So last weekend I started malting some barley. I had a 5 lb bag of barley that I got for planting in the garden for next year and since I only needed about a lb of that for planting I decided to play around with the rest. This is not really a malting variety but it is what was available and should work for proof of concept.
On Saturday morning I put 500 grams of barley seed in a .5 gallon mason jar with a sprout screen lid and, after rinsing a few times I filled it up with water and let it soak over night, then I drained, rinsed and let sit for about 8 hours, filled it back up and soaked it for another 6 or so hours.
Upon draining again for a final rinse and soak I noticed the grains were already beginning to chit. there were little white bumps pushing out of one end of the grain.
So instead of refilling I laid the jar on it’s side and started turning it every hour or so. The chits began to grow and branch out pretty quick and by last night they were about 1.5 - 2 times the length of the grain.
I took about 10 grains from a couple places in the mass and cut them in half and the acrospires was at least .75 times the length of the grain. everything I have read says that’s when it’s fully modified and the endosperm smooshed readily between my fingers so…
Into the dehydrator it went on the lowest setting spread between two trays. This morning it was getting nicely dried. The Chits were more or less completely dry and withered. I turned it up to 135*f let it ride a while longer. When I checked it before leaving for work it was 90% of the way there I would say. the grains were still a little soft so I left it to go a while longer.
They taste slightly sweet and… well… malty. so I’m pretty excited. It’s only one lb but I figure I can make a test of it. mash it and see what kind of yield I see.
this is also my impression. I think this first round may have gone too quickly based on my research. This is supposed to make the malt less flavourful. we will see.
The process itself is really quite easy. I can see this becoming a big part of my homebrewing jones… err… hobby.
You might want to start with a very small test just to make sure you’re going to get the germination rate you expect. Depending on variety barley needs a certain amount of time between harvest and sprouting to become fully viable. Modern malting varieties tend to take less time but they still take some. Storing very cold (stratification) for a period of time can help accelerate this process.
I was looking at the variety of barley I have. It’s Robust which is a 6 row multi purpose variety. Apparently it is in fact used for malting. One website I found had this to say about it:
so that will be interesting. I guess I wasn’t aware that the barley variety itself would have much impact on the color although thinking about it now, it makes perfect sense.
Get’s me wheels turning thinking about purple barley.
So I think I’m going to brew with this test batch this weekend. It’s only a pound of grain so I figure I can brew a .5 gallon batch around 1.045-1.050.
given the tiny volumes I’m thinking I’ll use the blender or food processor to ‘mill’ my grain in hopes of really maximizing yield.
I’ll mash at 155 BIAB style till gravity indicates that I am near 100% conversion efficiency, maybe do a iodine test but that would require buying some iodine.
boil for 90 minutes as I dried this pretty cool, never over 165 and only that high at the very end for an hour or so and I’d hate to have an otherwise successful test be full of DMS.
A small charge of magnum at 90 minutes and maybe something noble(ish) at 30 and 0.
thoughts? will this plan give a good sense of the grain? or should I skip the late hops all together and just go with a single small bittering charge, let the grain shine through.
I think your right (big surprise) on both counts. I do have some pale and a little pils, I think I’ll try the pils as, like I said, I kilned this pretty lightly.
Good point. Given the way my mill has been behaving lately thi sis just about the right amount of grist to be working through it at a go anyway :o
Very true, as you’re just encouraging a seed to do what it naturally does (germinate), but from that point on is the real test.
I did about 15 pounds of feed barley back in the early 90’s and ended up turning it into a munich/vienna malt as I couldn’t get my final kiln temps below about 220F. It did make a decent beer but what I remember most was that I’d never do it again because of all the work, haha! (especially the fact that you could buy a bag of malt for less than $20 back then)
you know, I hear the ‘lot of work’ thing from a lot of folks when they are talking about home malting and I wonder. This process, not counting the waiting part, took maybe 20-30 minutes of my time. Granted I only made 1 lb of malt but I could easily scale the process up to 5 lb at a time without too much additional time, maybe double what I spent this first time.
So overall it might add 2-3 hours to my ‘brewday’ but those extra hours would be spread over the couple of weeks between brew days. It’s possible I’m talking out my bottom and we will see as this experiment continues.
Price wise, I’m paying 50-60 bucks for a sack of organic domestic malt. If I want continental or british malts, we’re talking 70-100 bucks. So the economics might have changed. That being said, it’s not really about being economic is it? I make a decent living and my time is way more valuable than the value of the beer I produce (theoretically my beer is priceless but in the hard cold light…)
If the additional work or the cost were the issue, I could go to Costco and buy a case of Celebration for about a buck a bottle, but I like homebrewing.
I have been growing hops for about 5 years and grew barley for the first time this year. My winter barley experiment is in.
I will probably malt my first batch after Christmas. (either Santa will bring me a dehydrator, or I’ll pick one up on after Christmas sales) I’ll probably be working in the 1# range too.
from everything I’ve read, that dehydrator is going to be key. You can dry at an extremely low temp and a good one will allow you to cure at ~165 or above which is great.
I think knowing how to malt is a great skill. Probably not efficient but neither is building tiny ships in bottles. But when the ZA comes, people who can malt their own will be kings.