Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

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yakattack
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by yakattack »

Believe me I'm scratching my head too. And yes i have. And I used two as a redundancy.

I don't know what else to do.
HDNB wrote: The trick here is to learn what leads to a stalled mash....and quit doing that.
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bitter
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by bitter »

How far along was the malt when you started drying?
Acrospire length 3/4 to full length of the grain?

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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by yakattack »

Most that had malted were between 80 and 100 percent grain length
HDNB wrote: The trick here is to learn what leads to a stalled mash....and quit doing that.
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bitter
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by bitter »

What percentage of the grain malted?

How fine did you mill the malt? I like mine pretty fine. As fine as possible without wrecking the husk.

Did you taste and chew on a grain it taste sweet?

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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by yakattack »

It was low. Maybe 50 percent.

It was as find as my 2 roller mill would go. Husks broken but not dust. 1 step before flour I guess.

Didn't really do a taste test. I'm thinking it's mostly to do with the quality of the grain. When I measure out 4 scoops of grain to malt, 1 scoop of it is debris and dead grains. I'm going to start some wheat tonight. Wheats always malted better for me anyways.
HDNB wrote: The trick here is to learn what leads to a stalled mash....and quit doing that.
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bitter
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by bitter »

I am going to say must just be bad quality. If only 50% malted you could be hitting the limits of the enzymes in the malt that was successful. I did do a 50% 2 row commercial malt and 50% unmalted barely.. and it turned out well % wise was about 84-85% efficient. Home malted is normally not as high in enzymes as commercial malt.

I would say try different barley and wheat.. maybe try corn.. its on my todo list.

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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

Well I'm enjoying the discussion even if we aren't getting anywhere.

I always thought DP was a measure of how much conversion a malt can perform in a given time at a given temp.
What I'm not understanding here is why you aren't getting better numbers when letting the mash go longer. It almost had to mean that the enzymes are becoming denatured, otherwise they would just keep chugging through the starch.
Shouting and shooting, I can't let them catch me...
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by yakattack »

That's my thought too mch. Which is why I'm so perplexed. I just don't know how else to approach this. I'm going to start wheat and document each step. See if I get better results.
HDNB wrote: The trick here is to learn what leads to a stalled mash....and quit doing that.
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by gsugg »

Did the same thing using an old propane smoking cabinet. Temp cut on/off fans to control temp and smoke. In process of making modifications right now to get best things we can do.

Thanks,

GSugg
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by yakattack »

gsugg wrote:Did the same thing using an old propane smoking cabinet. Temp cut on/off fans to control temp and smoke. In process of making modifications right now to get best things we can do.

Thanks,

GSugg
Would love to see what you're working on .
HDNB wrote: The trick here is to learn what leads to a stalled mash....and quit doing that.
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by yakattack »

Well finally did a test of my malted wheat.

Ground 8 ounces of wheat malt to powder but not flower.
Took 1/2 gallon of water and grain up.to 144 and held for a few hours.

Allowed to cool

Took sg. 1.026 at 20.c that's 73 % efficency. And with such a small batch hold temp and not over shooting temp is not fun. It's acceptable. 15 bucks for a 55lb back of wheat. Around 5 dollars to malt it. Not bad at all really.

50 lbs malted. 200 to go. I can successfully malt 3 kg of wheat a day. All for about 25 minutes of work a day.

So assuming no hiccups and I don't have to go out of town, 200lbs will takes me 35 days from first soak to final dry. Not to bad really. Just shy of 200lbs of malt a month. I'm thinking I need to find a really good wheat beer recipe. I can also kiln for flavor profile. Smoke for flavor profile.

Steam mash. Steam run through the flute. Now to build the barrels and we can get some good whiskey aging for a few years. Jimbos single malt is going to be first up. 100% malt wheat. All home malted and kilnned.

God I love this hobby.
HDNB wrote: The trick here is to learn what leads to a stalled mash....and quit doing that.
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by panikry83 »

I may move in this direction once I get the process down. I'll be bookmarking this - that cabinet looks damn good.
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by FuelMaker »

I know I'm late to this party... if somebody else is thinking of building a drying cabinet I'd like to point out an alternate (and cheap) means of airflow and heat: a hair dryer.

A few months back I slapped together a heated curing cabinet for epoxy out of plywood and the only heat source I had handy was a old hair dryer I've been using for years as a cheapo heat gun. I used a hole saw near the bottom and poked it in, I made another hole on the same side near the top to let the airflow out. It worked really well.

The low-medium-high settings gave me 125F, 180F and 220F and the temps stayed stable and were consistent throughout the cabinet. Over the course of a few weeks I think I put at least 60 hours on the dryer and it just kept on blowing hot air. The only drawback was the hair dryer was kind of noisy - and I had to vacuum out the hair dryers intake screen a few times (shop is dusty).
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by Fart Vader »

Brilliant FuelMaker!
That's thinking inside the box. ;)
My double walled boiler build: The Mashimizer. viewtopic.php?f=50&t=64980
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Re: Building a malt kiln/ drying cabinet.

Post by yakattack »

125f is going to be hotter than you want for heat so you are going to want some sort of termostatic control.

The fan won't be strong enough to go through multiple grain beds. I have 4 trays on mine and even with 4 fans directly mounted under the trays blowing the hot air from the element up I have to rotate the tray to get even drying. So a blow dryer won't have the power to accomplish this either.

Buy if you wanted to make a rotating drum style dryer then yes a hair dryer would actually work quite well. But still noisy lol
HDNB wrote: The trick here is to learn what leads to a stalled mash....and quit doing that.
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