Micro malt house DIY for home malting automation

[arzaman]

Bought a new stepper motor driver and now the drum rotation is ok (even much lower noise)

http://forum.hobbycomponents.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1371
is tipically used for high torque high current CNC stepper motor, lot of feature and simple to interface to arduino

short video of the rotation
http://youtu.be/IW_C9lQ7NW8

So the transmission issue has been fixed, heating and fans seem ok, I have to test water and solenoid valve / level sensor

stay tuned
Davide

 

[arzaman]

Unless the malt house project is proceeding slowly due to time contains and other project priority the barley is growing well

hope to have some spare time to complete the malt house automation before the barley harvest !

Davide

 

[mash head]

Looks like it could use some Nitrogen. Your malt box looks awesome though.

 

[mr_wibble]

G'day,

How are you planning to harvest the barley?

I want to grow some, but my wife asked how I was going to harvest a hectare of barley ... "By hand?!" she says, but I didn't have an answer.

 

[arzaman]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Harvesting time is quite close [/SIZE]and my barley field has changed greatly in the last months
[SIZE=10.5pt]Unlikely lot of Zizania (wild rice?) started to grow and in some area overhang the barley[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]two weeks ago[/SIZE]

Yesterday

[SIZE=10.5pt]Like in the bible I have to find a way to separate the “good form the bad” ..if someone has an idea how to perform this is welcome[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]The harvesting will be manual and I keep you posted about my labors [/SIZE][SIZE=10.5pt] [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Davide[/SIZE]

 

[mr_wibble]

Just ideas - I don't have any experience with this ~

Can you sieve the final grains based on seed size

Or blow air through them such that lighter/smaller seeds are separated - I guess this is just winnowing.

If you are harvesting by hand, is it possible to just cut the heads you want ?
I guess this would take hours if not days.

 

[arzaman]

Today I have tried to harvest barley regardless the huge amount of "zizzania"
I have used the manual method with sickle ...it has been quite hard and I'm not so satisfied with the result and due to the amount of wild grass I have collected all together


Now I distributed over a tarpaulin In order to dry and the idea is to trash beating with a wood clapper

I'm little bit demoralized but determined to collect some kg of row barley to malt for at least a batch of beer

Davide

 

[Not For Horses]

Great work Davide!
Zizzania sounds a bit difficult.
MrWibble's post above might have the best ideas for separating the good from the bad. Separating by hand sounds time-consuming but it would work well.
I wonder if you could malt zizzania?

 

[Mardoo]

You are one awesome dude Davide. Keep it up. Very inspiring work!

 

[MastersBrewery]

you'd need a beer or 2 after all that hard work, please god don't let me win lotto and buy a small plot, cause I'll grow grain and kill myself harvesting the ******* for grain for beer! :unsure:

 

[mr_wibble]

When I was a kid our family owned a blueberry farm.

We had a sorting machine which was primarily a bunch of rollers with rows of large rubber bands - this formed a slotted conveyer belt.

The berries would roll along the belts with the smaller ones dropping down between the bands.

Perhaps to sort the seeds, you could make a wooden box with many slots (of the correct size) cut in the bottom.
Shaking a small amount of seeds would allow the smaller ones to drop through. I think this would work well for the very small seeds in the rightmost photo.

But the zizzania look much the same size as barley. Google translates "zizzania" as "discord", how appropriate.

cheers,
-kt

 

[mash head]

It seems you didn't think this through, you did such an awesome job with the malt maker, and now you need to make a machine to separate and sort your grains.
In the real old days they would beat the stalks against a hard piece of ground to break up the heads of grain, they would then shovel up the grain and on a windy day throw it in the air to allow the chaff to blow off. This should also remove the weed seeds, as they look a lot like ryegrass which is a lot smaller and lighter than the barley.
If you want to keep growing grain see if you can buy an old harvester, Ive seen them used stationary with people feeding material in the throat and clean product coming out the other end.
If you can break it down to just the heads, a set of soft rollers would probably break the grain away from the back bones.
Good luck

 

[MauricioUY]

Hi Davide
The weed you have in your field is named “Rye Grass” or Lolium Multiflorum.
It´s a very common weed in barley or wheat crops, here in South América.
You could control it on field with Pinoxaden + Cloquintocet-mexyl (AXIAL - Commercial product of Syngenta).
Now, your best solution is to be patient.

Good luck.

Rgs,
Mauricio

 

[changchuyo]

I would like to see pictures of it working. Looks awsome, congratulations!

 

[arzaman]

Hi Davide
The weed you have in your field is named “Rye Grass” or Lolium Multiflorum.
It´s a very common weed in barley or wheat crops, here in South América.
You could control it on field with Pinoxaden + Cloquintocet-mexyl (AXIAL - Commercial product of Syngenta).
Now, your best solution is to be patient.

Good luck.

Rgs,
Mauricio

Thank you for advice Mauricio
I know exactly the weed..and I know that there are techniques to prevent it but my choice has been not to use any chemical product...let say organic

So patience is included and admitted in organic production

Ciao
Davide

 

[MauricioUY]

Thank you for advice Mauricio
I know exactly the weed..and I know that there are techniques to prevent it but my choice has been not to use any chemical product...let say organic

So patience is included and admitted in organic production

Ciao
Davide

Much better this way!
Good luck!

Rgds,
Mauricio

 

[arzaman]

This we I have continued with the manual approach trying to get some grain from the harvested barley

Going back to the ancient method I have built a special tool in order to beat the barley on the ground

After a couple of hour of work I was able to get some seeds and strow..and using a DIY sieve I did a first selection

I hope after next selection process to get at least enough grain for a batch

Davide

 

[mr_wibble]

Nice Flail.

You should be able to winnow away a good lot of that chaff on the next windy day.

 

[arzaman]

I have collected the minimum amount of grains after the manual thrashing and I try to winnow the good from the bad using a sieve and a 12v fan
The result is not so bed after 2-3 cycle and I was able to separate the straw even if the small seeds of zizzagna are still present.
I think I can eliminate them during the soaking phase since I expect they will float.

My estimation is to produce 5-6 kg of base malt for at least one batch ! The batch of my life

Davide

 

[MauricioUY]

Congrats!