Wild Easter Week is Over - Back To Life

Today was a 'down to it' trip to the city. Pay bills, grocery shopping, haircut, whatever. It's of course Summer Holidays here now and there is a zillion people at the mall. I thought I knew what a zillion was but... oh never mind. I'll get used to crowds.

While on the daunting city jaunts, I quite often managed to acquire some small but useful things for my home brewery; today was good for useful things. I have located some aquarium silicone for making water-tight connections in the brew gear. It's clear and requires 7 days curing and a rinse before I can use it in brewing. It's called Pioneer Mighty Seal and comes in the small 50g tubes.

I also found some tiny little pump spray bottles at Watson's for isopropyl alcohol. When I am working with yeast cultures I can just spray and wipe with a cotton ball.

I also picked up the closest thing I could find to a turkey baster... it's called a "flavor injector" which is basically a large veterenarian type hypodermic needle that I can suck a wort sample with. The nice thing is that is has a detatchable stainless steel tip and it's easy to clean. I could also attach a length of small-diameter tubing where the needle part is.

Another thing-a-ma-jiggy is a make-shift airlock. From a sprayer bottle kit I use the tubing with some food grade silicone and some cable ties to make an airlock for my growler. I have another airlock on order from the US, but who knows when that will get here. The postal system here is about as reliable as a 10 cent watch.

There is another batch of malt in the works. This time 5kg of barley. It's already germinating very well and will be fully modified in about two days. I'll take some pictures.


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!

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 Barley at Home, Finally

Barley Ahoy!
Yesterday was a big day here in the sticks. I found a place that sells barley! It struck me when I was looking for info on the net and found the wikipedia entry for barley. Most of the barley in the world is grown for animal feed. Wow, what a concept. I went to the feed place a few km down the road and sure enough, two-row BARLEY! There was also wheat (trigo), oats and much more.

The funny part was when the guy there asked me "How many cocks do you have, Sir?" I said, "Uh...what?" He thought I was going to use the barley to feed my fighting cocks. I explained that barley was the main ingredient in cerbeza. Ah, he understands now. After all, you can't have a cock fight without beer.

So I ended up with 6kg in bag. I expect this 6 kilos to yield about 5 kilos when malted. Five kilos of malted barley is worth about $15 plus shipping. The raw barley is about 10 cents a pound or about $1.30 all up.

I started the soaking last night and the barley is swollen to almost twice the size already. I am soaking for 8 hours and then air resting for 1 to 2 hours. Soaking will be done tomorrow and then we'll start the germination phase.

Also, if anyone is looking for a 0ºC to 100ºC thermometer, labratory grade, they have them at Mercury Drugs for P170.

Gotta work na.

Working The Web on Sunday

Yesterday, I did lots of linking and link echange requests with some success. I made this little graphic to stick on the blogs...





Unfortunately, when I upload with Blogger they make the preview suck, but the image itself is clear.
Yeast Podcast
I did some listening to podcasts yesterday too and dropped an email to James at Basic Brewing Radio and asked him to plug the Homebrewing in the Philippines group. The podcast I enjoyed the most was James' three part interview with Wyeast's David Logston from November 2005. It's very informative and is well worth the over two hours of time they spend talking about all things to do with yeast; aeration, flocculation, attenuation, stuck fermentations and much more.

There is also a great two part interview with Gerard Lemmens all about hops. I didn't know that China is the third largest grower of hops in the world. Maybe someday those fresh hops can come south to us. I also want to research the possiblilities of growing any variety of hops here in the Philippines. I don't know much about the rhizomes and their ideal environment. I know the climate and country around Washington and Oregon states in the US having been there many times as I was born within a mile of the Columbia River. Yakima and Mt. Hood are words I remember since I could walk.

Today is Monday and it's grocery day again. I want to stop at the grain dealer and see what they have for raw grains. I know they have palay (unpolished rice), but maybe, just maybe they have some wheat or barley. That would rock. I have some Dry Malt Extract (DME) coming from the US right now and if I can malt some grain I can make a full bodied ale. I also have a variety of hops so depending on what I can come up with for malt, I may be able to make a beer with a "real" style. :-)
I tasted the ginger ale yesterday and gee it kicks. It's very dry now and has a noticable twang from the calamansi.
Got to go now. Busy day. I'll keep you posted.

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.