I wrote about malting a little bit in a post about the first BJCP class. You may notice the slight difference in the title from previous “How do I do that?” posts. The explanation comes down to my honest belief that malting, while something you can do yourself, should be left to the experts. This shouldn’t deter anyone from wanting to know how it’s done, what’s going on in the process, and ultimately how they might do it at home. But I can tell you that I probably won’t ever do this myself. Why? Lack of patience, lack of practical experience, a genuine respect for the companies that do it well; any of these reasons is enough to discourage me from trying it. But don’t let that stop you if you’re interested in it.
What I find most interesting about the malting process is that it’s done so well that it’s made techniques like decoction mashing obsolete. Grains are now so well modified that we don’t need to go to the trouble that brewers of the past did to achieve the same results. But let’s get down to brass tacks. What is the malting process?
At its core, malting is a controlled germination of the grain. What this germination does is convert some of the starch contained within each kernel of grain into sugar, but most importantly is the production of enzymes within the infant plant — or Acrospire — that are then activated during the mashing process.
Step One Soaking the grain:
The first step in the process is soaking the grain. Essentially, what you’re doing in this step is waking up the living, infant plant contained within the grain and telling it to begin growing. You’re also softening the hull of the grain in order to make it easier for the acrospire to break through. Essentially, the water needs to cover the grain, and should be lukewarm. It should soak overnight.
Step Two: Germination
After that, you’ll want to drain the water off, and put it in a vessel that will allow you to strain water through the grain — a colander can work if you’re not malting much grain, a lauter tun, or mash tun with a false bottom could work for larger volumes so long as you leave the lid off. The grain needs airflow to begin germination. You’ll run some water through the grain once or twice a day, depending on how humid or dry the environment you’re malting in is. This process can last anywhere from three days to one week. When the acrospire is about twice the length of the grain, it should be ready, and close to fully modified. You should see rootlets, and a small shoot. If the shoot gets too long, it will have converted and eaten too much of the starch; this is called over-modification. Another way to determine whether it is ready or not is to taste a grain. If it’s sweet, you’re pretty much ready to dry your grain.
Step Three A: Crystallizing:
Unless you want to make Crystal Malt. Crystal Malt gets its sweetness and color from the fact that it is “stewed” while drying. That is to say it’s heated while still wet, so it almost kind of mashes, converting all the potential starch to sugars which then crystallize in and around the grain. The longer it’s stewed, the darker the malt gets, thus the various lovibond scale colors available; e.g. 40, 60, 80, etc.
Step Three B: Drying/Kilning
Dependent on how much grain you’re malting, you can either oven-dry or sun-dry your grain. The basics of this step involve drying, but not toasting the grain. If you’re oven-drying keep it set to warm or the lowest temperature possible. If you’re sun-drying make sure the grain isn’t re-wet by dew or rain. You’ve dried the grain enough when the rootlets dislodge from the grain easily when you run your hands over it. This could take a day or two if you’re sun-drying, and as little as four hours if you’re oven-drying.
Basically, once this is done you should have exactly what you need for base malt, the raw ingredient to make a light colored beer like a Kösch, Pilsener or Cream Ale.
Step Four: Roasting
This is another hard part, and definitely where you may find yourself not getting exactly what you want. Roasting or toasting isn’t difficult in and of itself, but making sure you have the control over time and temperature to get the desired color and flavor imparted by heat isn’t easy. Without a careful understanding of exactly how hot your oven is — or dutch oven in the case of crystal malts. Time and temperature control are the big deals here. The longer you roast, the darker your grain should be, imparting the kinds of caramel flavors and melanoidins you may want in certain beers. While I don’t have a specific guide as to exactly what temperature and time to roast/toast for, John Palmer has a pretty awesome guide to malt types.
Should you do it?
If you want to. There’s nothing wrong with experimentation, my balk at the notion of trying to do this myself largely comes from the fact that it’s not a cheap process — on both a monetary and time level — with which to make mistakes. I would be excited to hear from people who have done their own malting. Contact me, let me know how it goes, send me a beer made with malt you made yourself. Or just send me beer. That’s cool too.
