbs of spent grain, a few seeds sprouted. Out of maybe a pound of malt, a few seeds might sprout.
But barley, like Van Damme, appears to be hard to kill. YMMV and all that.
Fixed that, for you.
Updating an old thread.
Barley from a sack of Weyermann’s Pilsner malt did indeed sprout, but probably not 5% of the kernels I planted. Actually “planting” is pretty liberal use of the word, I basically threw some malt on the ground, kicked some dirt over it and proceeded to ignore it for a couple of months. This weekend I noticed a small stand of barlley growing in my onion patch.
So now I wonder if those grains were never really malted in the first place, or if I just had only a few sprout for other reasons. If those grains were never malted I’m curious about what percentage of all the “malted” barley we use never really was malted… Do the malting companies ever test their product for this?
So are they “cutting” their malt with unmalted knowing that it will convert anyway? At first thought that is what it sounds like.
I hope you were wearing your foil hat when you posted that! 
If you’ll put your’s on I’ll wear mine.
How do you know I’m not wearing it right now? ;D
Good question. Mine interferes with my internet. Just assuming yours does too. ;D