Malting

We can give you advice about whether or not it is wise to start out in all-grain brewing by malting your own barley, if you would like. Ken

It probably isn't wise but it is the closest to what a man had to do before there was a lhbs to go to. What I'd like to do is to have the experience of getting back to the very basics of brewing. Gene

Hi, Starting at malting stage is the unwise bit. If you do want to go ahead there is so much involved that recommend book instructions rather than advice from here.

I would instead recommend that rather than start at the maling stage, why not start with buying pre malted grains and practice the mashing process first. If your shops are like ours, they will put them through a mill to crack them for you.

By mashing these shop grains, you will know that you have the mashing stage right before trying the more tricky stage of malting your own grains.

For mashing, I have tried two ways

1. putting water into a large jam pot and using a heat source to maintain the mashing temp - about 67 I think from memory. But I found this to be too time consuming as I had to hang around to monitor the temporature.

1. Another book directed me to using a insullated big pot, where you bring it up to temperature and then every half hour to add hot water when you stir it and test the starch levels with iodine. I found this way much easier .

After playing with this, I have gone back to kits which are more consistant than my own brews ( my fault) but I add my mash for added texture and flavour.

Cheers

You can dig around and find the details on the Internet.

Quickly looking around, here is one guy that shows how he malted sorghum (since he can't drink barley based beer) (He now makes commercial non-gluten beer:

I found a reference to this: Zymurgy magazine (the magazine of the American Homebrewers Association), Volume 8, Number 4, Special Grain Brewing Issue 1986—"Home Malting for Homebrewers" by R.C. Dale.

I can't find a detailed site right now, but I've seen them before. I think Papazian's books have a small section on it too. Basically, you will have to get good barley somewhere ("feed" quality barley - not TREATED seed barley). Then there is a lot of soaking in cold water and changing the water and stiring the barley. They you spread it out and let it sprout. Then you dry it and remove the sprouts. Then there are procedures for making all the specialty grains, such a toasting it, or half-mashing it and then drying it, etc.

Bottom line... I agree with the other posters that you should start with store bought malt and get that procedure down well, then move into malting your own (and even growing your own if you are very interested).

Derric