Joe White Pilsner Vs Weyermann Pilsner

[peteru]

I don't know whether or not they will make the malts available for homebrewers but have come to the conclusion it will cause a conflict of interest with the Coopers homebrew kits but, you never know.

No conflict at all. If you have a look at the stuff that comes out of Cooper's club, they certainly encourage homebrewers to progress from kit and kilo to steeping grains, partial mash and eventually all grain. It's in their best interest to have the whole spectrum covered. They don't want to lose customers when they graduate from canned extract to all grain.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Yeah that's what I was getting at. It's about technical reasons and economics of established players; not really about Australia being unable to grow or malt quality barley.

Energy cost is a very significant factor in determining profitability of malting. The cycle time can't be changed (without process changes like gibberellic acid additions, grain roughening to aid with steeping), and so a maltster in a cold climate doesn't need to expend anywhere near the same amount of energy to provide cool, moist air to germination over several days. Kilning does require a lot of gas, but modern plants have heat recovery which drastically improves efficiency.

I would love to see the Weyermann plant and understand how they manage such a huge product range.

Yes, I'm aware of that: energy efficiency in processing was my PhD research area and I used to work in a maltings. My post wasn't meant to imply that the energy costs aren't significant, just that the practical economics of the inflexibility of use of an established plant dominate the way it is managed. As a rough guide, the energy input to a maltings will cost about $100 a tonne and it's a lot harder to save 10% of that than to scrimp on the barley.

I assume you are familiar with the energy recovery from kilns but since many here won't be here's something I found interesting:

One of the common forms of heat recovery consists of a bunch of thin walled glass tubes across the exhaust venting from the kiln. This always seemed odd to me until I realised that most of the energy input to the kiln is taken up but the heat of vaporisation of the water from the green malt, this is recovered by allowing the water to condense on the the tubes ( against incoming cold air). The tubes are thus continuously bathed in warm moist air and mould grows very quickly, so making the tubes of glass makes them easier to clean.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

It makes sense as australia is one of the chief players in the trade of barley seen from the below quote from http://aegic.org.au/about/australian-grains/barley/.. It doesn't produce anything like that percentage though in world production terms.

Australia is a dominant player in world barley export markets, representing more than 40 percent of the world’s malting barley trade and 20 percent of the feed barley trade. It
Demand for high quality barley is strong both in Australia and internationally with Australian barley well recognised for its excellent malt and feed qualities. Australia produces two-row spring barley that is plump and bright with moderate protein content. Harvested grain has low moisture content with long storage viability.

30% of world trade makes sense, the original statement was 30% of world use.

Australia is ~8% of world production and try as we might we can't drink it all here.

 

[good4whatAlesU]

It's quite amazing no one's come up with a little home scale (say 5kg) malting plant.

Panasonic etc. make little bread-makers etc. and could easily knock one out. Program soak time, germination time (and temp), kiln time and temp. Put in a little revolving drum (or auger) to rotate the grain ...

Home brewers would snap them up. I'd buy one in a heart-beat.

 

[Glomp]

30% of world trade makes sense, the original statement was 30% of world use.

Australia is ~8% of world production and try as we might we can't drink it all here.

 

[Glomp]

Hi lyrebird.

I probably didn't word my reply correctly.

I meant that there was a reason why people got confused between the production and export percentages and that made sense to me.

Just as an aside , i once applied for a job at graincorp and on their site at the time they said with all their malting companies they were the worlds biggest malt conglomerate. I checked their website today and that remark has been removed or maybe things have changed.

But moving on weyermann always seems to get a lot of interest but what about the other german companies such as bestz.

 

[good4whatAlesU]

Did someone mention using Powells Malt (Victoria)?

I'd be keen to give it a go, does anyone know where to buy it? Or is it a custom order type of thing?

 

[klangers]

It's quite amazing no one's come up with a little home scale (say 5kg) malting plant.

Panasonic etc. make little bread-makers etc. and could easily knock one out. Program soak time, germination time (and temp), kiln time and temp. Put in a little revolving drum (or auger) to rotate the grain ...

Home brewers would snap them up. I'd buy one in a heart-beat.

It'd be rather expensive, and very un-scalable. Ie, the cost to make a 5kg vs 50kg isn't a whole lot different. I'd say at least $2.5K, for a 5kg based on what I've learnt so far.

 

[good4whatAlesU]

Why so expensive? The heating elements can't be that dear?

Just use a biab style basket, dunk it twice to chit. Drain, germinate (mix with an auger) and kiln.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

A few years back a brewer made one from an old front load clothes dryer with a thermostat on the heater element. Did the germinating and kilning in the one unit There was even a youtube clip but i cant find the original one

Here is a differenet one, but same idea

 

[good4whatAlesU]

A tricky bit not included in the washing machine style unit is cooling - as the grain germinates it needs to be kept at less than 20 C. I think that would be the tricky part.

Soaking with water for a set time, draining ... it's all existing technology (robo brew etc). Heating and mixing is existing technology (breadmaker style things can do that and they are less than $100). Just change the bread paddle for an auger.

I can't see how it would be more than about $500 for a unit if one of the big players decided to make them.

 

[GalBrew]

A tricky bit not included in the washing machine style unit is cooling - as the grain germinates it needs to be kept at less than 20 C. I think that would be the tricky part.

Soaking with water for a set time, draining ... it's all existing technology (robo brew etc). Heating and mixing is existing technology (breadmaker style things can do that and they are less than $100). Just change the bread paddle for an auger.

I can't see how it would be more than about $500 for a unit if one of the big players decided to make them.

I imagine that there isn't a demand for home malting, sufficient for the big players to bother. There aren't that many home brewers let alone home brewers who want to home malt. Maybe suggest to Keg King that they should look into it, I can't imagine anyone else would take that on.

 

[good4whatAlesU]

You'd be surprised .. were not just talking about Australia. The Yank market is huge.

.Everyone is going hipster. They want local materials and they want to make their own stuff (without all the hidden chemicals the big malsters use).

Edit: I can however, see one of the big maltsters buying up any patents for such as it would be bad for their business.

 

[malt junkie]

I did a big chunk of googling a few months back, there is a small startup in the States that is producing a nano maltings for the nano/home market. The machine included a chiller, pumps, controller, mounted under a conical. Be buggered if I can find it now though, if I do I'll post some links.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

A tricky bit not included in the washing machine style unit is cooling - as the grain germinates it needs to be kept at less than 20 C. I think that would be the tricky part.

The one I watched had a fan in it as well to blow cold air in. Obviously ambient temp would play a part, but ~18 20* would not be to hard*

*Except in the middle of Australia in January..or Darwin

 

[good4whatAlesU]

Panasonic, Sanyo etc. or one of those players could knock them out for nix. ..

 

[klangers]

Why so expensive? The heating elements can't be that dear?

Just use a biab style basket, dunk it twice to chit. Drain, germinate (mix with an auger) and kiln.

Because it's far from just heating elements. Simply dunking to steep won't work reliably either. You'll need some way to replace the steep water, as well as aerate it. I have two pumps for this.

In germination, you need to manage, measure and control:

• Temperature (multiple probes)
• Humidity (a very expensive sensor)
• CO2 levels (a very expensive sensor)
• Grain turning (limit switches, encoders, servo motors)

A batch takes a week, so unless you're gonna come in every few hours and turn the grain, or change out steep water etc, then it's all gotta be fully automated. This is not an easy thing to do cheaply on a small scale

The thing, to work climates other than European winter, would have to have air conditioning, numerous fans and all sorts. You need to trim the amount of air which is recirculated/fresh, so automatic dampers (air valves) are necessary - these are hugely expensive on a small scale.

Then you have kilning, which requires huge airflow and thusly a big fan and massive energy input. To make this remotely affordable to run, heat recovery is necessary.

You could make something that makes only pale malt, and poor pale malt at that, cheaply. But anything else that's remotely well-put together for retail sale would definitely be at least $2.5k.

I was confident it was a piece of piss too, until I started researching, designing and building, and the complexity kind of snowballed.

 

[kaiserben]

I was confident it was a piece of piss too, until I started researching, designing and building, and the complexity kind of snowballed.

It's all a bit beyond me, but could you control it all via a Raspberry Pi? https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b/

Multiple temp probes is no problem (I built a controller, with a lot of help) using 2 probes to control my ferment fridge's heating & cooling. I could easily add more temp sensors (but there's no need for my set up), and a fan (but I haven't been bothered).

I dunno if the following would be good enough (perhaps they could be for rudimentary home-made build), but I found:

A humidity sensor for $10, https://www.adafruit.com/product/385

A "MH-Z19 CO2 sensor" for ~AU$35, https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...hrome..69i57j69i60l2&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

And the grain turning could be controlled via something like an 8-channel relay board being told what to do by the data being taken by the Raspberry Pi.

It'd require someone with coding experience (but there are quite a few home brewers already doing stuff to measure temps, gravity, amount of CO2 blown off and more, to control stuff like cooling, heating, fans, pumps, specific gravity and more).

EDIT: By "there are quite a few home brewers already doing stuff", I mean they're writing the code to measure and control all those things.

 

[good4whatAlesU]

Because it's far from just heating elements. Simply dunking to steep won't work reliably either. You'll need some way to replace the steep water, as well as aerate it. I have two pumps for this.

In germination, you need to manage, measure and control:

• Temperature (multiple probes)
• Humidity (a very expensive sensor)
• CO2 levels (a very expensive sensor)
• Grain turning (limit switches, encoders, servo motors)

A batch takes a week, so unless you're gonna come in every few hours and turn the grain, or change out steep water etc, then it's all gotta be fully automated. This is not an easy thing to do cheaply on a small scale

The thing, to work climates other than European winter, would have to have air conditioning, numerous fans and all sorts. You need to trim the amount of air which is recirculated/fresh, so automatic dampers (air valves) are necessary - these are hugely expensive on a small scale.

Then you have kilning, which requires huge airflow and thusly a big fan and massive energy input. To make this remotely affordable to run, heat recovery is necessary.

You could make something that makes only pale malt, and poor pale malt at that, cheaply. But anything else that's remotely well-put together for retail sale would definitely be at least $2.5k.

I was confident it was a piece of piss too, until I started researching, designing and building, and the complexity kind of snowballed.

This is way overkill.

Soak for two timed intervals (with a drain in between)
Germinate (and turn) until the acrospire is 100% length of grain (at around 18c)
Kiln at desired temps.

Piece of piss.

What you are talking about is commercial tolerances. What I'm talking about is small home made batches of malt.

 

[barls]

ok guys far enough off track. please create a new thread if you want to talk about home malting.