Temperature and Time Chart For Roasting Grain

[MichaelC]

Hi guys
My generous farming neighbour has given me a 20 kilo bag of top quality 2 row barley. It's not horse feed. He sells this stuff to the guys who make Peroni.
There are plenty of youtube vids to demonstrate how to malt this. So I'm ok for this.
I'm struggling to find a temperature and time sheet that defines the roasted grains from pale, light munich, pilsener ect ,through to the darker ones.
Can anyone send a link with this info?
Thanks

 

[MHB]

Its a lot more complicated than you appear to think, low protein malt is used to make pale base malt, Pilsner generally being the palest, then dried/kilned a bit hotter and longer for pale Ale malt.
Vienna, Light and Dark Munich are actually treated differently during the sprouting (sprouted hotter) so they develop different flavours, then kilned differently.
Crystal malts are made from higher protein base malt, at the end of sprouting they are heated to somewhere around 65oC so the mashing actually happens inside the individual grains, then kilned to higher temperatures.
Toasted malts are generally higher protein grain, malted then kilned progressively hotter and longer until you get to burnt malt - something like Amber, Brown, Black Patent.

I doubt that any such temperature/time chart exists in the way you are asking. Malting is simply way more complicated than you realise.
If you want to make malt, try to get good at making pale malt, it will probably make up over 90% of the malt you use and just buy your specialty malts.
Maybe after you are really good at making base malt it would be worth taking some time to study up on specialty malts and revisit making specialty.
Mark

 

[MichaelC]

Its a lot more complicated than you appear to think, low protein malt is used to make pale base malt, Pilsner generally being the palest, then dried/kilned a bit hotter and longer for pale Ale malt.
Vienna, Light and Dark Munich are actually treated differently during the sprouting (sprouted hotter) so they develop different flavours, then kilned differently.
Crystal malts are made from higher protein base malt, at the end of sprouting they are heated to somewhere around 65oC so the mashing actually happens inside the individual grains, then kilned to higher temperatures.
Toasted malts are generally higher protein grain, malted then kilned progressively hotter and longer until you get to burnt malt - something like Amber, Brown, Black Patent.

I doubt that any such temperature/time chart exists in the way you are asking. Malting is simply way more complicated than you realise.
If you want to make malt, try to get good at making pale malt, it will probably make up over 90% of the malt you use and just buy your specialty malts.
Maybe after you are really good at making base malt it would be worth taking some time to study up on specialty malts and revisit making specialty.
Mark

Thanks for your reply Mark
This looks way more technical than I anticipated.
I have looked into it and so far I'm pretty sure i have the right temperature and time to make a pale malt.
Months back, i did come across this chart on the net. It gave the roasting details for the many of the most popular grains. Spent hours trying to find it yesterday and today, but it's still hiding from me. I have found the details for about 3 types of grain, but that's about it. I'll keep looking

 

[damoninja]

Roasted barley is from raw barley should be simple enough?

 

[MichaelC]

Roasted barley is from raw barley should be simple enough?

Yes, you simply malt the raw barley and roast it, unless it is a specialty grain like crystal malt. This is put in hot water then dried

 

[damoninja]

Yes, you simply malt the raw barley and roast it, unless it is a specialty grain like crystal malt. This is put in hot water then dried

Roasted barley isn't malted though, that's my point. It's unlike patent black because of this.

 

[MHB]

It is also quite common for it to catch on fire, that was one of the "Patent" features of Black Patent, not the malt but a way to make black malt and roast barley that was evenly treated and didn't burn the malt house down.
Mark

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

I used to run an experimental mini maltings that did 6 x 100 g batches in parallel: we used it to evaluate trial cultivars out of the barley breeding program and for internal research purposes. It was a fairly simple system and the malt produced was OK, no reason you couldn't do it at home.

The trials were run in mesh baskets which rotated continuously in a temperature controlled bath, steeping / germination was controlled by filling and emptying the bath as required. The drying / kilning stage was done by blowing warm air through the (empty) bath.

Because we were interested in the differences between the base barleys we left the steeping and kilning parameters constant: IIRC steeping and germinating was done at 20oC. There was a temperature probe on the hot air inlet and one on the moist air outlet, the PLC looked at the delta T and ramped the heat accordingly: IIRC air inlet temp was kept around 50oC until the delta T started to drop (indicating the green malt had little moisture) then ramped slowly to 100 or thereabouts.

This produced malts with colours from 3 to 20 EBC depending on the degree of water absorbtion and modification of the individual variety.

To increase colour: increase the steeping temperature to increase the degree of modification, (Kunze suggests 22 to 25 degrees) decrease the air volume and increase the air inlet temperature after breakthough to around 110.

To increase crystallisation, decrease air speed (or recirculate some of the warm moist air) and ramp the heat before breakthough occurs so that the malt stews a bit and forms toffee.

More specialised malts are produced using a toaster rather than a kiln, we didn't have one of those but your local coffee roaster does.

BTW if the barley is ex farm in bags, it isn't likely to be destined for a maltings, they take in barley in truckloads.

 

[spog]

Hi guys
My generous farming neighbour has given me a 20 kilo bag of top quality 2 row barley. It's not horse feed. He sells this stuff to the guys who make Peroni.
There are plenty of youtube vids to demonstrate how to malt this. So I'm ok for this.
I'm struggling to find a temperature and time sheet that defines the roasted grains from pale, light munich, pilsener ect ,through to the darker ones.
Can anyone send a link with this info?
Thanks

Barley is Barley until it is malted for brewing purposes .
I understand you want to make your own malts by home roasting ?
Checkout Barleypopmaker.com for home roasting base grains to make your own .
I do it, a bag of base grain,follow his recommendations and your good to go.
While it's not an exact copy its really interesting and above and beyond all saves a shit load of money.....exactly why a HB'er home brews.

 

[MHB]

Malting grade barley is quite different in protein content and a few other parameters than feed grade barley. If you think every maltster in the world is too stupid to know the difference and to pay a lot extra for malting grade - well I doubt there is much hope for us understanding each other.

I can understand making malt once or twice just to learn about the process, but as to it being a major saving, nah there are plenty of better ways to save money.
A bag of base malt can be had easily enough for $65 or less. working on the old 1kg of malt makes 5L of beer rule of thumb, that works out to around 125L from a bag of malt or 52 cents a litre. Hardly the end of the world on a cost basis.

Personally think I would rather use consistent high quality ingredients, as a rule the yield and the beer will be better and I can make a recipe over and over until I get it exactly the way I want it.

No matter how little your cost of making malt it isn't free, around Newcastle I can get feed barley for about $13/bag, by the time you add in the cost of the water/gas/electricity you use, I suspect it is going to be costing you at least $20/bag. At best you are saving around 32cents/litre - if you place zero value on your time.
If saving about $7.50/batch (23L) is that important, well go for it. For mine I'm happy to spend the tiny bit extra to make consistently better beer.
Mark

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Barley is Barley until it is malted for brewing purposes .

Trust me, barley ain't barley. You can put a feed grade barley through a malting cycle, sure, and what you get out looks like malt and even almost tastes like malt but it really doesn't work like malt.

 

[Zorco]

What's that smell....? Hmm hopefully it passed.

So, why not give it a try anyway. My SHG looks like it won't work but I'm learning a shit tonne because I'm giving it a go.

What's this option spog? Links, vids, pics?

A good friend of mine started roasting coffee 5 years ago (around when I started brewing) and his first many many batches were ordinary. They're bloody magic now.

Listen to and then Forget the nay sayers.

If you get off the ground with this and make progress then every one will try and help you out mate.

I've dreamed of making beer grain to glass.

 

[Rocker1986]

I've checked out that barleypopmaker thing before, there is a section on making crystal malts where he basically soaks the grain in water for hours, then dries it in the oven at low temp before increasing the temp to darken it to the desired level, or something like that anyway. Would that yield the same result as the commercially made crystal malts? I did try it once and the grain sure tasted similar to the bought stuff.

 

[MichaelC]

I used to run an experimental mini maltings that did 6 x 100 g batches in parallel: we used it to evaluate trial cultivars out of the barley breeding program and for internal research purposes. It was a fairly simple system and the malt produced was OK, no reason you couldn't do it at home.

The trials were run in mesh baskets which rotated continuously in a temperature controlled bath, steeping / germination was controlled by filling and emptying the bath as required. The drying / kilning stage was done by blowing warm air through the (empty) bath.

Because we were interested in the differences between the base barleys we left the steeping and kilning parameters constant: IIRC steeping and germinating was done at 20oC. There was a temperature probe on the hot air inlet and one on the moist air outlet, the PLC looked at the delta T and ramped the heat accordingly: IIRC air inlet temp was kept around 50oC until the delta T started to drop (indicating the green malt had little moisture) then ramped slowly to 100 or thereabouts.

This produced malts with colours from 3 to 20 EBC depending on the degree of water absorbtion and modification of the individual variety.

To increase colour: increase the steeping temperature to increase the degree of modification, (Kunze suggests 22 to 25 degrees) decrease the air volume and increase the air inlet temperature after breakthough to around 110.

To increase crystallisation, decrease air speed (or recirculate some of the warm moist air) and ramp the heat before breakthough occurs so that the malt stews a bit and forms toffee.

More specialised malts are produced using a toaster rather than a kiln, we didn't have one of those but your local coffee roaster does.

BTW if the barley is ex farm in bags, it isn't likely to be destined for a maltings, they take in barley in truckloads.

You sure know alot about barley. Very technical stuff
FVI the barley is destined for malting. My mate simply poured a bag for me out of his 30 tonne silo.He harvests around 200 tonne per year.

 

[MichaelC]

Barley is Barley until it is malted for brewing purposes .
I understand you want to make your own malts by home roasting ?
Checkout Barleypopmaker.com for home roasting base grains to make your own .
I do it, a bag of base grain,follow his recommendations and your good to go.
While it's not an exact copy its really interesting and above and beyond all saves a shit load of money.....exactly why a HB'er home brews.

Hi Spog. The amount a farmer is paid for barley destined for malting and horse feed barley is hugely different. A barley farmer aims to grow barley for malting and brewing,but in a bad season with wrong conditions, the barley is down graded and is used for animal feed. Graded barley for malting will malt at a much greater percentage than horse feed barley. This is why the breweries pay so much more for it.
Thanks for the site you sent. Sounds great. Problem is I can't get on as the server is down.
Cheers

 

[MichaelC]

Trust me, barley ain't barley. You can put a feed grade barley through a malting cycle, sure, and what you get out looks like malt and even almost tastes like malt but it really doesn't work like malt.

Don't quote me on the numbers, but from what I've come across, Graded barley for malting will malt at about 95% and feedgrade barley will malt at a rate of around 70%. Saw it on youtube today, but not sure how reliable these numbers are.

 

[MichaelC]

I've checked out that barleypopmaker thing before, there is a section on making crystal malts where he basically soaks the grain in water for hours, then dries it in the oven at low temp before increasing the temp to darken it to the desired level, or something like that anyway. Would that yield the same result as the commercially made crystal malts? I did try it once and the grain sure tasted similar to the bought stuff.

I've seen a few guys do this and the results look pretty good. I'm gonna give it a go. looks easy enough.

 

[MichaelC]

Malting grade barley is quite different in protein content and a few other parameters than feed grade barley. If you think every maltster in the world is too stupid to know the difference and to pay a lot extra for malting grade - well I doubt there is much hope for us understanding each other.

I can understand making malt once or twice just to learn about the process, but as to it being a major saving, nah there are plenty of better ways to save money.
A bag of base malt can be had easily enough for $65 or less. working on the old 1kg of malt makes 5L of beer rule of thumb, that works out to around 125L from a bag of malt or 52 cents a litre. Hardly the end of the world on a cost basis.

Personally think I would rather use consistent high quality ingredients, as a rule the yield and the beer will be better and I can make a recipe over and over until I get it exactly the way I want it.

No matter how little your cost of making malt it isn't free, around Newcastle I can get feed barley for about $13/bag, by the time you add in the cost of the water/gas/electricity you use, I suspect it is going to be costing you at least $20/bag. At best you are saving around 32cents/litre - if you place zero value on your time.
If saving about $7.50/batch (23L) is that important, well go for it. For mine I'm happy to spend the tiny bit extra to make consistently better beer.
Mark

It's not the money factor. Making better beer than you can buy, and saving money is simply a win win situation in my books.
I would think most brewers get a great kick out of making a great end product and making my own malts is just taking things to the next level.
If I succeed, growing my own hops and culturing yeast are the next challenges on the list.

 

[MichaelC]

What's that smell....? Hmm hopefully it passed.

So, why not give it a try anyway. My SHG looks like it won't work but I'm learning a shit tonne because I'm giving it a go.

What's this option spog? Links, vids, pics?

A good friend of mine started roasting coffee 5 years ago (around when I started brewing) and his first many many batches were ordinary. They're bloody magic now.

Listen to and then Forget the nay sayers.

If you get off the ground with this and make progress then every one will try and help you out mate.

I've dreamed of making beer grain to glass.

Couldn't agree more. The best thing I ever did was make the move from "kits and bits" to All Grain brewing. Huge jump up in the quality of the beer. and AG is really not that difficult, just need the time.

 

[MichaelC]

Roasted barley isn't malted though, that's my point. It's unlike patent black because of this.

Stupid question! Doesn't the barley have to be malted to make make beer out of it? And what is patent black?