Yeastie Beastie
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- 2/7/09
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Something I thought I would share.
I basically made the transition from K&K to AG very quickly as I live in the country and kits were few and far between, and only Coopers. I had to wait till I made a trip to the city before I could get something half decent, or, order it online but then the postage was a bit hefty.
I decided to start buying grain online so I could brew the variety of beer that I wanted to brew, not the variety I had to brew. But still the postage was a bit steep, but hey, I was brewing what I wanted and loving learning AG.
It came to me that my boss had 400 tonne of malting barley, feed barley and wheat sitting in some silos at work...tick, tock, tick, tock. Why don't I have a crack at doing something with it?
I researched a bit into it and found that a lot of people were roasting their roasted grains to a different spec etc but few were taking it from a "straight from the paddock" point of view.
I scored a 25kg bag for nothing and went to work on some malting/learning/burning/swearing.
I won't take all the credit for the below process as most of it was just notes I gathered from research on the net . Not a copy paste though lol.
I needed close to 3 KG for this recipe but I did it in 1KG lots to make things more manageable and in my notes 1KG lots was highlighted, for a reason I guess.
1KG Raw Barley Grain.
Wash grain in water, husks will float to the top these are the bit you can turf.
Soak in water (I used cold tap water) for 6 hours.
Drain & rest for 8 hours.
Repeat the above 2 steps for 48 hours.
Time this right 'cos admit it, you won't wake at 4am, you'll think that if you left it 'till 7am, she'll be right. Considering how much time you will be putting into it after reading this you won't want to see if "she'll be right".
After these 48 hours the grain will begin to chit/shoot.
Drain but don't be too fussy, a bit of water will be okay.
Germination.
Put your grain in a terracotta pot (terracotta is good 'cos it absorbs excess water).
Cover with something like aluminium foil to keep a bit of the moisture in but the dust etc out.
Keep pot/pots at room temperature stirring 3 times day to ensure overheating and to make sure mould does not set in.
Germination should take 4-5 days to complete.
Most of the grain should grow rootlets about twice as long as the actual grain itself.
The main shoot (acrospire) should grow to 75% - 100% the length of the grain. The acrospires is on the INSIDE of the grain so you will need to crack a few open to see this.
Drying the Grain.
This stops the germination process & locks in the enzymes that convert starch to sugar. Do not exceed 50 degrees Celsius or this will destroy the enzyme.
As it was cold/winter I put it on a clean oven dish and put it in the oven. Use a good thermometer and don't trust the dial on your oven, the probe is on the oven wall, not in the grain.
This will normally take about 24 hours, yes, 24 hours. Under 50 degs will not hurt your power bill that much. Bite the grain, if it crunches, it's done. If you have used grain before you'll know.
Roasting.
I roasted for 2 hours at 100 degrees Celsius to achieve a Pale Lager Malt.
Use a strainer or similar to knock off the dried roots etc.
Now make some beer. I made AndrewQLD's Lager from the DB. Not far off tasting.
I have not experimented with roasting times but there is plenty of info on that avail on the net to do different spec grains.
EDIT: Font size as I wrote it on Word 2007 and pasted it here and it went all skew wiff.
I basically made the transition from K&K to AG very quickly as I live in the country and kits were few and far between, and only Coopers. I had to wait till I made a trip to the city before I could get something half decent, or, order it online but then the postage was a bit hefty.
I decided to start buying grain online so I could brew the variety of beer that I wanted to brew, not the variety I had to brew. But still the postage was a bit steep, but hey, I was brewing what I wanted and loving learning AG.
It came to me that my boss had 400 tonne of malting barley, feed barley and wheat sitting in some silos at work...tick, tock, tick, tock. Why don't I have a crack at doing something with it?
I researched a bit into it and found that a lot of people were roasting their roasted grains to a different spec etc but few were taking it from a "straight from the paddock" point of view.
I scored a 25kg bag for nothing and went to work on some malting/learning/burning/swearing.
I won't take all the credit for the below process as most of it was just notes I gathered from research on the net . Not a copy paste though lol.
I needed close to 3 KG for this recipe but I did it in 1KG lots to make things more manageable and in my notes 1KG lots was highlighted, for a reason I guess.
1KG Raw Barley Grain.
Wash grain in water, husks will float to the top these are the bit you can turf.
Soak in water (I used cold tap water) for 6 hours.
Drain & rest for 8 hours.
Repeat the above 2 steps for 48 hours.
Time this right 'cos admit it, you won't wake at 4am, you'll think that if you left it 'till 7am, she'll be right. Considering how much time you will be putting into it after reading this you won't want to see if "she'll be right".
After these 48 hours the grain will begin to chit/shoot.
Drain but don't be too fussy, a bit of water will be okay.
Germination.
Put your grain in a terracotta pot (terracotta is good 'cos it absorbs excess water).
Cover with something like aluminium foil to keep a bit of the moisture in but the dust etc out.
Keep pot/pots at room temperature stirring 3 times day to ensure overheating and to make sure mould does not set in.
Germination should take 4-5 days to complete.
Most of the grain should grow rootlets about twice as long as the actual grain itself.
The main shoot (acrospire) should grow to 75% - 100% the length of the grain. The acrospires is on the INSIDE of the grain so you will need to crack a few open to see this.
Drying the Grain.
This stops the germination process & locks in the enzymes that convert starch to sugar. Do not exceed 50 degrees Celsius or this will destroy the enzyme.
As it was cold/winter I put it on a clean oven dish and put it in the oven. Use a good thermometer and don't trust the dial on your oven, the probe is on the oven wall, not in the grain.
This will normally take about 24 hours, yes, 24 hours. Under 50 degs will not hurt your power bill that much. Bite the grain, if it crunches, it's done. If you have used grain before you'll know.
Roasting.
I roasted for 2 hours at 100 degrees Celsius to achieve a Pale Lager Malt.
Use a strainer or similar to knock off the dried roots etc.
Now make some beer. I made AndrewQLD's Lager from the DB. Not far off tasting.
I have not experimented with roasting times but there is plenty of info on that avail on the net to do different spec grains.
EDIT: Font size as I wrote it on Word 2007 and pasted it here and it went all skew wiff.
