# Temperature and Time Chart For Roasting Grain



## MichaelC (16/11/16)

Hi guys
My generous farming neighbour has given me a 20 kilo bag of top quality 2 row barley. It's not horse feed. He sells this stuff to the guys who make Peroni.
There are plenty of youtube vids to demonstrate how to malt this. So I'm ok for this.
I'm struggling to find a temperature and time sheet that defines the roasted grains from pale, light munich, pilsener ect ,through to the darker ones.
Can anyone send a link with this info?
Thanks


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## MHB (16/11/16)

Its a lot more complicated than you appear to think, low protein malt is used to make pale base malt, Pilsner generally being the palest, then dried/kilned a bit hotter and longer for pale Ale malt.
Vienna, Light and Dark Munich are actually treated differently during the sprouting (sprouted hotter) so they develop different flavours, then kilned differently.
Crystal malts are made from higher protein base malt, at the end of sprouting they are heated to somewhere around 65oC so the mashing actually happens inside the individual grains, then kilned to higher temperatures.
Toasted malts are generally higher protein grain, malted then kilned progressively hotter and longer until you get to burnt malt - something like Amber, Brown, Black Patent.

I doubt that any such temperature/time chart exists in the way you are asking. Malting is simply way more complicated than you realise.
If you want to make malt, try to get good at making pale malt, it will probably make up over 90% of the malt you use and just buy your specialty malts.
Maybe after you are really good at making base malt it would be worth taking some time to study up on specialty malts and revisit making specialty.
Mark


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## MichaelC (16/11/16)

MHB said:


> Its a lot more complicated than you appear to think, low protein malt is used to make pale base malt, Pilsner generally being the palest, then dried/kilned a bit hotter and longer for pale Ale malt.
> Vienna, Light and Dark Munich are actually treated differently during the sprouting (sprouted hotter) so they develop different flavours, then kilned differently.
> Crystal malts are made from higher protein base malt, at the end of sprouting they are heated to somewhere around 65oC so the mashing actually happens inside the individual grains, then kilned to higher temperatures.
> Toasted malts are generally higher protein grain, malted then kilned progressively hotter and longer until you get to burnt malt - something like Amber, Brown, Black Patent.
> ...


Thanks for your reply Mark
This looks way more technical than I anticipated.
I have looked into it and so far I'm pretty sure i have the right temperature and time to make a pale malt.
Months back, i did come across this chart on the net. It gave the roasting details for the many of the most popular grains. Spent hours trying to find it yesterday and today, but it's still hiding from me. I have found the details for about 3 types of grain, but that's about it. I'll keep looking


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## damoninja (16/11/16)

Roasted barley is from raw barley  should be simple enough?


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## MichaelC (16/11/16)

damoninja said:


> Roasted barley is from raw barley  should be simple enough?


Yes, you simply malt the raw barley and roast it, unless it is a specialty grain like crystal malt. This is put in hot water then dried


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## damoninja (16/11/16)

MichaelC said:


> Yes, you simply malt the raw barley and roast it, unless it is a specialty grain like crystal malt. This is put in hot water then dried


Roasted barley isn't malted though, that's my point. It's unlike patent black because of this.


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## MHB (16/11/16)

It is also quite common for it to catch on fire, that was one of the "Patent" features of Black Patent, not the malt but a way to make black malt and roast barley that was evenly treated and didn't burn the malt house down.
Mark


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## Lyrebird_Cycles (16/11/16)

I used to run an experimental mini maltings that did 6 x 100 g batches in parallel: we used it to evaluate trial cultivars out of the barley breeding program and for internal research purposes. It was a fairly simple system and the malt produced was OK, no reason you couldn't do it at home.

The trials were run in mesh baskets which rotated continuously in a temperature controlled bath, steeping / germination was controlled by filling and emptying the bath as required. The drying / kilning stage was done by blowing warm air through the (empty) bath.

Because we were interested in the differences between the base barleys we left the steeping and kilning parameters constant: IIRC steeping and germinating was done at 20oC. There was a temperature probe on the hot air inlet and one on the moist air outlet, the PLC looked at the delta T and ramped the heat accordingly: IIRC air inlet temp was kept around 50oC until the delta T started to drop (indicating the green malt had little moisture) then ramped slowly to 100 or thereabouts.

This produced malts with colours from 3 to 20 EBC depending on the degree of water absorbtion and modification of the individual variety.

To increase colour: increase the steeping temperature to increase the degree of modification, (Kunze suggests 22 to 25 degrees) decrease the air volume and increase the air inlet temperature after breakthough to around 110.

To increase crystallisation, decrease air speed (or recirculate some of the warm moist air) and ramp the heat before breakthough occurs so that the malt stews a bit and forms toffee.

More specialised malts are produced using a toaster rather than a kiln, we didn't have one of those but your local coffee roaster does.

BTW if the barley is ex farm in bags, it isn't likely to be destined for a maltings, they take in barley in truckloads.


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## spog (16/11/16)

MichaelC said:


> Hi guys
> My generous farming neighbour has given me a 20 kilo bag of top quality 2 row barley. It's not horse feed. He sells this stuff to the guys who make Peroni.
> There are plenty of youtube vids to demonstrate how to malt this. So I'm ok for this.
> I'm struggling to find a temperature and time sheet that defines the roasted grains from pale, light munich, pilsener ect ,through to the darker ones.
> ...


Barley is Barley until it is malted for brewing purposes .
I understand you want to make your own malts by home roasting ?
Checkout Barleypopmaker.com for home roasting base grains to make your own .
I do it, a bag of base grain,follow his recommendations and your good to go.
While it's not an exact copy its really interesting and above and beyond all saves a shit load of money.....exactly why a HB'er home brews.


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## MHB (16/11/16)

Malting grade barley is quite different in protein content and a few other parameters than feed grade barley. If you think every maltster in the world is too stupid to know the difference and to pay a lot extra for malting grade - well I doubt there is much hope for us understanding each other.

I can understand making malt once or twice just to learn about the process, but as to it being a major saving, nah there are plenty of better ways to save money.
A bag of base malt can be had easily enough for $65 or less. working on the old 1kg of malt makes 5L of beer rule of thumb, that works out to around 125L from a bag of malt or 52 cents a litre. Hardly the end of the world on a cost basis.

Personally think I would rather use consistent high quality ingredients, as a rule the yield and the beer will be better and I can make a recipe over and over until I get it exactly the way I want it.

No matter how little your cost of making malt it isn't free, around Newcastle I can get feed barley for about $13/bag, by the time you add in the cost of the water/gas/electricity you use, I suspect it is going to be costing you at least $20/bag. At best you are saving around 32cents/litre - if you place zero value on your time.
If saving about $7.50/batch (23L) is that important, well go for it. For mine I'm happy to spend the tiny bit extra to make consistently better beer.
Mark


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## Lyrebird_Cycles (16/11/16)

spog said:


> Barley is Barley until it is malted for brewing purposes .


Trust me, barley ain't barley. You can put a feed grade barley through a malting cycle, sure, and what you get out looks like malt and even almost tastes like malt but it really doesn't work like malt.


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## Zorco (16/11/16)

What's that smell....? Hmm hopefully it passed.

So, why not give it a try anyway. My SHG looks like it won't work but I'm learning a shit tonne because I'm giving it a go.

What's this option spog? Links, vids, pics? 

A good friend of mine started roasting coffee 5 years ago (around when I started brewing) and his first many many batches were ordinary. They're bloody magic now.

Listen to and then Forget the nay sayers.

If you get off the ground with this and make progress then every one will try and help you out mate.

I've dreamed of making beer grain to glass.


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## Rocker1986 (16/11/16)

I've checked out that barleypopmaker thing before, there is a section on making crystal malts where he basically soaks the grain in water for hours, then dries it in the oven at low temp before increasing the temp to darken it to the desired level, or something like that anyway. Would that yield the same result as the commercially made crystal malts? I did try it once and the grain sure tasted similar to the bought stuff.


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## MichaelC (16/11/16)

Lyrebird_Cycles said:


> I used to run an experimental mini maltings that did 6 x 100 g batches in parallel: we used it to evaluate trial cultivars out of the barley breeding program and for internal research purposes. It was a fairly simple system and the malt produced was OK, no reason you couldn't do it at home.
> 
> The trials were run in mesh baskets which rotated continuously in a temperature controlled bath, steeping / germination was controlled by filling and emptying the bath as required. The drying / kilning stage was done by blowing warm air through the (empty) bath.
> 
> ...


You sure know alot about barley. Very technical stuff
FVI the barley is destined for malting. My mate simply poured a bag for me out of his 30 tonne silo.He harvests around 200 tonne per year.


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## MichaelC (16/11/16)

spog said:


> Barley is Barley until it is malted for brewing purposes .
> I understand you want to make your own malts by home roasting ?
> Checkout Barleypopmaker.com for home roasting base grains to make your own .
> I do it, a bag of base grain,follow his recommendations and your good to go.
> While it's not an exact copy its really interesting and above and beyond all saves a shit load of money.....exactly why a HB'er home brews.


Hi Spog. The amount a farmer is paid for barley destined for malting and horse feed barley is hugely different. A barley farmer aims to grow barley for malting and brewing,but in a bad season with wrong conditions, the barley is down graded and is used for animal feed. Graded barley for malting will malt at a much greater percentage than horse feed barley. This is why the breweries pay so much more for it.
Thanks for the site you sent. Sounds great. Problem is I can't get on as the server is down.
Cheers


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## MichaelC (16/11/16)

Lyrebird_Cycles said:


> Trust me, barley ain't barley. You can put a feed grade barley through a malting cycle, sure, and what you get out looks like malt and even almost tastes like malt but it really doesn't work like malt.


Don't quote me on the numbers, but from what I've come across, Graded barley for malting will malt at about 95% and feedgrade barley will malt at a rate of around 70%. Saw it on youtube today, but not sure how reliable these numbers are.


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## MichaelC (16/11/16)

Rocker1986 said:


> I've checked out that barleypopmaker thing before, there is a section on making crystal malts where he basically soaks the grain in water for hours, then dries it in the oven at low temp before increasing the temp to darken it to the desired level, or something like that anyway. Would that yield the same result as the commercially made crystal malts? I did try it once and the grain sure tasted similar to the bought stuff.


I've seen a few guys do this and the results look pretty good. I'm gonna give it a go. looks easy enough.


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## MichaelC (16/11/16)

MHB said:


> Malting grade barley is quite different in protein content and a few other parameters than feed grade barley. If you think every maltster in the world is too stupid to know the difference and to pay a lot extra for malting grade - well I doubt there is much hope for us understanding each other.
> 
> I can understand making malt once or twice just to learn about the process, but as to it being a major saving, nah there are plenty of better ways to save money.
> A bag of base malt can be had easily enough for $65 or less. working on the old 1kg of malt makes 5L of beer rule of thumb, that works out to around 125L from a bag of malt or 52 cents a litre. Hardly the end of the world on a cost basis.
> ...


It's not the money factor. Making better beer than you can buy, and saving money is simply a win win situation in my books.
I would think most brewers get a great kick out of making a great end product and making my own malts is just taking things to the next level.
If I succeed, growing my own hops and culturing yeast are the next challenges on the list.


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## MichaelC (16/11/16)

Zorco said:


> What's that smell....? Hmm hopefully it passed.
> 
> So, why not give it a try anyway. My SHG looks like it won't work but I'm learning a shit tonne because I'm giving it a go.
> 
> ...


Couldn't agree more. The best thing I ever did was make the move from "kits and bits" to All Grain brewing. Huge jump up in the quality of the beer. and AG is really not that difficult, just need the time.


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## MichaelC (16/11/16)

damoninja said:


> Roasted barley isn't malted though, that's my point. It's unlike patent black because of this.


Stupid question! Doesn't the barley have to be malted to make make beer out of it? And what is patent black?


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## Rocker1986 (17/11/16)

It has to be malted to be able to be mashed and convert the starches in the grains into fermentable sugars, yes. The bulk of these in any recipe comes from the base malt. Roasted barley is unmalted barley, if you've ever brewed a stout with a large amount of it in the grist then you'll see the flavour it brings. Black patent is malted barley that has been roasted very dark. I normally use it in small amounts for colour adjustment but it does get to be front and centre in my porter. I don't know what it is but I suspect it's the black patent and crystal in combination that give it a smooth chocolatey flavour.


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## damoninja (17/11/16)

Rocker1986 said:


> Black patent is malted barley that has been roasted very dark.


Then you have special versions of them like carafa special III which is also dehusked. 

I think I'll stick to buying my grain


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## MHB (17/11/16)

Roast Barley and Black Patent are about the same colour (Good read in BYO), they are both roasted until they are partly charcoal. The roasting process is very similar, one is made from raw barley, the other from malt. The term patent applies to a type of drum roaster developed to stop the grain catching on fire and to roast it evenly (which was a big problem with earlier flat bed roasters, in 1817 Daniel Wheeler was granted a patient on his new drum roaster, giving us the term Patent Malt.
The same type of drum roaster is now used for making most darker grains, mainly because they give a very even result.

Zorco, I bet one of the things your coffee roasting friend isn't doing is try to make really good coffee out of Vietnamese Robusta, you cant. Which is my point.
To make good coffee you need good beans - same with barley and malt in brewing.
I said in my first post that I understand the interest in making malt, I have been in several maltings, and even more coffee roasters, have had a long hard look at one here in Newcastle that uses a fluidised air bed (Sprocket). Baking, coffee roasting, brewing, malting... are all both arts and sciences and fascinating processes.

I doubt any home maltster will get the consistency nor be able to make the range that a specialist commercial maltster can achieve, without making a huge investment in equipment, knowledge and time. Nor will you save a bomb if that is your motivation. If you are doing it out of interest, big ups, it's great to learn.
Mark


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## TheWiggman (17/11/16)

I think spog's statement was misunderstood. "Barley is barley" as opposed to "barley is malt". Barley or malt can be kilned, but - excluding some specialty grain - to make beer you need to malt the barley first.
After pale or pilsner _malt_? Something you want to mash to make beer? You need to malt the [malting grade] barley, then kiln.
There are few exceptions like roasted barley, which is as the name implies. This isn't malted and is great in stouts.

Malting, while seemingly straightforward, isn't straightforward. There are some good threads on it and plenty of online resources. The kilning part is easy if you have the right equipment. A member here Not For Horses has become a professional maltster, and he stated that he's had good results using his kitchen oven on low temps.


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## Lyrebird_Cycles (17/11/16)

TheWiggman said:


> I think spog's statement was misunderstood. "Barley is barley" as opposed to "barley is malt".


OK, I interpreted it to mean "all barleys are basically the same", hence my reply.

On slight side note: one of the differences between malting and feed barley is that malting barley is aged (overwintered) to relieve dormancy* so it steeps properly. One of the primary tests in a maltings is germination capacity on projected intakes to ensure this has happened.



*Gibberellic acid can be used to overcome this requirement.


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## sp0rk (17/11/16)

MichaelC said:


> It's not the money factor. Making better beer than you can buy, and saving money is simply a win win situation in my books.
> I would think most brewers get a great kick out of making a great end product and making my own malts is just taking things to the next level.
> If I succeed, growing my own hops and culturing yeast are the next challenges on the list.


Where abouts in NSW are you mate?
I'm told there's a barley farmer somewhere between Scone and Tamworth that is starting to malt his own grain.
Might be a good source to glean some info/experience from


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## n87 (17/11/16)

Lyrebird_Cycles said:


> OK, I interpreted it to mean "all barleys are basically the same", hence my reply.



I read it as a sort of attempt to personify the plight of a grain of barley, in that it it represents the need to sort humanity into categories. People are people.
Either that or it is a discussion on the monetary value of aquatic life forms in a large Asian country... Haven't quite decided yet.


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## MHB (17/11/16)

Funny enough I took it to mean all barley is the same so the cheapest crap you can get your hands on must be the best choice.
I figure if that isn't what spog meant, he can pipe up and say so.
Mark


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## Zorco (17/11/16)




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## Lyrebird_Cycles (17/11/16)

MHB said:


> Roast Barley and Black Patent are about the same colour (Good read in BYO), they are both roasted until they are partly charcoal.


I vaguely remember a lecture given by one of the materials suppliers BITD, he had a chart of time vs colour for different temperatures: the lines looked like power law curves until they suddenly didn't and crashed into the negatives. Explanation was that if you went too hard you made activated charcoal which then adsorbed colour.


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## MichaelC (17/11/16)

sp0rk said:


> Where abouts in NSW are you mate?
> I'm told there's a barley farmer somewhere between Scone and Tamworth that is starting to malt his own grain.
> Might be a good source to glean some info/experience from


Live on the central coast, but my farm is near Dubbo. Not sure if it's the same guy, but there was a barley farmer on foxtel show "River cottage Australia". He explained how to malt the barley and make beer. He sells his beer on tap at the local pub and all profits from the beer are donated directly back into the small country town. What a legend. We should vote this guy to be the next Prime Minister!!!


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## MichaelC (17/11/16)

Lyrebird_Cycles said:


> I vaguely remember a lecture given by one of the materials suppliers BITD, he had a chart of time vs colour for different temperatures: the lines looked like power law curves until they suddenly didn't and crashed into the negatives. Explanation was that if you went too hard you made activated charcoal which then adsorbed colour.


This is close to what I'm after and have found a few, but I'm really l need a chart that defines heat and time for the malted grains finishing up as pilsener, Munich, pale ale etc so I can replicate most recipies.


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## spog (17/11/16)

TheWiggman said:


> I think spog's statement was misunderstood. "Barley is barley" as opposed to "barley is malt". Barley or malt can be kilned, but - excluding some specialty grain - to make beer you need to malt the barley first.
> After pale or pilsner _malt_? Something you want to mash to make beer? You need to malt the [malting grade] barley, then kiln.
> There are few exceptions like roasted barley, which is as the name implies. This isn't malted and is great in stouts.
> 
> Malting, while seemingly straightforward, isn't straightforward. There are some good threads on it and plenty of online resources. The kilning part is easy if you have the right equipment. A member here Not For Horses has become a professional maltster, and he stated that he's had good results using his kitchen oven on low temps.


Yeah ''twas what I was getting at,until it's malted " barley is barley".
To clarify yeah malting and feed barley do differ.


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## spog (17/11/16)

MHB said:


> Funny enough I took it to mean all barley is the same so the cheapest crap you can get your hands on must be the best choice.
> I figure if that isn't what spog meant, he can pipe up and say so.
> Mark


G,day MHB.
My post was in regard to home roasting from a base malt ,be it the cheapest you can afford or digging deep and going top shelf .
Home brewing covers a shit load of ideas/ suggestions ,that's why we do it.
I use JW ale malt and piss around with home roasting to simply save money. ( location $ etc).
Cheers....spog.


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## malt junkie (20/11/16)

I got interested in this a while back a did a good bit of reading then got side tracked with other projects. I believe this Link should have times and temps your mostly looking for. The is also this home malting thread that has lots of great tips and tricks. Best of luck with it and post some results of the resulting brews.


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