| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Chez |
Barley in beer ...We have been given a huge bag of cracked barley (ie, it's done it's "starting to sprout" thing, that makes it malted). I usually use 'spray malt' in beer; and I understand that I should be able to just grind this up and use it instead.Has anyone done this? How much should I use? Will it be vile? |
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| Treacodactyl |
There's a few members who've made full-mash beer and I've tried it once. The main problem I had was holding the temperature at the right level for the right amount of time. I could do with some more equipment before I try again so I'm waiting until we get some more room and have access to some cheaper malted barley.
If done right it should be the best tasting beer you can make. |
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| sean |
Or at least better than banana wine. 
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| Chez |
Thank you Treac.. I am going to try to find my brewing books over the next day or two as we get everything out on the shelves again.
Sean - you didn't even try it, you coward 
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| sean |
Did too. | ||||
| Chez |
Oh okay then. It didn't make you ill or anything though, did it? 
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| sean |
No. It was fine (well, when I say fine I mean alcoholic  ). Interesting is the word I think.
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| happytechie |
Historically they mashed by pouring boiling over the grains and leaving it overnight it a well insulated vat I think. As long as you extract enough sugar it should make some beer.
I've never tried a full mash type brew mind you, I keep meaning to try it but the tins of malt extract make it too easy |
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| Chez |
That's Jilly Goulden speak for "Oh my god! Use it clean drains!", isn't it? .
Happietechie - so it needs to be warm for the sugar to come out? Perhaps if we poured boiling water on it and then left it sitting on the rayburn overnight to keep warm? |
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| sean |
No, I wouldn't make it myself is all. | ||||
| happytechie |
That's my understanding, I'll dig out my old homebrewing book in a bit. |
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| rhyddid |
Mash temperature needs to be around 64 celsius after you've mixed the water and cracked grain. http://www.realbeer.com/jjpalmer/ch14.html |
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| James |
Hi Chez,
I used to do this all the time (until my time was taken up with other stuff…) Its great fun, and makes a MUCH better beer. Firstly, do you mean cracked barley, or do you mean cracked malt? I’m not sure how to check. I know that cracked pale ale malt has a slightly sweet taste, a texture of crumbly flour and is very pale golden brown in colour. If its cracked barley, there’s not much you can easily do with it, apart from using small quantities as an addition to a ‘full mash’ grain brew, for which you need to buy cracked pale malt. If you don’t want to buy cracked pale malt & go down than route, then the chickens are in for treat…(and maybe you’ll be eating barley-corn bread) Lets assume its cracked pale malt. To use it, it must first be crushed. The best way to do this is to put it through a hand mincer. It’ll be a long process, so get some good tunes on the stereo and have a cup-o-tea by your side. Now you’ve got crushed crystal malt. To use it on its own will give a very pale golden brew. To get a slightly darker brew, more akin to a standard ‘bitter’, you can add crushed crystal malt, and maybe even black malt. There are two enzymes in pale malt. One is mostly active in the low 60’s centigrade, and one is mostly active in the high 60’s centigrade. The one that’s active in the low 60’s is really, really good at converting starch to sugar, the higher temperature one isn’t so good. You’d think, therefore, that you should shoot for a mash temp in the low 60’s. But this will actually make for a very thin beer that tastes like piss water. To give your beer a little body, you need a few more complex sugars. These are produced by the enzyme active in the late 60’s. You’ll need a very large container that you can heat a decent amount of water in. About 6 years ago, I gave a 4 gallon calor-gas tea urn to Mochyn’s OH. If your lucky, he’s still got it (ask him for James’ tea urn). You’ll also need a brew bucket with a tap on the bottom (you can buy the tap separately and attach to existing brew bucket), a brew bucket without a tap, another brew bucket with thousands of tiny holes drilled in to make a coarse sieve, three large pans and an old sleeping bag or duvet. So here a basic Pale Ale recipes: WARNING: it takes most of a day, then your bath will be taken up overnight. 4.5 Kg Crushed Pale Ale malt Bittering hop: an ounce of Goldings (30g) Aroma hop: half ounce Goldings (15g) 1 teaspoon Irish moss (carrageen) Instructions (assuming you can get the tea urn from Mochyn’s OH): This is an adaptation of a method that medieval monks developed. I suppose if its got a name, its called a stepped double mash. The early stages of this do not need to be sterile- clean is fine. I’ll note when sterile conditions are needed 1) Put the crushed malt into the tea urn and add water so it three-quarters full. This’ll give you a very thick soup. 2) With lots of stirring, raise the temperature to 30 centigrade, and turn off the gas. Put the lid on and leave it for 15 minutes. This is called the “acid break”, it allows an enzyme to acidify the water. 3) While you’re waiting for the acid break, put the brew-bucket with holes in inside the brew bucket with tap, then rap both of them in a sleeping bag or duvet. 4) Now raise the malty thick soup to 65 centigrade 5) As soon as you hit 65c, dump into the insulated buckets. Lid on bucket, big cushion on top. Leave it for 15 minutes. 6) Then pull the sieve bucket out, bringing with it all the grain. 7) Dump the grain back in the urn. 8 ) Check how much liquid is in you bucket- it’ll probably be around 2 gallons. Subtract this amount from 4 gallons to find out how much to add for your second mash (so 4 gallons – 2 gallons = 2 gallons to use for second mash) 9) Raise in one go up to 68 centigrade. Cover, check every 5-10 minutes to make sure it stays at 68c for ½ hour 10) Empty off the wort that you’ve got in your tap-bucket into the tapless brew bucket 11) Re-assemble the sieve bucket and tap bucket, rap up with sleeping bag and dump all the stuff from the tea urn into it. Leave for half an hour. From point 4 up till now is called the “mash” , it converts the starch to maltose sugar. 12) Put the wort in the spare bucket into the tea urn and raise to boiling point. 13) As this is heating up, un-wrap the tap & sieve buckets & put on a work top. 14) Fill a kettle & put on to boil 15) Turn on the tap so a dribble comes out into one of the clean pans. Keep a second pan underneath to catch any dribbles. 16) As this dribbles out, replace with a little of the hot wort from the tea urn. 17) When you’ve got a pan-full, swap with the third clean pan and slowly, carefully dribble this pan of liquid over the top of the grains. 18 ) If you get into a situation where grains are exposed at the surface, dribble some boiling water over them. 19) With time, by tapping off the wort at the bottom and putting it back in at the top, you should end up with something that isn’t very cloudy. The books tell you it’ll ‘come clear’ but it wont, especially if you’ve ground your own malt. This is a long slow process, do it for as long as you can, then give up. 20) Drain off all the wort from the grains and wash through with a gallon of hot water from the kettle. 21) Put 3-4 gallons in the tea urn, split the rest between the pans. 22) Boil for 45 minutes. This is the called the “hot break”- it cooks the proteins ready to be dropped out of suspension later 23) After this period, the stuff in the pans can be turned off 24) Add an ounce of goldings to the urn 25) After a further 45 minutes, add 1 tsp Irish moss and half an ounce of goldings 26) Boil for 15 minutes 27) During this time, rinse out both buckets & re-assemble (sieve bucket inside the tap bucket), and start running a bath with cold water. 28 ) Dump it all into the bucket stack, and pull out the sieve bucket, with it will come the hops. 29) Now put any extra wort that you’ve been boiling in the other pans, and make the whole lot up to 5 gallons. 30) Cover the tap bucket and put in a bath of cold water over night. This is called the “cold break”. The proteins that were cooked in the hot break now fall out of suspension. They flocculate around little particles of grain left over from the mash. 31) Next day, siphon it off into a STERILE bucket. You’ll find a large amount of grey-brown sludge at the bottom of the cold break bucket. 32) Add active brewers yeast 33) Job done! Simple, eh? |
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| mark |
simplifying the above
find away to keep 5-7 ilb of your crushed malt in 2 1/2 gal of hot water at 66C for around 3 hours (don't exceed the heat or you wil kil necessary enzymes aftr this wash the water and sugars our of the malt with water at similar temp easiest was is to get an open top fermenter with a tap fementer - and have it all in a big straining bag or pilowcase - or over a bit of plastic on bottom end of fermeter with holes poked in it sh you cvan drain through the tap. you can also drain it then just jug in and drain of water repeatedly - but this is loads less efficient and you get less flavour and sugar extraction - and may ned to either boil it dow to reduce it or ad sugar to keep a decent alcohol strength Chuck old grain in compost or use as mulch. Boil up the water with around 2-3 oz hops and reduce to around 4-5 gals if you want it stronger (or for around 1 and half hours) strain it off the hops and let it cool - shove ale yeast in and ferment as usual. chuck hops on compost voila! |
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| Jamanda |
James, (or any one else who does this) is there any chance of a few piccies so we can make an article. You must have spent a lot of time typing that in, it seems a shame for it get buried in the threads. | ||||
| James |
writing all that up made me want to brew from grain again. Next time I brew from grains, I'll take some photos. But becuase it takes at least half a day to brew it, with best part of another half day to set it all up & tidy up afterwards, this isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Maybe I'll have time in autumn for my winter ale... |
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| Chez |
Thank you James, that's fab. If we get around to doing it, we'll take some photos. | ||||
| sean |
If I've read it correctly you end up with a bath full of partially made beer for some time. Might be best to wait until your putative lodger has signed their contract. | ||||
| Chez |
Hmm. I guess it depends on the lodger . But I'll definitely wait until the plasterer has finished ... can't see a fine film of plaster dust adding to the flavour!
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| James |
Thats right- you have a bath full of cold water with a bucket of 'beer' sitting in it from when you finish boiling your wort to when you siphon off the wort after the cold break the following day. This means that you've got to get back into brewing mode before you can use the bath the following day. I made a 'shock cooler' to get around this. If you're serious about brewing from grain, its worth making one. It makes a much cleaner tasting beer, and you can shorten the brewing process a lot. Get yourself a length of 8mm copper ("micro-bore") pipe, you'll need about 3 or 4m. Drop one end of the micro-bore inside a demijohn, then carefully bend the pipe downwards and round until the pipe is in contact with the body of the demijohn. Make sure you don't kink the pipe- it needs to be an open bend. Then coil the pipe around the demijohn until you've got about 6 inches left. Holding the central bit that was inside demijohn, Pull the coil upwards to remove it from the the demijohn. Turn upside down, so the two ends are now facing upwards. Carefully flatten the bottom (again, no kinks!) Lay on a surface and bend the two pipe ends at the same level so they make 'hooks' (making sure to keep the pipe open inside). Push some wide-bore siphon tube onto the ends of the pipes, and jubilee clip garden hose to the siphon tube (you may need some PTFE tape to make them fit better). Blow through the hose to make sure there are no blockages. Hook the coil over the edge of bucket containing the hot wort, take the hose that's attached to the pipe that passes up the middle of the coil and attach it to a cold tap. Take the the other hose (attached to the top of the coil), and place somewhere to discharge (It comes out warm to hot, so don't put straight onto the garden- a water but or large bucket is useful). Turn on tap, then turn down the flow until the discharge water is warm. Cover the top of the bucket. Your wort will cool down to late 20's centigrade in 40 minutes or so instead of taking many hours. |
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| mark |
another eezy shortcut is to time your brewing for evening and put the bucket outside in the cool overnight (no probs in winter)
If your mash technique is good, your boiling time is long enough and you haven't let your beer cloudy a sharp "cold break" is not essentail as some people think - and i have never noticed any differnt in taste or clarity in my brews as to how i cooled it . I think it more an issue in large commercial quanities that could take a very very long time to cool without it . Cottage brewers have often just let it cool by itself ! If you really have an issue about it just sink immerse a container full of ice into the bucket so the two cant mix! - or put a cold hose ont eh side of your brew bucket I always need a bath myself after a days brewing so aint sharing it with the brew! ! LOL (i useually brew and do gardening or domerstic jobs at same time so i can pop over an keep an eye on it. The whole process is don just outside the kitchen door so avoids smells an dpongs and spills, |