Caramel Rye Malt

[Twisted Brick]

I have a batch of germinating rye that will be ready for kilning in a day or two. I was thinking of reserving a couple pounds to try making caramel malt to add in a 100%-malt rye, but am unfamiliar with the flavor contributions/proportions of caramel rye malt.

Anyone have any experience distilling with caramel rye malt or roasted rye malt? Any/all advice would be appreciated.

Twisted Brick

[still_stirrin]

I have made smoked malt (not rye, but barley malt) by soaking it in water until saturated and then spreading on cookie sheets and placing in the (BBQ grill) smoker for a while until dried. I would stir the malt every 15 minutes as I did this. The malt smoked and crystalized and caramelized nicely.

Then when I made the Rauch beer, it had a wonderful deep copper color and the rich caramel and smokey flavor of the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauch beer (a German smoked beer).

So, homemade caramelized rye malt would be a great addition to your whiskey. In fact, smoking it to caramelize it would give you a great highlands Scotch-style whiskey. I would experiment to see what ratio gives you the best balance in the distillers beer.

Good luck. And remember to keep us informed on your results.
ss

[8Ball]

TB, I haven’t done any at all with malted caramel rye. Have done quite a bit with caramunich malt, a two row as you are aware. For me, 3% of the grain bill gave the subtle flavor I was after and 7% was just too much.

Roasting raw steam rolled barley from the feed store for a couple hours @ 325F produced a good nutty flavor for me. Have to let it air out for a couple weeks before using it. 10% of this stuff in a grain bill worked.

Finally, 5% malted rye turned out very nice in that bourbon I finished recently.

Hope this helps.

[Twisted Brick]

Thanks s_s. I will definitely be smoking some of my next batch. I have some cherry, apple and (red) oak in the shed that I can throw in my offset. Got no peat though. Will be looking for that thin blue smoke. Definitely going to have to experiment with time and temps, but also want to make a peated bourbon at some point.

8Ball - Thanks for the tips. I should go pick up a pound of different caramel malts to compare mine to. I'll follow your advice and start with 3% in the first mash, with incremental increases over successive batches.

[Twisted Brick]

Just a quick follow up on my first attempt at caramel rye malt.

Fifteen pounds of organic rye berries were steeped/air dried then germinated at 61F. When the acrospires were 50% the length of the grain, I loaded 5.5lbs into a covered stainless pot and kilned (stewed) at 165F for 3hrs. The kiln temp was 165F, but the grain only reached 135F, 23F short of target, so I stewed it for an additional hour. The rye was moved to 2 cookie sheets and dried at 200F for 2 hrs and 250F for 30min.

The following morning the rye was slightly 'tacky' so it was spread over my black shade cloth on the ground and sun-dried until fully cured. At this point the rye was noticeably sweet. I imagine at 135F for 4 hrs the starch essentially converted itself inside the grain. I need to repeat this test in a more shallow stewing vessel to achieve the recommended 158F threshold to see the differences that occur.

The caramel rye is on the right in the photo. It believe it is more like a 20L caramel malt and lost the grassy aroma of the normally kilned pale rye malt at this stage. I wonder what a mix of these two rye malts would taste like in a bourbon.
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[still_stirrin]

...I wonder what a mix of these two rye malts would taste like in a bourbon.

“sexy” ?????

[pope]

LOL SS. TB what is your malting and drying regime? Bucket soak/rinse/repeat? Curious how you stop the malting process and dry.

[Twisted Brick]

I have only malted 50lbs of rye now, but use the same steep/air rest intervals I follow for malting wheat. The entire steeping and germination process is carried out at 60F (or close to it). This is critical to eliminate any chance bacteria getting hold of the grain as it germinates.

To start: I place 15lbs of grain in a BAP, cover over by 2" of water and place in the fridge, followed by:

• 12hrs steep followed by 8hrs air rest (drain water out into sink through a giant colander)
  12hrs steep followed by 8hrs air rest
  4hrs steep - at this point the acrospires are little buds protruding from the end of the grain
  Load grain into steamer trays and place back in fridge for 3days or until acrospires have grown to 50-75% the length of the grain

I can only fit two 16" circular aluminum steamer trays in my fridge at one time so I keep the third and fourth tray in a closed box in the garage and just rotate trays in/out of the fridge every 3hrs or so. At night it's been in the 50's so I just leave all four of them on the patio table, covered.

Once germination is complete I untangle the grain and rootlets and spread onto 6 cookie sheets. I place these in my kiln and dry out using the following schedules depending on what I want to do. Since my kiln only goes up to 165F, I finish roasting the malt in the house gas oven. I am currently looking for a hot plate that I can place in the bottom of the kiln to hopefully attain 200-250F. I found a perfect one on Craigslist, but its located 2hrs drive away.

The purpose of the kiln is to dry the grain out very slowly in order to preserve the enzymes and protect the grain's optimum DP. This is obviously compromised when making caramel/crystal malts, but exogenous enzymes make this a non factor.

After all stewing/kilning/roasting is completed, I lay the grain out in the sun to cure and hopefully end up with a 4-6% moisture content. I use the highly technical 'squeeze' and 'bite' tests to monitor this. When the grain feels hard and crisp, I'm done. The grain then needs to rest about 30-45 days before using. Before I got the kiln I just laid my grain (red wheat) out on the shade cloth to sun dry and it worked great (when it was sunny).
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[cayars]

Are you not worried about denaturing the enzymes at those temps or just using them for flavor?
Have you tried a pillow case and your clothes dryer on it's lowest setting?

[Twisted Brick]

Right. I'm not worried about denaturing the enzymes because this malt is for flavoring only and constitutes only a small percentage of the overall mash bill. I also always use enzymes now regardless of the DP of my mashes for the following:

Glucoamylase is more effective at saccharification than the beta amylase in malt.

It’s common for the amylases in malt to create nonfermentable dextrins. Glucoamylase can reduce these dextrins to fermentable sugars - thus giving you a higher yield when combined.

its also common to use high temp fungal amylases during cereal mashing, where regular malt amylases would be quickly denatured by the high temps.

Use them alone with unmalted grains, or together with malt, there are good reasons in both cases.

Can't say I have tried the pillowcase drying method. I like the kiln because once the desired temp is set, it will remain perfectly stable until I return. I would imagine a side benefit of the clothes dryer method is the free winnowing that occurs with the tumbling.

[cayars]

Glucoamylase is more effective at saccharification than the beta amylase in malt.

It’s common for the amylases in malt to create nonfermentable dextrins. Glucoamylase can reduce these dextrins to fermentable sugars - thus giving you a higher yield when combined.

If you are using enough malt on home size batches like 50 gallons you likely will not notice any difference of adding gluco over just the malt which has beta enzymes. If you were fermenting thousands of gallons then getting the remaining 5% the beta couldn't convert is money and time saved. Do two batches head to head and check your FG to see what benefit you get using the gluco with malted grains.

If you don't have enough malt and will be adding alpha then by all means add the gluco as well but really no need to add just gluco to malted batches. Save it for recipes you really need it for.

You don't get flavor from liquid or powdered enzymes but do get flavor from malts so given a choice use the money you would have spent for the gluco dose and put that in malted barley instead.

Home vs Commercial is a different beast. At home I don't need to turn around ferments every 3 days nor do I need to liquefy my corn quicker to free up the masher for the next batch, etc... So enzymes save time in commercial settings that may not be as important in the hobby realm, especially if you embrace and enjoy mashing.

[8Ball]

Right. I'm not worried about denaturing the enzymes because this malt is for flavoring only and constitutes only a small percentage of the overall mash bill. I also always use enzymes now regardless of the DP of my mashes for the following:

Glucoamylase is more effective at saccharification than the beta amylase in malt.

It’s common for the amylases in malt to create nonfermentable dextrins. Glucoamylase can reduce these dextrins to fermentable sugars - thus giving you a higher yield when combined.

its also common to use high temp fungal amylases during cereal mashing, where regular malt amylases would be quickly denatured by the high temps.

Use them alone with unmalted grains, or together with malt, there are good reasons in both cases.

Can't say I have tried the pillowcase drying method. I like the kiln because once the desired temp is set, it will remain perfectly stable until I return. I would imagine a side benefit of the clothes dryer method is the free winnowing that occurs with the tumbling.

+1 on the malting during cool weather and always using enzymes, even with malts.

I sun dry the wheat (from the feed store) after I malt it then stick it in my oven at the lowest setting with the door open till it gets the amber color. Then I spritz with a little water and put it into my smoker with the cold smoke generator going. Then it airs out for a few days. Then into a homer bucket with a good sealing lid.

[RC Al]

This ones a bit more "in the box" thinking
http://www.aussiedistiller.com.au/viewt ... 24&t=12152

[Twisted Brick]

That's a pretty skookum setup ya got there, Al! Which reminds me, I need to get an aerator for my steep pot.

Thanks for sharing.

Twisted

[RC Al]

Not mine, I wish, just thought id share to get peoples grey matter working

[Twisted Brick]

I sun dry the wheat (from the feed store) after I malt it then stick it in my oven at the lowest setting with the door open till it gets the amber color. Then I spritz with a little water and put it into my smoker with the cold smoke generator going. Then it airs out for a few days. Then into a homer bucket with a good sealing lid.

I've smoked a lotta stuff in my day, but not wheat. Whatcha flavoring your wheat with? Sounds yummy, as in an Islay-style single malt wheat. Ever do like still_stirrin describes and dry your malt using smoke? I'd be tempted to use cherry or pecan.

[OtisT]

Twisted Brick,
I love your kiln. That double door is very cool. By double I mean the outer insulated, inner glass door.

Otis

[Twisted Brick]

Thanks, Otis. Those doors were a bonus, and honestly, the deal-maker in taking receipt of the kiln I got for free.

They were an excellent tool when I installed an exhaust (computer) fan in the top of the kiln and learned from the fogged up windows that I needed to run the fan speed higher.

[8Ball]

Twisted, I actually do use pecan, cherry, and white oak to smoke the wheat and also pale malt barley. I make an 80/20 mix with the two grains, barley being the dominant one. I use it to supplement my grain bills that already contain barley & wheat with a little smoke. I haven’t tried drying in a smoker, have had issues with mold before so I get the home malted stuff dried real good and kilned, then I work on getting the smoke on it.

Here’s my malt process for wheat:
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=73115