sipadvisor

Malted barley is needed to make beer and it’s very cheap to buy. So why would anyone attempt to malt their own?

Well in September 2020, 10 kilos of raw barley landed at my doorstep courtesy of my local farmer Henry. He’d always grown cereal barley but that year he’d planted a spring malting barley called Planet. Having heard about our brewing exploits from a mutual friend he gladly donated the grain in exchange for a few bottles of the eventual ale.

Barley has to be ‘malted’ in order to create beer, the process is fairly simple though time consuming. Firstly you allow the barley grains to germinate by soaking them in water for eight hours then allowing them to dry at around 60 degrees C, though keeping them moist. The next day repeat the process.

The grains will show the start of tiny roots after the second soaking and now they must be spread out to dry evenly but sprayed periodically with water so they don’t completely dry out.

It’s also important to turn the grains every four hours and to continue spraying with the water. It takes between two and five days after the first sign of roots for them to finish germinating.

Inside the grain a tiny shoot is growing which generates enzymes the brewer needs to convert starch into sugar.

Once the shoot is three quarters the length of the grain it is time to halt the germination as the enzymes are at their peak.

The grain needs to be dehydrated so I put them in a slow oven – ideally between 90 & 120 degrees Fahrenheit but I couldn’t regulate mine so they were in at 190 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours.

This resulted in a more amber malt as opposed to the pale malt I was expecting.

I repeated the process over the next few weeks till I had malted 4.9 kilos.

We’re using a traditional bitter recipe to make the beer but first we have to crush the grain…

The husks have to be milled so the starch can be extracted in the mash.

We then add it to the malt pipe which sits inside the kettle, stirring so there are no clumps.

Then we mash or steep the grains for an hour at 65 degrees.

This is the result, the liquid is now referred to as the wort.

Next, haul it out of the kettle and top up with hot water to replace any liquid lost to evaporation.

Discard the grains.

We now boil for a further hour.

At certain points we add our hops, Styrian Goldings & Brewers Gold…

Once the boil is finished we cool down the wort to 20 degrees C and transfer it into a fermenter and add yeast.

We then took a hydrometer reading of the amount of sugar in the wort…

and let the beer ferment for one week.

We took a further hydrometer reading after fermentation to see how much alcohol there was in the beer.

Usually the reading is 1.011 for a pale ale but because I kilned the grain at a higher temperature it is now more like a light mild at 3.2% ABV

Now we’re ready to transfer the beer into the cask…

We placed the cask in our temperature controlled vessel and left it for about a month at 12 degrees C.

We managed to have enough beer left for just one bottle which we kept for a couple of weeks before opening…

It looked and tasted like a very well known strong ale, it was delicious! Now to find out what Henry thought of it….

‘Old Speckled Henry’ went down a treat!

This blog tells you how to brew your own Festival Ale as we did for The Farm at ‘Let’s Rock Liverpool’ recently.

To start with, fill your beer kettle with water to about the 23 litre level and set the temperature to 38 degrees C. We use the Braumeister 20 litre kettle.

Weigh out 4.5 kilos of low colour Maris Otter malt and 500g of Dextrine malt.

Crush the grain.

Once the desired temperature has been reached, insert the malt pipe in to the kettle and add all the grain stirring continuously.

The grain has to be crushed to allow the heated water access to the enzymes in the starch.

Once all the grain is in, secure the malt pipe and switch on the internal pump. The temperature will gradually rise to 65 degrees C.

Steep the grains with the lid on for about an hour and a half – this process is called mashing.

When the mash is finished take the lid off and you will see that the water has changed colour, from now on this is referred to as the wort.

Now lift out the malt pipe and pour hot water over the grain to replace any of the wort lost to evaporation.

The grain is now discarded

Now set the temperature to 100 degrees C…

weigh some hops…

and add to the wort.

Boil for about an hour adding further hops along the way. For this brew we are using two lots of New Zealand hops and one lot of US hops.

At this point we put a chimney on top of the kettle to reduce evaporation.

At the end of the boil the wort has to be cooled down to 20 degrees C. There is a rapid cool mechanism in the Braumeister which does the job in half an hour which is perfect.

Once it’s cooled we take a hydrometer reading – this enables us to know how much sugar is in the wort.

Now pour the wort into a fermenting bucket and add yeast.

Put on the lid and an airlock and leave it to ferment in a fermenting chamber for about a week at 20 degrees C.

After a week quickly take off the lid and add some more hops to the fermenting beer.

Replace the lid and airlock and leave for another week.

At this point you can test the final gravity – this reading allows us to see how much of the sugar has been turned into alcohol.

By subtracting the final gravity from the original gravity and then multiplying by 131.25 we reached an AVB of 4.3%

We’re now ready to transfer the beer into the cask.

Once full, knock in a bung and put the cask back into the fermenting chamber to mature for three weeks at 12 degrees C.

On the day of the festival we transported the cask to the venue where we vented it and knocked in a tap.

We then hooked the tap up to our hand pump via a short line and added the pump clip.

The beer went down a treat as can be seen on our sister site – The Farm.blog

Summer Festivals (6)

Author: sipadvisor

Planet barley

Brewing The Farm’s Festival Ale