# Brewing With 'green' Malt



## bigholty (21/1/09)

This is a bit of a theoretical post but I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on the subject. I have a mate who is a grain grower in the mallee, he always gives me packs of his home-made snags, chorizos, etc when we visit and I was thinking of returning the favour in a way by brewing a beer for him using primarily his own barley. Now I'm not a maltster, but I reckon I could successfully germinate four or five kilos of malting barley to get it to the 'green malt' stage. The difficult bit would be the slow warming and drying process that follows to cure and dry the malt. 

However, if you are planning to brew straight away when the malt is at the right stage of germination, is there any need to dry and cure the malt? Couldn't you just put the green malt straight into the mash tun, with enough hot water to get to your chosen mash rest temps and proceed as normal? I would like to give this a try, so go ahead and offer your thoughts/suggestions for the process and I'll see if I can get hold of some malting-grade barley. :beerbang: :beerbang:


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## FreemanDC (21/1/09)

Not sure if of any help, but www.homedistiller.org has plenty of info on malting to produce whiskey
*
From their website :*


_* * Soak grain for 24 hours, change the water, and soak for another day. Toss away any thing that float. Try to keep the water between 17-30 C; too cold and the grains won't grow.
* Spread grain out (2-5 cm deep) on a wet surface, and keep at 17-30 &degC, until it sprouts (7-10 days). Turn grain over daily & keep moist, so that all get a chance to sprout. Wait until sprouts/rootlets are 5 mm long.
* Dry the grain - either spread out real thin in front of a breeze, or oven dry SLOWLY. Don't exceed 50 C until grain is dry (couple of hours), then 55 C for an hour, then 66 C for an hour. If it gets too hot, the enzymes present will be destroyed, and not work during mashing.
* Clean and de-sprout the grains - place in a sack/bag and bang against a hard surface to knock off rootlets. Shake & toss in a sieve to allow crap to fall through holes. 

Drying the grain isn't always necessary if you're going to be using it all straight away. Ted advises ..

There is no reason that you must dry your malt before mashing. My grand father would soak bags of corn until it sprouted and then grind it up and mash with it. The reason brewers dry the malt is to remove DMS from the grains, this isn't necessary for distillation but it is always better to have a clean smelling ferment for the peace of mind that it gives.
*_
Might be of some use...

There we go * " the reason brewers dry the malt is to remove DMS from the grains "*


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## Quintrex (21/1/09)

bigh said:


> This is a bit of a theoretical post but I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on the subject. I have a mate who is a grain grower in the mallee, he always gives me packs of his home-made snags, chorizos, etc when we visit and I was thinking of returning the favour in a way by brewing a beer for him using primarily his own barley. Now I'm not a maltster, but I reckon I could successfully germinate four or five kilos of malting barley to get it to the 'green malt' stage. The difficult bit would be the slow warming and drying process that follows to cure and dry the malt.
> 
> However, if you are planning to brew straight away when the malt is at the right stage of germination, is there any need to dry and cure the malt? Couldn't you just put the green malt straight into the mash tun, with enough hot water to get to your chosen mash rest temps and proceed as normal? I would like to give this a try, so go ahead and offer your thoughts/suggestions for the process and I'll see if I can get hold of some malting-grade barley. :beerbang: :beerbang:



I think you'll find a lot of flavour development comes from the kilning process.
Probably taste quite bland i'd imagine. If you are going to the effort of sprouting the grain etc, might as well do it properly I say.

Good Luck
Q


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## Bizier (21/1/09)

I know my family (Finns) used to use the sauna to germinate and kiln grains.

Maybe you could spread them very thin on black surface in the sun somehow, and then roast slightly in batches in the oven.


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## buttersd70 (21/1/09)

Agree that kilning of sime kind would be needed for the flavour...and one of the benefits is that you can roast to your own specifications. The temperatures quoted look good, but I would go a bit further...90C for another hour, turning every 20/30 mins. This should get you somewhere in the region of standard ale base grain.

I've toasted a fair bit of JW trad ale....with that, I go 1hr at 90 (which you would skip, if you've already done the 90), then 100 and 110 for 30 mins each. I have gone further, 120C for 45 at the end...this ends up somewhere in the region of munich, as far as colour and depth of flavour is concerned. The depth of the malt flavour ends up significantly better as a result. So even just stepping to 100 would be good. The main issue is the space in the oven and the time it takes.....I can fit in just under 2 kilos at a time, at a push (but I have a hellishly small oven).
The gradual stepping up of the temperature helps to preserve the enzyme...my case swap beer had 45% of the grain bill roasted, which was half the base, (and I got it slightly hot and accidently roasted it too dark), and I had no drop in efficiency at all when compared to the same recipe but with straight JW for the base.

Hope that helps in some way. 

edit..agree with bizier, sun dried then done in batches would be good....that would also allow you to do the different batches to different roast amounts.


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## Bizier (21/1/09)

It would be killer to combine this with homegrown hops...


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## Ducatiboy stu (21/1/09)

You will need to dry it, the degree of kilning will determine what type of malt you get.

If you dont dry it, you wont be able to crush it


Very hard to crush green malt

The crush is essential to extraction


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## bradsbrew (21/1/09)

Ducatiboy stu said:


> You will need to dry it, the degree of kilning will determine what type of malt you get.
> 
> If you dont dry it, you wont be able to crush it
> 
> ...


Jeez Stu you seem to be much more intelligent and it is hard not to disagree with a word you say now that you have that new avatar  .

Cheers Brad


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## muckanic (22/1/09)

I believe green malt contains several substances apart from DMS that impact flavour. Whether these are volatile enough to scrub out in the ferment is an open question. The expression "kilning" is a bit of a misnomer, as we are hardly talking pottery, and a distinction also needs to be made between drying the malt and colouring the malt. I have heard stories of people adapting tumble driers to dry malt, using nothing more than unheated or slightly warm air. Radiant oven heat is presumably required for more precise control over colour.


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## Ducatiboy stu (22/1/09)

bradsbrew said:


> Jeez Stu you seem to be much more intelligent and it is hard not to disagree with a word you say now that you have that new avatar  .
> 
> Cheers Brad




It was Bill who forced my hand to a higher intelligents...So i went Linux... :icon_cheers:


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## Thirsty Boy (23/1/09)

I once dried a kilo of malt (making my own crystal) by putting it in a pillow case and shoving it in the tumble dryer. Did the job.

Then coloured in the oven. remember to stir frequently.


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## Darren (23/1/09)

Thirsty Boy said:


> Then coloured in the oven. remember to stir frequently.




Just remember to clean your over before you do this. I once made an oily, meaty batch of crystal in a dirty oven  

cheers

Darren


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## np1962 (27/1/09)

From e.malt.com
<H3 align=left>"Green malt </H3>Where logistics permit, and malt particularly rich in enzymatic activity is required, it may be possible to use malt direct from the germination floor without kilning. To preserve enzymic activity anaerobic conditions and/or heating must not be allowed to develop and it is not possible to hold the material in store before use. Those flavours which are developed on kilning will be absent, but some enzymes, normally denaturated and inactivated during kilning, will be present to increase the degree to which complex carbohydrates are broken down to fermentable sugars. "

Nige


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## muckanic (27/1/09)

From memory, the order of enzyme destruction in the kiln is the inverse of their preferred operating temperature. So green malt would presumably contain more phytase, glucanase, protease, etc, rather than necessarily being a super starch-converter. I would hazard a guess that dried but unkilned malt could make a reasonable beer in conjunction with specialty malts to give the colour. Most distillers wouldn't even worry about the specialty malts, as all they are chasing are volatiles for the flavour, and there is a widespread view (which I would personally question) that melanoidins aren't volatile at distillation temperatures.

PS: I thought the whole point of making crystal was to kiln it wet in order to encourage starch conversion in the oven.


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