Malting Barley

[HopHeadGrady]

A member of the family who has a farm has offered up free 2 row barley. They grow 300 + acres annually.

Of course the problem is, is it worth the trouble to malt?

Does anyone have any links that explains how to malt barely at home?
Even if I can make some sort of toasted malt or some specialty malt it would be worth it. I dunno, don't want to toss this up. With free barely its worth investing a little to help malt I would think??


Cheers

 

[fifelee]

Do a search. There are lots of guys on HBT who have done home malting. This is the most extensive I have seen: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/happiness-home-malting-107409/

If it is worth it is up to you. I doubt you will save much money, but few in homebrewing save money. It is about the fun. So give it a try. Then teach me. I raise barley and have been meaning to try malting myself.

 

[HopHeadGrady]

Thanks! This looks like a lot of work... LOL. However, the Barley is free so it's not costing me anything. I just wish there was an easier way to dry the malt out.

 

[Revvy]

Colobrewer on here is the king of home malting. His thread is a great resource.

 

[HopHeadGrady]

Cool. I will def check out some of his info. I just don't want to build a huge kiln or something. I would be happy doing 5-10lbs at a time just for the fun of it.

 

[Chesterbelloc]

When you decide to malt the barley. You might try to wait until the when Sun is high-in-the-sky and dry the malt on a surface that collects a load of solar-radiation, racking it every so often to ensure even drying. This should kill the germination process while keeping the enzymatic potential.

This is how a lot of nuts and drupes headed for commerical sale are dried by the Mexican migrant-workers in California. Similarly, it is also how beasties infesting soil are gotten rid of, except in this case the soil is covered with plastic for a whole season to collect solar-radiation, thereby steaming to death nasty critters. Yep. The good old Sunshine.

Light-crystals might be able to be prepared the second way illustrated and then dried for solar evaporation.

Just a thought.

 

[kevlee67]

I actually malted my first 50 lbs of barley a couple of weeks ago. Tried the oven thing, did not like it, but I work for a farmer, so I borrowed a screaming 12 inch grain drying fan, along with a couple of aereation tubes found out at his dump pit, used my turkey smoker for heat and got the temp to 125 and dried 25 lbs in 3 hours. So then come the lil roots, well what I found best there was use the same thing just only put 5 to 10 lbs in at a time and it would blow the grains around. and removed the roots for me. I am not saying this is the right way in fact am asking if someone else has any idea if this is the correct way, but I did make 20 gallons of beer this weekend.