Down By The Old Malt Mill

Gee, I wish I had a barley mill. I want to experiment with the malt I've made and want to check out how it looks, feels and behaves compared to commercially available malts I've used before.

Diastatic Power
One thing of most interest is the diastatic power of the malt. A well modified base malt will have at least 20% more muscle so that things that cannot self convert their own starch can be included in the mash. The base malt has the extra amylase to convert other things such as corn, rice, unmalted barley and oatmeal. The amylase enzymes float around in the mash at 60 to 70ºC chomping all that starch into sugars.

Extract brewers need not worry as all the sugars are already available. So with extract recipe no enzymes are needed. Enzymes are denatured (killed) in the evaporation and or drying processes.

Anyways, back to the mill. The idea of a barley mill is to crush the grain and not shred its husk. We are going to need the husk intact to act as a filter in the lauter tun (aka cooler). We also don't want the seed to be pulverized into powder as the flour can cause gummy blobs that block the flow from the lauter tun and cause 'stuck mashes'. So the job the mill has to do is like a rolling pin with enough force to crumble the insides of the seed and yet leave the husk in pretty good shape.

Git Yer Rollin' Pin
Seeing as though I have no real barley mill, but I do have a rolling pin I thought I'd give that a go. By placing a few cups of malt in a heavy duty plastic bag I began rolling and crushing. I did this in the kitchen on the big cutting board.

The result was pretty good and looked consistent with what I was hoping for in a crush. Now a few cups is a few cups, but I have lots of cups to crush.

It's a lot of work, it's hot and I am getting thirsty. I guess I am going to have to make some beer soon.

Cheers!

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!