AHB Articles: Doing it from absolute scratch

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Ok, so the plan here is have a crack at floor malting +-100kg of this particular crop which sits next to my hops.
Last season I did 15kg using the this method and it went well. I think I got my head around the process.
Want to try & up the scale for ecconomy of effort. Large concrete floor available. Though I will have to think about building kiln... A few months to worry about that yet.
Might even use it as 'green malt' & just smoke some for colour...

Definately keen to hear from ne1 who has had a crack at floor malting. Fair bit of detailed stuff on Braukaiser in regard to pile depths & temps which i'll be following.
Also from anyone who has harvested their own yeast like on the Brewmasters Egypt episode
 
This is awesome!

Can you get "scratch" with yeast?
 
We may just have our first "real brewer" in our midst. Awesome stuff, keep it coming.
 
This is awesome!

Can you get "scratch" with yeast?


I thought the consensus round here was that it was a waste of time, but then I saw that Brewmasters edisode where they went to Egypt & Sam was rubbing dates all over petrie dishes & it worked.

I have a few grape vines and I believe the beast we are chasing lives on their skin naturally?
 
Thats the show iwas thinking of.
Remember going to the old penfolds winery that made st henri, open vats and "wild" yeast. Air,building everything was yeasty.
 
Thats the show iwas thinking of.
Remember going to the old penfolds winery that made st henri, open vats and "wild" yeast. Air,building everything was yeasty.
 
I think realistically back in the day, people figured out how to pitch the good ferment from one barrel to another long before we knew it as yeast.
To start a new brewery you 'aquired' fermenting beer from a proven source to kick you off.
Pilfering propriatry yeast from friends in the community is no different in my mind...
 
I've played with putting some of my sourdough starter in a litre of finished beer left over after bottling, but I haven't done it from the beginning yet.

It came out pretty sour but 1 dimensional. I'm going to try it again one day but with left over wort instead, and let it sit for longer than a few months.
 
This is awesome can't wait to see how it comes out. There was a guy on here who make a grain kiln out of a clothes dryer you could look into that
 
I like the idea of culturing a starter from bread dough. My interpretation of the glyphs that Sam & Florian look at in Egypt is that the ancients used the bread dough like we use slants to start the culture & maintain the strain. Not using the cooked bread as a flavor addition like they ended up doing.

Re: clothes dryer kiln
Yep, that article is what got me into this. I started drying last time on baking trays in a wood oven, then threw it all in a pillow case in the dryer to finish it off.
Great method for a few KG. Uneconomical on power for large batches.
This year I'm thinking perforated false floor with a wood fire beside, though using the sun in qld has merits...

Another self imposed restriction was going to be using no electricity during production - using wood fire only to power the brewery for that beer.
Nothing that special there; that's how we started before I got "the magic wand" (awesome 15a over the side element)
 
Is there an update on this, its quite interesting!
 
Just thought I would add my 2 cents in here. I have brewed around 10 batches made from home malted barley that I got from the feed store. I live in hot Queensland so I malt in my old fridge with a temp controller. I generally malt around 5kg ( a batches worth) at a time in a storage container at a depth of about 10cm and a temperature of 15 degrees. I then sundry the malt, seems to dry out well after a day but I give it 2 anyway and the roots just fall off.

I've made a few batches where I haven't roasted it and it's fine, although it is much better if roasted at 100 - 120 degrees for a number of hours. I have found through experimentation the potential of my grain is around 1.028 vs 1.036 for commercial grain. I use this value in beersmith and hit my calculated gravity every time.

Home malting is a fair bit of mucking around but it's great to brew up a batch and know you did most of the hard work!
 
Just thought I would add my 2 cents in here. I have brewed around 10 batches made from home malted barley that I got from the feed store. I live in hot Queensland so I malt in my old fridge with a temp controller. I generally malt around 5kg ( a batches worth) at a time in a storage container at a depth of about 10cm and a temperature of 15 degrees. I then sundry the malt, seems to dry out well after a day but I give it 2 anyway and the roots just fall off.

I've made a few batches where I haven't roasted it and it's fine, although it is much better if roasted at 100 - 120 degrees for a number of hours. I have found through experimentation the potential of my grain is around 1.028 vs 1.036 for commercial grain. I use this value in beersmith and hit my calculated gravity every time.

Home malting is a fair bit of mucking around but it's great to brew up a batch and know you did most of the hard work!
i hav'nt home malted but have played around with home roasting,it changes so much to the colour/expected taste etc.an interesting exercise as no doubt your home malting is.
its all about experimenting and learning..........cheers............spog.............
 
Mate, excellent. Hats off to you.
I can just see my wife have a heart attack when she sees my next brew shopping list:
  • 500g Crystal Malt
  • 1kg Dextrose
  • 1 Combine Harvester
  • 200 Bottle Tops...
LOL
 

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