Home Toasted Malt Commercial Equivalent

[urepedese]

I have been toasting my own malts since I first started AG but am now at a stage where I wonder what commercial equivalents I would need to used to get a similar flavour.

In particular I do the high temperature for one hour on dry malt, and soak some malt in water for an hour and toast that at the same time but for two hours. My thoughts are perhaps brown malt for the dry roast, and special B for the wet roast. John Palmer also says the wet roast is like a brown malt but I have not tried the commercial version to compare. If I chew on a few grains the wet roast has some caramel sweetness as well as the toastiness, but not so sweet as a crystal malt.

 

[black_labb]

I've roasted my own grain quite a few times. getting good results is easy, though actually getting something the same as a commercial grade can be harder.

I think the crystal you are making is more or less closer to brown or munich in terms of method, but you are probably getting more enzime action with the slower heating of the grain in a home oven making it a bit closer to crystal. I've used that method before and it makes nice malt though it can be hard to get full conversion this method. Crystal is hardest to replicate as it is made from green (wet) malted barley. I've done it by soaking grain in zip lock bags and then keeping it at about 70*c in an esky with hot water outside of the bags. Then I dried and toasted it in the oven for the different grades of crystal. I wont do this again as it takes a long time to do as you need to continually vent the oven to let the humidity out making it a long process.

I often make what would be similar to Biscuit by dry roasting at about 145 for around 30-50 mins. I buy the different variety of crystals as the effort isn't worth it, but it is nice to know that I can do it.

 

[urepedese]

Thank your your reply. Yes I know what you mean about venting the oven after soaking the grain for 24 hours in an attempt to make crystal, I would not bother with that again. I don't actually like too much crystal anyway. Toasting the grain after 1 hour in water produces a very nice result though, which is why I am trying to work out what commercial grain/s might be similar.

I do my dry roast for 1 hour at around 190C so is likely quite a lot darker than biscuit malt, so perhaps brown malt is the closest to it.

 

[pablo_h]

Necromatic bump.
I'm thinking of buying some marie ottis grain for a small batch porter and ESB.
I've worked with partials and crystal malts before (happy to buy med and dark crystal BTW).

My main thought was as the M.O. /british pale LME cans on sale weren't to fresh, I decided to buy malted M.O.grain. I need 3.3kg total for the 8L porter, 8L ESB. May as well buy 4kg, use the remaining malt to make my own brown, amber, aroma/biscuit malt as they just require toasting in the oven and it would save me $18 which I can spend on yeasts.
Anyone know the method and how long to roast for each type?