Chris' Excellent Home Floor Malting Adventure

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Step by step instructions:

1. Soaked 15# 1998 crop Standard/Hussar, AB 2 row in 66F water. Used my red Coleman camp cooler.
2. Rinsed malt well using both hot/cold water using Zapap bucket. Grain ended up at 66F. Fastened cloth mesh bag over top end of inner Zapap using rubber bands. Laid bucket on it's side near basement floor drain.
3. Several soakings/rinses as above about 10 hrs apart.
4. One last rinse. Dumped malt on the basement floor 56 hrs after initial soaking. Grain bed is 3-4" deep. Temp is 65F and rising. Can just see rootlets coming out of grain ends.
5. Sprayed grain with water mister and turned it with leaf rake 2x/day. Kept grain bed covered with plastic garbage bags to keep moisture in.
6. 48 hrs since on the floor. Acrospire 1/3 to _ way up length of the grain. Temp 64F. Cut grain open with knife to see the acrospire.
7. 18 hrs later. Acrospire 1/2 to 2/3 way up length of the grain. Temp 64F.
8. 24 hrs later. 80% of the grains are fully modified (acrospire same length as the grain). When 60 to 80% of the grains are fully modified you must stop the growth process, unless you want over-modified malt.

 

Here's Chris raking the sprouting malt on the basement floor.
	The floor malt is resting. Note the bottles of beer for effect. Either Chris wanted the malt to have some good beer role models, or he was stashing beer to drink the next time he raked.
Doing a mini-mash in the coffee maker to test for flavour, conversion, and extraction. Great way to test small amounts of malt.

Drying

• "Wet malt" was dried in the oven on cookie sheets at 125-132F. Turn often.
• The malt was dried until it was a "crunchy" texture.
• Pale Malt - dried - 48 hrs @ 125F
• Vienna (biscuit) - 48 hrs @ 125F 
• Rauchmalt - several hrs at 125-132F in the smoker

Kilning/Curing

• The pale malt was dried in the oven for 4 hrs @ 180F
• Vienna (biscuit) - 1 hr @ 210 +- 25F

Smoking The Rauchmalt

The smoker is a Cdn Tire electric smoker with 2 racks. Smoking was done using charcoal instead of the electric element. Wood, which was soaked in water first, was mainly crab apple, with some hickory, and a little mesquite. The grain was either put on a metal window screen rack or put between layers of newspaper. The target was 4 hrs @ 210F. Temp was very hard to control as the charcoal gets very hot then dies down. Bottom rack is 15F hotter than the top rack. Malt should be turned/mixed hourly or it will burn. 

• Light Rauchmalt - 4 hrs @ 135-200F (avg about 175F).
• Dark Rauchmalt - 2 hrs @ > 210F. The grain has a " full buff" centre (like a brown malt).