Howdy from Yarmouth

[BrewRide]

Hey I am Chris, I'm 38, I have been brewing for almost a year now, just moved to all grain this last month, in a week or so I will be making my first batch from barley that I malted at home. I make mostly easy drinking lawnmower beers, I am into making cheap good tasting beer with minimal equipment. I BIAB, in a 32qt stainless steel pot that cost me $50 brand new (thank you Everwood Ave brewing shop). Each 23 liter batch costs me about $11 with store bought grain and $3 with my own malted grain. My town doesn't have a brew store that sells grains or hops, so I improvise whenever possible. I keg my kit and kilo (Morgan's Canadian light), and bottle my all-grain. I also ride and repair motorcycles.

[LeafMan66_67]

[RubberToe]

Welcome!

How do you malt your own and how much do you do at a time?

[GuingesRock]

Hi, That all sounds very interesting, and imaginative.

I'd be interested to hear more some time.

[mr x]

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

[redoubt]

[Keith]

Welcome!
There are so many users on here with the ability to smoke stuff. Has anyone ever attempted to smoke their grains before brewing? I wonder how that would turn out?

[BrewRide]

Howdy everyone, thanks for the welcomes and the responses.

First off on the malting your own, its a complete pain in the "well you know" area. I often am reminded that it is way easier and probably more cost effective to go with store bought grains. Secondly, I am sure the beer will be stronger, and probably taste better. I am doing it for more of an off-grid, simple roots, educational, intellectual exercise type of thing. I had an early success with my all grain, and loved the process, so I moved to making it even more difficult. I am not an expert by no means but I have had luck in some areas and have documented them.

I go to a local feed store, and buy whole barley, or raw barley, I measure out the grains, I did 8 pounds at once, and it turned out to be almost too much grains to handle as it took up much of a kitchen table to hold them, as they malted.

Place the grains in a large bucket large enough to cover the grains with water, keep in mind that the grain will expand. I used a 10 liter ice cream buckets. Then you clean the grain by filling the bucket with water and any grain or husk material that floats to the top is no good, and should be discarded. Rinse them well several times until the water runs clear of debris.

Then fill the bucket until you have at least two inches of water above the level of the grains. Soak for 6-8 then drain, and let rest out of water for 6-8 hours. Repeat this Soak/rest process until you see a white tip appear on 75-90% of the grains.

Put grains into pans ( I used 8 tin foil lasagna pans from the dollar store) until they are 2-3 inches deep and cover with plastic wrap or garbage bags to seal in the remaining moisture.

They will germinate over the next 2-5 days, requiring frequent stirring and re-wetting with a squirt bottle.

On the 2nd day cut open the grain lengthwise to show the inner plant called the endospire. When this has reached a length of more than 75% of the overall length of the grain, they are done and ready to be dried. I used a ceramic heater (fan, and heat is needed) and pointed it into the stove. I placed the grain on 6 pans, I turned the heater on to a low setting. Optimum temperature is 100-125 degrees Fahrenheit, it will take about 24 hours, for base 2-row malt.

Now this is the part that really sucks, and I can't understate this enough... suuuuuuucccckkkks...you use a screen like a large metal sieve to take off the rootlets, which takes forever and will make you wish you had never tried malting your own barley. After which you can toast them for different specialty grains (crystal is made from un-dried green barley). Last step you let grain sit in a paper bag for at least 2 weeks.

So the math, I pay $18 for 88 pounds of feed. I figured for the 8 pounds I paid $1.70 for the grain, and $5.50 to run the 1500 watt ceramic heater for 24 hours (other drying methods would be cheaper, but it did cost me). I paid a total of $7.20, even at store prices 8 pounds of malted barley only costs $10.40 and you don't have to spend three weeks making grain into beer..

Thanks for the questions, feel free to ask anything.

Chris

[LiverDance]

very cool to see your setup for malting.

[Keith]

The wife would shut my operation down if I started this haha. I could just imagine my 1 year old climbing into the stove and pulling those out lol.

[BrewRide]

that would be bad, but there are other options for drying such as an oast ?? I think I spelled that right, that you could keep out of the way. In all honesty if you brew in any quantity or a big beer malting your own is super impractical. Now if you want to do up your own specialty grains.. this setup would work well.

[akr71]

[GuingesRock]

Thanks a lot for going over the home malting process.

[BrewRide]

Thanks a lot for going over the home malting process.

no problem, the strange part is I copy and pasted out of my "brewers journal" which are more are less notes to future me that wont remember how I made that good beer..lol

[GuingesRock]

I think it might be really satisfying to know you have the skills to take barley out of the field, hops from the garden, and turn them into beer. I think that trumps it all…maybe.

[chalmers]

Welcome aboard, and thanks for the malting primer. Maltster on here also malts his own (could guess from his nickname), and uses a box attached to his furnace to dry the grain. I could have sworn there were pics of his setup on here, but I can't find them now.

[BrewRide]

I think it might be really satisfying to know you have the skills to take barley out of the field, hops from the garden, and turn them into beer. I think that trumps it all…maybe.

You're right. I like the idea of basically being able to produce a beer from the field to the table. I like learning skills that are "old school". Now I just need to buy some rhizomes, and get those going..haha

[BrewRide]

Welcome aboard, and thanks for the malting primer. Maltster on here also malts his own (could guess from his nickname), and uses a box attached to his furnace to dry the grain. I could have sworn there were pics of his setup on here, but I can't find them now.

Howdy. A furnace would produce consistent temps, that's a cool idea, thanks for sharing the info.

[BrewRide]

Howdy I made a video on how I make beer from horse feed, I hope someone finds it helpful, or at least entertaining.

The Cheapest Beer You'll Ever Like..lol

Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFJPHvH4eZo

Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOMXLkPHBDs

Part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtDVDt3dOaA

[GAM]

Vids like this are great to show my wife that I'm not that crazy about making beer.


Sandy

[redoubt]

Thanks for the cool video. It looks like a pain in the ass, but I'd definitely try it at least once just to see how it goes.


-Keely

[chalmers]

I'm only one minute in, and already love your attitude. Awesome!

[GuingesRock]

Just finished watching it. Great!

[chalmers]

As I was watching your BIAB video, I was wondering about kilning your own malt. Have you tried that? I know you need to get it very, very dry before putting any heat to it, was curious if you'd tried that.

Your technique for the boil is intriguing, as I'm usually shooting for a specific gravity on things, whereas you are shooting for a specific taste from the hops. Will give me something to think about the next time I brew! What I'll do is set my timer for 60min (or however long I've calculated the boil to be), and then if I know I don't want a lot of bitterness, I'll hold off on adding the hops until later in the boil.

Thanks again for posting the videos, looking forward to watching number 3!

[Tony L]