Houston, We have Malt

Sorry for the lateness of my updates. I wanted to show you the malting process in more detail and I have some photos from the camera loaded. After a day or two of soaking, your barley will look like the left photo. This may happen sooner, even after 1 day depending on the age and general viability of the seed. After a day or two of germnination, your barley will look like the photo on the middle.

Stop the seeping/air rests when you get little bud roots (called chits) protruding from the kernel. Start germinating: spread them out and turn them every few hours. Keep them moist with a spray bottle of water w/a few drops of bleach.

When they look like photo 2 or the roots are slightly longer, start drying. Dry in the sun at up to 50ºC. Direct sunlight around noon is going to be warm enough.

After the rootlets have shriveled and fall off, crank up the heat. I used my solar oven to get temperatures around 80ºC to 90ºC. A few hours in the oven and your are the proud owner of your own malt.

Try to dark roast some small amounts of the malt. Experiment with roasting, wetting, stewing at 50ºC, charring whatever turns your crank. Just make sure to use about 70% or more of the pale malt in your mash as it has the enzymes in tact. These enzymes will break down the starches into fermentable sugars (mainly maltose). Diastatic power is a grain's ability to break down starches.

Gotta go, work to do.

Cheers!

More on Modification

G'day mates!

Today is Hot and Slow
Yestday was a slow day and a hot one. I rinsed and stirred barley on and off for the whole day. I did manage to get some work done on the computer, but barley was the thing on my mind. I listened to Oz Craft Brewer Radio's 2 podcasts on malting at home and picked up a few tips. I like listening while I work. Programming is fun, but beer is funner.

The grain is starting to spout in heavier numbers now. I keep them under a fan in two big tubs. The depth of the barley is about 4 inches (100mm) and it's kept moist with a squirt bottle with water and a little bleach. So far nothing overly exciting to report, just more sprouting. It's in the 30's here in the daytime, so I am wondering what the higher temperatures do to the germination process. I popped the thermometer into the grain yesterday and measured a lovely 31ºC. I know that the grain itself is generating heat too.

When I get this germination phase over with, I am going to stew some and try to make a crystal malt. As far as I can tell, a crystal malt is taken from the germination bed 'green' and stewed at 50ºC for an hour to cause the amylase to kick into action. The amylase converts the starch in the endosperm into maltose. This is why crystal malt is so sweet and sugary. Once stewed, the crystal malt is dried. Because we're not overly worried about preserving the enzymes or its diastatic power, we can crank up the heat and make a variety of coloured crystal malts.

For leisure last night I studied all the different kinds of malt. There are dozens of varieties and even more variation from malthouse to malthouse. I don't have a giant rotating drum roaster, but I can improvise.

Our friend is coming back from Cebu today and we're going to pick her up at the airport soon.

Stay tuned!

Malting at Home

Last night I had some time to listen to a podcast from the crazy guys at Australian Craft Brewers. The show was about malting at home and the processes involved. I will encapsulate for anyone that is interested. Note the same techniques can be used for malting rice.


Steep and Air Rests
Steep - soak grains in water for 8 hours
Drain - drain and allow air around the grains for about 1 hour.
Steep - add water again and soak for overnight, say 8 hours.
Drain - repeat the drain and air rest.
Repeat this process for 2 days or about 48 hours.

Tap water usually ok. Chlorine is going to prevent molds from taking to your grains.

Germinate
Drain and spread the grain out so that air can circulate around the grains. We need to keep the grain moist, so spray with water if they are getting dry. Not too much water at this phase.

In a few days the grain will sprout. If you are curious, take a razor blade and slice a few kernles open. You will see the shoot or acrospire starting to grow. When the acrospire pokes out of the husk you are half way there!

Let the rootlet reach a length of 2 times the size of the seed. This will have to be an approximation as not all of your grain will germinate at the same rate. When the majority of your modified grains are sprouted it is time to dry.

Drying
Spread the grain on a dark surface outside, say black plastic garbage bags and let the sun dry them. Spread them thinly. They will dry in one to two days in the sun. Watch out for the birds! Maybe a net is advisable if the sparrows are a problem there.

It's important to note that the grains should not dry out at a high temperature. We're looking at about 50ºC until it is dry. Two days in the sun should do the trick. Once the malted grain is dry, you can increase the temperatures and leave the valuable enzymes in tact.

The last step of the drying process involves more heat than the sun alone can produce. Spread the dried grains on a big baking sheet and pop them in your oven to finish them off. This will bring the moisture content below 10% which is ideal for storage. I don't have an oven, but I have a solar oven.

Roasting
If you want to roast a few kilos of malt to create some different darker malts, put a half kilo in a big wok and stir them over the gas cooker. They will smoke so keep tossing them. When they are the desired darkness, dump them in a pot and add some more to the wok. This is smoky business, but roasting malt smells so yummy (especially if you like dark ales and stouts).

Later I'll talk about the water here.