My oven’s minimum temp is 170°F, so aside from using Mother Nature during the summer months, I haven’t had a good way to quickly dry malted grain during the winter months.
Last year, I got a good deal on two bathroom vent fan/heater combos that I was going to use in my bathrooms at the house. I ended up only installing one of them, so the other one just got tossed aside in the garage until the other day.
Using some spare wood, a roll of polyester window screen (bought from Lowe’s), some left over styrofoam insulation panels, and the neglected bathroom vent fan/heater, I put together a malting / drying table.
My thought on this design was to install the heater on one end and the vent fan on the opposite. That way, the heater would blow hot air across the top of the grain, the vent would pull that hot air in and return it below the grain bed. The heater would then pull in this air and return it back up top. This hot air would just continuously circulate around the grain bed, drying the grain out over time.
During construction, I built the insulated shell to slide back and forth as to control the temperature. During testing, with the shell completely closed, the temp would hold around 140°F. I then spent time sliding the shell back to form an opening, a little bit at a time, until I found the point at which the temp would hold around 115-120°F. I made a couple of sharpie marks at this point for the future.
Below are pics of this build, as well as some pics of it in action.
The frame:
