Home Distiller

OK i am attempting to malt my own barley.. i get the malting bit.. but am a little bit unsure of the final drying and kilning bit...

most places i have read seem to dry the malt out in slowly increasing heat (30 then 40 then 50) and then finish with a "kilning" or "curing".. now most pale malt do this at about 75°C for about half an hour to an hour..

wouldn't this destroy the enzymes??

what steps do you guys take in the drying "curing" stage???

You probably already read it there is a sticky at the top of r&t,

Remus and Steve go through the trials and tribulations of malting and drying rye. It'd work the same for barley I think ,worth the read anyway.

I only did some trial maltings so far used the oven to dry it from memory it was about 50*c

anyhow good luck

20 years ago - I tried my hand at malting.

Soak the grain to get it wet in a BOP - I think I let it soak at room temp for a couple of hours.

I would spread the grain out on a bedsheet in the sun, cover it with another sheet and get it wet to start the germination. When it started to crack and the acrospire was twice the size as the kernel, I would remove the top sheet and fold the bottom sheet and grains up and pour the sprouted grain into a pillow case. I would then tie the open end off with a piece of string to keep it shut and throw it into the wifes clothes drier for a quick spin with NO heat in the gentle/fluff cycle until dry. Heat kills the enzymes you need for starch conversion.

The constant rolling motion separated the sprouts from the grain and they were easily removed before I used it for mashing.

I just buy 50# bags of malted grain now, it was too much trouble, but I am the sort that tries to learn everything in case i need the knowledge in the future.

YMMV,

Mike

absinthe wrote:OK i am attempting to malt my own barley.. i get the malting bit.. but am a little bit unsure of the final drying and kilning bit...

most places i have read seem to dry the malt out in slowly increasing heat (30 then 40 then 50) and then finish with a "kilning" or "curing".. now most pale malt do this at about 75°C for about half an hour to an hour..

wouldn't this destroy the enzymes??

what steps do you guys take in the drying "curing" stage???

I never got it down really well, but just HAD to try my hand at home malting, just as you are. During my research, I had the same exact question.

The answer is that it is step dried for enzyme protection. Yes, alpha-amylase would deactivate at kilning temperatures IF the enzymes were in an aqueous mash. Just as a thicker mash protects enzymes, so does the dry conditions of the kilning procedure. This is why you would not jump straight to 75 C. You would indeed deactivate your enzymes. You have to drive off the moisture first.

Alchemist is pretty accurate right there.

In my experience, constantly moving air will dry the stuff out faster than stale air in a non-convection oven. Put the stuff in a smoker without any wood and it works great.

By the way, barley and rye are extremely rare in my part of Ohio, so I use wheat.

I used a thin layer spread on a plastic covered folding table to dry my corn malt. I blew cold air over it and turned it once a day until it was really dry so I could grind it. It worked great except my corn was incompletely malted. The acrospire(green part of the shoot) needs to be about 1 inch average for complete malting. The corn spread on the table started as 20 lbs dry weight. It gained a lot after steeping and sprouting. When it was dry it was 19.5 lbs.