Home Distiller

Hey guys,

I have a bit of a read here and I think I am almost ready to dip my toes in the water of an AG mash.

I have almost 25Kg of whole wheat (about 95% hull free, but definitly unpolished) that i bought for my chickens and they dont eat
From what I have read wheat can have about the same conversion power of two row.

I've bought some foodgrade HPDE buckets that i can drill micro-holes in the bottom of so i can sprout the wheat, what i'm not so sure about is how to go about dring it effectively - (1) can i just bung it on screen/sheet in the sun?
I assume oven drying would be a bad ideas as i would probably denature the enzymes that i'm after.
(2) Am I right in assuming that i will need to crush/grind the malted, dried wheat before using it to convert any other grain?

Thanks for you patience, if there is a thread that i missed, and is known to you please just link me to that - i know the reasearch rule

AG is a little scary, but from what people describe it is Ag if you get it right! (geddit?)

you can sprout in a bucket but this depends on climate,for cool location is OK for higher temperature regions the grain tends to over heat.
you can dry in the sun ,oven ,with a fan makes not much difference.but most ovens does not go low enough.

Cheers Dunder,

have 10L buckets so shouldnt get too high a temp - especially at the moment - 2-4 celcius overnight! Might have to wait a bit till its warmed up a bit more.
Sprout in the dark or light? Or dont matter?

frozenthunderbolt wrote:Sprout in the dark or light? Or dont matter?

Dark... Light can potentially prematurely start chlorophyll production, as I recall...

Cheers Rad, I'll give it a go and report back.

Just wondering why you have to dry it...could you just crush the sprouted wheat wet and mash it? Probably haven't read enough about malting to understand this...I just have a lot of Montana hard red winter wheat that needs to be put to good use.

yes you can that is called "green malt" it does give a bit of different flavor.

Handy to know - good question and feedback, thanks.

What would be a good drying kiln temperature?

this gives you a pretty good idea..http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques/a ... techniques." onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow.

Thanks Dnderhead. That is a great course on malting. The link that worked for me is http://www.byo.com/stories/article/indi ... techniques" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I'm doing this on the fly due to the perfect weather which will be gone soon. #7 trail batch of wheat soaking. If it stinks the birds will eat it.

I'm going to make a batch of hef with it to check the taste before investing in a lot of propane...not into wheatgrass flavor.

Used frozenthunderbolt's bucket method. This works good. 7 Lbs/3.5Kg. Divided into two buckets. Rinsed twice per day, smell for sweetness and stir frequently. I will go to 3 Lbs in one bucket per week as it fits my work schedule better.

Started Wednesday and moved to "dryer" Saturday based on advice from several websites and blogs ("three to four days max" for wheat and corn)...the Mormon related sites were especially helpful...you know; the Mom's blogs...I discovered that they actually eat malted grains! I am shocked.

Anyway; photos are attached of my "dryer". Just a hot garage with a fan. I took off a few window screens, sprayed them clean, then spread the wheat on them (my wife is livid). For the kilning, I put old sheets around the screens and crates and put a 1500 watt electric heater underneath. The dial thermometer says 120 degrees F, a good kiln temperature for wheat. Of course, the garage temp is 90 degrees F.

Look at this article for good wheat malting information: http://www.byo.com/component/resource/a ... r-own-malt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I tried to upload some photos but this forum can't upload basic photos as the message says: "The file is too big, maximum allowed size is 500 KB". My camera is old and not too megapixel intensive. Does anyone know how to upload photos? I am probably not doing it right.

Look in the tips section for pic resizing and posting. http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... =35&t=5852

Nice info on the malting by the way.

Thanks for the photo info prariepiss, I will edit these photos and try to submit.

The wheat is in jars and in the freezer. Nice taste. Does anyone know if vacuume packing would have any effect on enzymes? This would inhibit mold until mashing. Making Hefe-weitzen next weekend...will update results.

The literature recommends "soft wheat" which I will try later...I just have a substantial stash of hard wheat that I want to try (on my co-workers).

Well, i finaly got around to doing this, think i let it go on a bit long though - tasted some grains - could taste the sugar, sweetness in them left another 2 days and they now smell slightly sour - like a lacto ferment - still taste ok, but not as sweet. Have almost finished drying them and though I would test some on a bunch of rice I cooked down. Suspect i will get incomplete conversion so may use it as an adjunct on rice sugar head (once my next 4 Birdwatchers finish) and I have a free fermenter

Hey mate, I've got a cold smoker at a brewing mate's place I have access to if you want to try smoke kilning any of it Let me know if you need to borrow a mash/lauter tun or a mill to get you started as well.

Hey Kiwi, cheers again the offer - I had meant to hunt you out during this school holidays, but doesn't look like its going to happen - i'll have to wait till the next set
You have got too many cool toys to play with!

I used the malt last night/today (about 250-500gms of brown rice cooked and slurried and 550gms wheat malt) and found that the 'low' setting of my slow cooker is 78 celcius. DAMN. 'warm setting' is 55 Used that, luckily i had planned to stagger the adding of my malted wheat - I definitely got some conversion at least - it tastes mildly sweet, but i tested it with lugols solution and it turned black (though it wasn't the clearest sample).

I'm stoked that somethinghappened though!
Next time i'll keep a better eye on the malting grain and stop it sooner.

I blended this lot in my blender - it worked ok but was slow - i should have gone and got dads grist mill and used that, but was to lazy to make an extra trip, I might steal it this Sunday when i go to visit ma 'nd pa to do the rest of the grain.

I'm going mix this with 3kg invert sugar and ferment on the grain with a few extra nutrients using Lalavin ec-1118. See what kind of taste i get. A wheat-y saki clean taste i hope - i figure i'll single run it in my current commercial job.