Malting Your Own Barley

[James Bourchier]

Has anyone had any experience in malting barley from scratch?

 

[beerguide]

I've read this before on BYO (http://byo.com/feature/284.html) but in the end thought:
a) I don't grow it,
B) whilst fun would only increase the length of time between brews.

So I slapped myself around the head and went back to purchasing pre-malted

Hope it helps, a little at least anyway...

 

[campro]

Yeah mate, I tried this about 8 months ago. Tasted like vegetables at first, and I nearly threw the lot. But I cracked one about 8 months later and it was good, with only a slight harshness. I've made better, but I've made a lot worse!

The basic process I followed was:
1. soaked grain and emptied water every 8 hours or so until roots emerge
2. let it grow until stem was on average the same length as the seed, turning each day
3. put in oven on trays on low heat (40-70 C) until dried out

I did a triple decoction to mash to try and make up for the irregularities in modification. The final beer had plenty of body and caramel sweetness like it has a lot of crystal malt.

There are a lot more detailed procedures out there, but this worked for me. It's a lot of mucking around but I'll try this again, maybe with some sort of drying chamber of some sort to give more control over kilning temps.

Here's a pic of the final beer

Cheers
Rod.

 

[pint of lager]

This has come up before and doing a search on the word "malting" on the forum returns this thread.