Malting your own rye

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Dnderhead
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Re: Malting your own rye

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if you have the room. a floor from a prefab shower.
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Re: Malting your own rye

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I used shower bath, not too convenient.
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by midwest shinner »

I recently malted some rye myself,i used the bucket in a bucket method for about 24 hours wetting the grain and letting the excess drain to the bottom bucket. Then spread the grain(originally 5lbs)on 4 baking sheets and let em sprout. When they were done i dried at liw temp on the baking sheets and once toasted desprouted my putting in a pillowcase and banging it on the ground. It worked well for me at least
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by mmk8283 »

I've done some research on the dangers of ergot, it seems that the likely hood of it has gone down significantly with newer more resistant breeds of rye. The learned practice of farmers rotating different crops from year to year has also helped reduce the problem. That being said, it is not something to overlook; the food industry still takes measures to separate "infected" grains from rye before using them in production. For small batches, its fairly easy to identify ergot on grains from their darker/longer appearance and simply pick them out. Another method is to submerge the grain in a 25% saltwater solution, saltwater being slightly more dense will encourage grains with ergot to float since they are more buoyant than healthy grains. (I would recommend rinsing with freshwater afterwards.)

I'm not implying that this solves any problems or worries, I merely wanted to share what I have learned. If anyone feels brave enough to malt their own rye anyways, I hope they take some measures to be safe.

Does anyone else have any information on detecting separating ergot?
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Halfbaked »

If you have a local mill every load is sampled and checked for ergot and moisture. That being said I can't help you but I bet the mill could tell you 100% how to do it.
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Dan P. »

Can anyone tell me how long the acrospires should be for home-malted rye?
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Dan P. »

Internet (and maybe even this very thread) seems to suggest acrospires should be around 75% of the length of the grain.
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Re: Malting your own rye

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Around length of grain is what mine was when I dried it with good results in past there pics on site somewhere . Think it was abstine who posted malting rye
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Dan P. »

Tater wrote:Around length of grain is what mine was when I dried it with good results in past there pics on site somewhere . Think it was abstine who posted malting rye
Difficult to do a search for "malt rye" or even "malting rye" without coming up with a buttload of results you don't want.
Absinthe did a lot of stuff on malting barley, but I read on ADI that rye needs the acrospire to be shorter, that by 75% of the grain it is entering the realm of over-modification. Seems for the home-maltster 75% should be good for rye. I'm planning on using it green, 100% of the bill, just to see what happens. Kilning the malt is the trickiest bit space/time/equipment wise. Seems to me that 100% green rye malt distilled XXX or more will put you in touch with some beautiful ancient peasant vodka vibrations.
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Re: Malting your own rye

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Dan P. wrote:
Tater wrote:Around length of grain is what mine was when I dried it with good results in past there pics on site somewhere . Think it was abstine who posted malting rye
Difficult to do a search for "malt rye" or even "malting rye" without coming up with a buttload of results you don't want.
Absinthe did a lot of stuff on malting barley, but I read on ADI that rye needs the acrospire to be shorter, that by 75% of the grain it is entering the realm of over-modification. Seems for the home-maltster 75% should be good for rye. I'm planning on using it green, 100% of the bill, just to see what happens. Kilning the malt is the trickiest bit space/time/equipment wise. Seems to me that 100% green rye malt distilled XXX or more will put you in touch with some beautiful ancient peasant vodka vibrations.
That is right was barley .From what Ive done Rye s pepper taste will have a added grass taste if done green..Making vodka guess it doesn't matter
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Dan P. »

Making pot still-vodka, or more properly samoghon or polugar. I've heard about the grassy taste, but so few people seem to have actually used green malt of any kind. Those who have seem to describe "earthy" more than grassy, but then "grassy" seems like a trope from whiskey reviewer speak, i.e. I've heard it applied to stuff that doesn't taste grassy to me. I guess I will have to try and see for myself. I'll do a write up when I get round to it.
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Dan P. »

Well, there seem a lot of little tricks to this malting lark, particularly in how moist to keep the grain, how often to turn it, and how deep to have it.
I found deeper = more heat = faster sprouting. Of course, the ambient temperature will dictate how much heat you want the sprouting grain to generate. In my cool climate, I found that having them spread less than an inch deep and the germination seemed to slow down, and they dried out quicker. At around 5" deep they seemed to go a bit too crazy (ambient temperature here is 15-20 c), so somewhere in bewtween seems like it could work perfectly.

My sprouts were very even, and after 4 days sprouting, the acrospire was around 50% of the length of the grain. I thought maybe this was too short, but there was just the tiniest shadow of a hint of a whiff of something that I didn't like, so I decided to process them.
I ground the malt up up. The smell changed from the smell of hay to a kind of nutty smell. Very nice. I have just mashed the malted grains, and they have worked a charm. They grains were kind of sweet anyway, but the conversion seemed to work abnormally quickly. Maybe my imagination. I am excited for this. The wort tastes a little malty, a little like sweet grass. All in all this was a fun, easy and satisfying process.

I also red that green malt has a very much higher diastatic power than even pale kilned varieties, and that using a low proportion in a mash with unmalted grain, say 20%, the taste does not come through particularly.
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Kegg_jam »

I found malting rye to be a tricky beast as well.

The last part of this article was interesting http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/l ... ayden.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I think I might have been too rough with mine. Only about half went fully modified.
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Dan P. »

Huh. I posted an update that seems to heve been lost in the aether.

Anyway, Kegg-Jam, what I have been doing with further rye malting experiments is to soak and sprout the grain in one of those fine mesh mash-in-a-bag bags. It seems gentler on the roots and acrospires than scraping them up off of a screen or table when it comer time to turn the grains. The roots do not really grow through the mesh, or where they do they shake free easily without damage, but I guess you need to turn the bag often. The only drawback is that you need to really get your hand in the bag to help mix up the sprouts to get even modification. The advantages are that I believe it is gentler on the sprouts, it makes them easier to handle, it makes them easier to clamp them up at night if it gets cold where you are. It's also easier to just put the portion you need for one mash per bag, since once they are soaked, who knows what weight of dry grain you have there. I guess that only applies if you are using the rye green.

Speaking of which, the taste of my first 100% green rye distillate is too young to accurately assay, but a week or so after distilling, I still don't get the dreaded "grassy notes". Perhaps this will come out in the days or weeks to come?

My view on green malt at the moment is that seems to do better slightly over-modified, and used primarily to convert un sprouted grain, as on its own I seem to be having a lot of trouble getting a good yield on its own. The mash it makes also has a strange slimy, silky quality a bit like soy milk. Maybe the protein?
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by still_stirrin »

Dan P. wrote:.... The mash it makes also has a strange slimy, silky quality a bit like soy milk. Maybe the protein?
Is it sticky, like glue? Or should I say, very viscous? That would be the glucans in the rye. They're significant. You've heard of using (wheat) flour as paste, haven't you? Well, rye would be an even better choice.

When I mash rye, it gets so sticky that the runoff almost stops. In fact, I use a special mash/lauter tun to run the rye in. It's a shallow V-shaped tun that collects the "syrup" from the bottom and rinses with hot sparge water. The runoff is VERY sticky. And I always do a glucan rest in my mash profile too.

But oh my goodness..the rye tastes spectacular. So its well worth the effort.
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Dan P. »

still_stirrin wrote:
Dan P. wrote:.... The mash it makes also has a strange slimy, silky quality a bit like soy milk. Maybe the protein?
Is it sticky, like glue? Or should I say, very viscous? That would be the glucans in the rye. They're significant. You've heard of using (wheat) flour as paste, haven't you? Well, rye would be an even better choice.

When I mash rye, it gets so sticky that the runoff almost stops. In fact, I use a special mash/lauter tun to run the rye in. It's a shallow V-shaped tun that collects the "syrup" from the bottom and rinses with hot sparge water. The runoff is VERY sticky. And I always do a glucan rest in my mash profile too.

But oh my goodness..the rye tastes spectacular. So its well worth the effort.
ss
Not sticky, but kind of slimy like soy milk.
I've fermented raw rye before, and make rye bread too, so I'm familiar with its stickiness. It just so happens that rye meal is what I use to lute my still, as you say.
Now, the mashed green rye malt, on the other hand, is not sticky, or doughy, but thick and slick. It'a wierd one, probably glucans, as you say.
In any event, I distil on the grain, but with regular store-bought malt I can just bung everything in the boiler and carry one as normal. With the green rye mash I'm much, much more cautious in bringing it up to temp.
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Dan P. »

Yesterday I did a 3kg green rye malt (3kg dry weight) and 3kg wholewheat flour mash, and the mash has come up as I expect a mash to; Clear wort on top, gunk at the bottom, everything nice and thin and manageable, so I think the green malt is probably best used for its DP, which is apparently crazy high.
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Dan P. »

Further experiments show that green malt is great for converting raw grain. With smaller percentages I get better conversions than I do with store bought kilned malt. I also slightly over modify the malt. No "grassy" taste. For rye, I let the acrospire grow to aproximately the length of the grain. I use it in low % of the bill, 10-15% (but I am a very amateurish and sloppy masher. Someone with better equipment and discipline could likely go even lower).
Also the malt-in-a-bag is a real winner for making up batches of green malt with a known dry weight.
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Re: Malting your own rye

Post by Kegg_jam »

Dan p.

I'm giving this a try. got some rye sprouting at the moment should be fully modified in a another day or so. Going to try and convert some corn and see how it goes.
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