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Yes please!

Yeah I got some off Yob that one time. Mine didn't turn out brilliantly, I found it a delicate flavour so maybe it's good with other floral element (eg, the trad gruit combo of yarrow, bog myrtle, and marsh rosemary).

I don't know who sells heather, sorry, and it's probably not a plant that is well accustomed to the Australian climate. I'd try looking for it on Tealyra or overseas brewing supply stores.

It seems a version of the same recipe that Stephen Harrod-Buhner gives for gruit in his book. I still think the amount of herbs in that recipe seem underdone, as many herb qualities fade, as I've noticed in my gruit, and after two/three months in an oak barrel I'm not sure if much will remain...

I have often wondered whether the word 'mash' was applied to the brewing process because ye olde cottage brewers simply soaked and drained barley grains for a time until they sprouted and the grains were soft and mashable. That is, the grains could be squashed with something like an over-sized...

I was recently reading the 18th/19th century writer William Cobbett's "Cottage Economy" where he talks about brewing; in one passage - which I can't find at the moment but is buried in there somewhere - he compares brewing with malt to brewing with barley. In other words, he thinks both are...

I hoist my bag above the pot, place a wire rack on top of the pot and the cylindrical mesh part from a cider press above the wire rack. Plonk the bag in the cylinder, and I just let the wort drain out into the pot. It will drain by itself but I usually plonk a brick on top of the bag to...

No I'm suggesting more that the enzymes lost in a traditional rudimentary malting process may be substituted by enzymes from other plants or food stuffs - even unmalted barley or wheat, though I'm thinking more along the lines of stuff like honey (it has both amylase and invertase) or even...

The discussion around the viabiilty of enzyme retention in a home malting process is quite interesting. This seems to indicate to me that traditionally malting may have often happened in a way where often brewing enzymes were not retained, or were very sub-optimal. Does this mean that perhaps in...

Fair enough! I guess though, looking at the whole thing from the perspective of someone who has never brewed, if you told them you brewed they'd go 'whoa, that's so DIY!' Anyway, it's all a bit of an aside.

I sometimes find it interesting how folks really get into the DIY side when it comes to some parts of the brewing process - all grain mashing, fermentation fridges, etc - but take a step back from other things, like malting! Part of the fun of it I think is working out how to do all this stuff...

Or not enough room?

Why? Too hot?

Good question. It was a bag from the Indian shops I believe. I wouldn't do it again from them as that barley is of pretty questionable quality - not meant for malting - but this stuff looks the goods.

Malting shouldn't be that hard. I did some once just with a packet of crappy stuff from the shops, seemed to work. It would be fun to play around with.

They're on fruit - which is why ciders often go through a malo-lactic fermentation phase. They're on vegetables - which is how people started making pickles, sauerkraut and the like. They're on grains - sauergut is a kind of traditional acidulated malt due to the LB that lives on malted barley...

LB are effing everywhere.

Thanks for the comment Doog. I guess the whole belly button fluff angle does impart a rather questionable PR message to the whole thing though - "brewers are navel gazers" - but that's up to your publicity arm to deal with, I guess. (Which, considering how most breweries operate, is probably you...

Who loves yoghurt? Ever question where Lacto bacillus originally came from? It's an enteric (intestinal) bacteria. Resides in 'poo canals' of mammals. Originally? There are millions and millions of them, and some have found an evolutionary niche inside animals but I wouldn't say that's where...

It's yeast that makes every beer, and we probably don't want to know how it got there in the first place. Do you ask what people have done with their hands before you shake it? ;) But yeah nah this cultural trend can probably end now.