wildschwein
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- 3/4/07
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Money is tight @ the moment and I'm forced to try out things with my beer in order to keep the costs down. One thing I do like to add to my enhanced kit and kilo recipes is specialty grains like chocolate and crystal malt. Although, they bring little to no fermentable material to the mix they do seem to add some sort of voodo to the final beer. This voodo includes different colours, better head, body and flavour complexity IMO. However, my HBS is 20-30km away and I can't always justify going there. They sell their spec malts for $2.20 for a 200g bag which doesn't seem like much but it adds up after a while and adds a bit to the price of each brew I do.
I often use pearl barley in cooking which is dirt cheap. Pearl barley is unmalted, de-husked, polished barley and it costs me $1.12 for 500g @ my local supermarket. Roasted/burnt barley is used in some beers/stouts/ales (Guinness is the most well known) for its roasty character, head retention properties and the dryness/bitterness it can impart. I'm not interested in really burnt flavours but I thought I could roast up some pearl barley in various colours/finishes to impart some DIY spec grain voodo to my brews at a low cost. I made three different types: a golden roasted pearl barley, a deep amber pearl barley and a mock crystal malt which I will describe here.
For the golden and deep amber roasted barley I placed 500g of pearl barley in an a tin foiled-lined oven tray and roasted it in my oven at 120C for around 2 and a 1/2 hours mixing it around every 10-15 minutes to get an even colour. Once I'd achieved a kind of light brown, golden orange colour and a slight caramel taste I tipped off half of the barley which became my first DIY grain. I returned the remaining half to the oven and cooked it at 140F for an additional hour which gave me a nice brown amber colour and a slighty nutty coffee taste. This became the deep amber brown grain. It was not as dark, or bitter as chocolate malt or commercially available roasted barley.
For the mock crystal I got the idea of forming a caramel coating around the pearl barley to simulate the light sweetness of crystal spec grains. Crystal malt is usually made by moistening malt and allowing a mash process to occur inside the husk. Once some of the starches are converted to sugar the crystal is finished at varying temps for varying finishes. Firstly, I placed a fresh 500g of pearl balrey into a pot and covered it with 2 cups of water and a cup of raw sugar. I then brought it to the boil and stirred constantly over high heat until most of the water had evaporated and the sugar was becoming syrupy. I then poured the contents onto an oven tray and roasted the sugar and grain mix at 120C for about an 1 and 1/4 hours stirring constantly to get an even sugar coating and colour on all the grains. Eventually all the water evaporates and all the sugar gets cooked onto the grains and begins to caramalise to a medium amber finish. These mock crystal grains are marginally sweeter tasting than real crystal but taste unusally like malt.
I'm going to use some of these in my next brew by crushing them and then steeping them in hot water for about 30 minutes before seiving the fliud. 66-70C is good but because there is no husk there is no reason to be as anal about temps and tannins as you would with commercial spec malts. Furthermore, I'm not going to exceed 250g of grain total in a 23L brew as because they are not being mashed they could put a little too much protein and starch into the final beer which is not really what I'm after. Also, huskless broken barley can really clog up sieves so I don't want to have to worry about a stuck rinse with a huge batch of the stuff.
I'm sure the fake crystal will contribute some fermentable material in the form of caramel, a bit like belgian candi sugar. With these methods I'm hoping I will get some of the roasted taste and spec grainesque voodoo to add a little something personal to my brews, hopefully @ a low price. I will post later to say how it goes.
I often use pearl barley in cooking which is dirt cheap. Pearl barley is unmalted, de-husked, polished barley and it costs me $1.12 for 500g @ my local supermarket. Roasted/burnt barley is used in some beers/stouts/ales (Guinness is the most well known) for its roasty character, head retention properties and the dryness/bitterness it can impart. I'm not interested in really burnt flavours but I thought I could roast up some pearl barley in various colours/finishes to impart some DIY spec grain voodo to my brews at a low cost. I made three different types: a golden roasted pearl barley, a deep amber pearl barley and a mock crystal malt which I will describe here.
For the golden and deep amber roasted barley I placed 500g of pearl barley in an a tin foiled-lined oven tray and roasted it in my oven at 120C for around 2 and a 1/2 hours mixing it around every 10-15 minutes to get an even colour. Once I'd achieved a kind of light brown, golden orange colour and a slight caramel taste I tipped off half of the barley which became my first DIY grain. I returned the remaining half to the oven and cooked it at 140F for an additional hour which gave me a nice brown amber colour and a slighty nutty coffee taste. This became the deep amber brown grain. It was not as dark, or bitter as chocolate malt or commercially available roasted barley.
For the mock crystal I got the idea of forming a caramel coating around the pearl barley to simulate the light sweetness of crystal spec grains. Crystal malt is usually made by moistening malt and allowing a mash process to occur inside the husk. Once some of the starches are converted to sugar the crystal is finished at varying temps for varying finishes. Firstly, I placed a fresh 500g of pearl balrey into a pot and covered it with 2 cups of water and a cup of raw sugar. I then brought it to the boil and stirred constantly over high heat until most of the water had evaporated and the sugar was becoming syrupy. I then poured the contents onto an oven tray and roasted the sugar and grain mix at 120C for about an 1 and 1/4 hours stirring constantly to get an even sugar coating and colour on all the grains. Eventually all the water evaporates and all the sugar gets cooked onto the grains and begins to caramalise to a medium amber finish. These mock crystal grains are marginally sweeter tasting than real crystal but taste unusally like malt.
I'm going to use some of these in my next brew by crushing them and then steeping them in hot water for about 30 minutes before seiving the fliud. 66-70C is good but because there is no husk there is no reason to be as anal about temps and tannins as you would with commercial spec malts. Furthermore, I'm not going to exceed 250g of grain total in a 23L brew as because they are not being mashed they could put a little too much protein and starch into the final beer which is not really what I'm after. Also, huskless broken barley can really clog up sieves so I don't want to have to worry about a stuck rinse with a huge batch of the stuff.
I'm sure the fake crystal will contribute some fermentable material in the form of caramel, a bit like belgian candi sugar. With these methods I'm hoping I will get some of the roasted taste and spec grainesque voodoo to add a little something personal to my brews, hopefully @ a low price. I will post later to say how it goes.
