50 Shades of Grey'n - How to malt your own.

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screamlead

Landlord.
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Oct 21, 2010
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Kemer, fethiye, Turkey
Here we go - bare with me as i get this together as its a PITA trying to do a long doc.

So you want to malt your own grains? i have to do it as no local home brew shops anywhere near me and the only one that does sell them invariably dont have them in stock.
Theres normally two growing seasons out here in Turkey and i would presume worldwide too - a summer crop being sown at the moment and a winter crop which has just been harvested here, I think that would have been sown around may june time.

Any way here we go -
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These are some of the grains i produce, usually it takes around 5-7 days from germination to roasting and always weather dependant - for me as i do it all on my roof terrace. You can do it indoors if you wish, ie the garage or somewhere coolish but not too hot. I have a nightmare in summer with temps hitting upto 50c so the soaking ends up stewing my grain.

So first up you need some grain - i normally do around 5kg at a time - that gives me enough for a decent brew and enough to use for speciality grain if i need any. I buy mine locally from the local olive and flour mill and its very cheap but always has loads of other bits of stuff in it as you will see later in the post.
First up you need a large plastic bowl or something similar in which to soak the grains so it needs to be fairly shallow so as you are not dumping 5kg into a bucket which wont germinate properly or evenly. Firstly give the grains a wash to remove any dust and muck i usually do this on my drying screens as you will see later.
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The grain in the bowl being filled with water - cover the grains with around 2 inches of water to submerge them fully.
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Initially you will get a few floating so give it 10 mins or so then give the whole lot a stir with a big spoon or something similar - then you need to start removing the rubbish thats floating - i use a small mesh collander and dump it all into a bucket.
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You need to soak for two hours then give the grains a breather for 8 hours - I tend to give them a sitr every 30 mins or so when im around and strain out any further floaters. After two hours carefully drain off the water - it doent matter if you dont get it bone dry it needs a liitle moisture to germinate. So day one you can get two soakings in.
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Above - grain in its breathing mode.
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Above day two and you can see its starting to germinate the little white bits poking out of the grain.
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Above - day 4 and its almost there.
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Above its day five and time to start drying the grain
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This is what you want -the rootlet around three times the size of the grain - or if you want to cut them open you want the sprouting shoot inside to about 70% of the length of the grain.
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Above - what you dont want this is a shot of the grain that has gone too far and really is no good. As long as theres only a few no problem carry on to the drying stage.
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Above - mine on the drying screens i made from mossy netting - they need a decent airflow round them to dry out - i do mine in the sun but you can also do this in the oven on a low setting of 50c - 80c for around 8 hours - mine usually takes around 2-3 days at around 30c in the sun. One thing to note here - when you start spreading the grain onto the screens - you may notice your hands come away sticky - this now shows you its doing its thing converting the starch to sugars inside the grain !!
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Some i dried in the oven for speed you should be able to make out the roots now look very brown and very dry - you then rub them between your hands to remove the rootlets and you end up like the pic below.
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Next up the roasting.
 
To get bog standard pale malt all you need to do is dry it out then crush it and thats pale malt.
To get a light malt you need to roast in the oven for about an hour at around 120c - 140c, the way to check it is to remove a couple of grains and slice them open with a sharp knife or stanley knife and have a look inside - for light malt it should be a nic buff colour same as an envelope.
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Above bog standard
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Various pics of different types of grains i do - from light to very dark malts all done in the oven from 120c to 200c for the dark stuff. Some take upto 3 hours for the really dark stuff and can produce quite a bit of smoke too.
I have a couple of word docs on different methods and temps for the malts if anyone wants them PM me your emaill addy and i'll send them - i dont want to post here due to copyright issues etc even though i found them online etc.

If you a serious about doing a lot of malting then you seriously need a grain mill - heres mine - an american version i picke up from an ex pat going back home -
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Heres another tip i picked up online - when storing grain add some bay leaves to the grain
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If you get the stuff like i do its usually got loads of flourbugs - weevels in there too.
Apparently they dont like bay leaves and i can confirm this as the all buggered off once i stuck some in mine.
Also although they look bad wiggling round in your grain they are not in any way harmful to humans. They also drop dead in water when soaking and can be scooped out no problem.
They also dont survive the roasting process either.
The way to confirm if you have them is look at a few grains and if they have small holes in them you will have them - they burrow inside and lay their eggs in the grains.
But dont worry the complete malting/roasting and brewing process kills them off totally. :thumb:
 
Thanks for sharing this.

I've read quite a bit about the malting process but it all makes more sense seeing the pictures you've provided.

- Scott
 
I remember when I lived in Uzumlu, the village families all bought sacks of wheat to make their own bread. They had a village miller who came round towing his grain mill with a tractor. First time I saw it I was laying on my balcony reading a book, WHAT A RACKET!! I jumped 3 feet in the air when it started up.
 
Well you certainly increased my knowledge base Screamlead. Thank you very much for the how to. :clap:

PM sent for the super secret malting methods you teased us with. :cheers:
 
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