Malting - Day Three

4/30/2013

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Success! Here is our update:
Soaking and drying the grain for malting step one so far has been soaked and dried four times approx 6hours soak 9 hours drying and ..........


We have rootletts forming! YAY! Success so far. I'm quite happy. Kinda stoked actually.

Well another couple of soaks and hopefully we will have enough rootlets to go to second stage wich should germinate the grain this will be the more tricky bit to prevent mould growing.
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Malting - Day One

4/28/2013

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So when we said we would do malting, even our brewing phone-a-friend expert was impressed, as he'd only done it once himself, and it is a fairly long, drawn out process. But our intrepid incipient brewer and barley expert Muigheinn, was not put off. Here is her update for Day One:
Malting process begun so let's hold our collective and hope. I have soaked the grain twice, dried once, and it is drying again now will put back in to soak in the morning . Grain appears to be swelling which is what it's supposed to do prior to sending rootlets, so it seems to be doing the right thing... will keep you posted. 
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Baking bread of Barley...

4/21/2013

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Picture
Barley into flour, via mortar and pestle, then food processor.
Picture
The finished barley loaves. (The bottom ones had double the amount of ingredient.)
Today's exploit was baking bread from barley flour. We tried four experiments:
  1. We tried grinding our own barley flour (quite the chore, verging on the impossible in a mortar and pestle - you can see why they went with a quern).
  2. Making barley leaven (well, actually we made this a few days ago, as it takes a few days to form properly)
  3. Loaves using only barley flour 
  4. Loaves using a mix of wheat and barley flour

The results were quite interesting.

Loaf 1 = Barley with leaven
Loaf 2 = Barley with yeast
Loaf 3 = Barley/wheat with leaven
Loaf 4 = Barley/wheat with yeast

The Barley/wheat combination with yeast was the lightest and sweetest. You can see why it was the high status option!

As well as being denser, the barley loaves went stale and mouldy more quickly too.  
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To make an Ale of Barley

4/14/2013

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So brewing is quite a long process. Mostly it seems to be lots of activity, then lots of waiting in between activities. I think it helped that we had help along the way, and could phone a friend when we were unsure. It helps that he sent us the right ingredients too :)

We've tried both strong and a weak (or Small) ale. Basically the strong ale is use all your ingredients as per the recipe, and the small ale, is use all your leftovers again to eke anything out that you can.

The strong ale (Great Ale?) is now in the fermenters, and the kitchen smells of a really nice spiced bread.
And the small ale is now in the plasterers bucket (which has contracted in quite an amazing manner) ready to be brought out and brewed closer to the time.  A good result all round, with the barley water being quite sweet and clear before it was put into the fermenter. Let's hope it works!
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