Old Grain.. Suggestions??

Hello All,

I came across a cooler full of old grain that i'd forgotten about. I was going to chuck it but it seems fine, smells ok and looks ok. I figure it's getting boiled for at least 60 minutes so no harm in trying to make beer with it. At worst all i'm losing is time, some hops and yeast.

Most of it is Vienna, I don't really want to make a lager because lager takes time in the fridge, it's old grain and i have another lager going in.. I wanted to make a beer with this in the background while I'm waiting on my lager.

I have a pack of Cascade hops which I have no planned use for, so my thinking was to make some sort of light beer with it - using Harris Beer yeast (I've used this before, it doesn't seem to impart a lot of character on the brew but on the plus side it's fairly clean at room temp, so i thought this might work well).

Here's what i have:
About 1kg Pilsner
3kg (Sealed) Marris Otter Pale
0.5kg Crystal 60
1.5kg Roasted Barley
0.5kg Carapils (Sealed)
6kg (Sealed) Vienna

They're all dated mid to back end 2017. Feel free to tell me this is a total waste of time if it is, If there's no chance of a reasonable brew i'll just bin it.

Anyone got any suggestions? I'd rather not add much to it if i can avoid it, I was thinking along the lines of this:

0.25kg CArapils
0.25kg Crystal
1kg Pale
3kg Vienna
50g Cascade

That way i have enough to make it again if it works out well..

Anyone got any other ideas or alternative hope / yeast suggestions? Feel free to tell me this is a waste of time if it really is

Do a kettle sour?

As long as your malt is dry and smell and tastes good, you should have a problem. I've used malts older than that and the beer's been fine. You might use some fresher hops for the bittering if your pack of cascade has been open for a long time. Look at them. Are they yellow and dry and crumbly or are they still greenish and give a lovely hoppy smell when you rub them between your hands?
Your recipe looks ok. I'd be inclined to use up the pilsner as it's in a bag which has been open for a while.

An Ankoù said:

As long as your malt is dry and smell and tastes good, you should have a problem. I've used malts older than that and the beer's been fine. You might use some fresher hops for the bittering if your pack of cascade has been open for a long time. Look at them. Are they yellow and dry and crumbly or are they still greenish and give a lovely hoppy smell when you rub them between your hands?
Your recipe looks ok. I'd be inclined to use up the pilsner as it's in a bag which has been open for a while.

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That's a fair point, i think i'll substitute the pilsner into the first attempt and get it used up. The hops were bought recently so they're nice and fresh :).

I'll have a go at this the next chance I get for a brew day, see how it turns out - I'm doing my lager with the fresh ingredients today, but I have nothing home brew to drink, so it'll be nice to have some beer to drink while i'm waiting for the lager to ferment out.. then condition.

prog99 - I'm going to have a go at making a sour stout soon, I have most of the stuff for it - I think i'm going to do a straight beer with half of this, i might use the last half of the malt for a practice sour beer.. I like that idea..

Birkin said:

prog99 - I'm going to have a go at making a sour stout soon, I have most of the stuff for it - I think i'm going to do a straight beer with half of this, i might use the last half of the malt for a practice sour beer.. I like that idea..

Click to expand...

Go for it, its a bit weird deliberately infecting the wort but the results from my one attempt have been more than worth it.

As long as the grain is well stored (dry, cool, dark) it can last a long, long time. I bag my (crushed grain) in zip lock bags and then put it in a 60L blue bin. The current sack is at least 8 months old (maybe even a year) and it smells almost as fresh as when I bought it.

You could just make a pale ale. Use your vienna lager reciepe but with something like US-05

Just a quick update - so far so good.. the old grain mashed without issue, hit the target OG bang on and fermented out to the target FG without issue.

I had a sip of the FG sample and early indications are good, it tastes like good beer with a strong malt character - just flat and needs to settle out!

Another week or two to settle and I'll keg & carb it.

Yeah, what is old? I see that maltsters give a best before date of three years when stored dry and cool.

So, your result is actually a nice experiment to provide people with an insight about storage properties of malt.

Your malt is less than three years old. This should give confidence to people who don't use much malt or forget what they have.

I would even say, worst case, mash with some fresh light malt (pale, lager or pilsner) so that at least conversion can take place.

I've got some dark crystal malt (about 3Kg) which I bought from Barley Bottom, at least 10 years ago, maybe 12. Was going to throw it out, but thought I'd give it a try so I put 20% (to start getting rid of it) into a brown ale. Haven't even bottled it yet but keep having a little sip and there's no way I'm going to throw it away.
Sure, you don't have to depend on diastatic properties with crystal malt because there isn't any anyway, but if the malt's kept bone dry- not even cool- it'll be ok.