boganll
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2014
- Messages
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I'll begin by apologizing for not taking more pictures. I was not originally intending to go into such depth because I was responding to an old thread I'd found on home-roasting grains. After realizing how little information I could find on the subject of roasting at all, much less using a stovetop roaster, I felt compelled to make it a thread of it's own. I have done some roasting in the past, but only in the oven. I recently had a go with my stovetop coffee roaster (popcorn roaster) and these are my results:
Materials:
Stovetop roaster
Small stockpot
Large cookie sheet
Paper bags
Stove or hotplate
Digital thermometer
Stirring utensil
4lbs Domestic two-row base malt
Before getting started set aside 2lbs of your grain to be toasted malts and rehydrate 2lbs to be crystal malts for 24hrs at room temperature in just enough water to fully submerge the grains.
Note: I've never rehydrated for more than a few hours before, but had been reading about 24hr rehydrations and decided to give it a try this time. Towards the end of my 24hr soak the grains started to smell like they were souring and I was concerned it would affect the finished flavor. The crystal malts turned out just fine despite this, although I have not brewed with them yet as they'll need a few weeks to mellow beforehand. As of now, I would say do not be alarmed by the sour odor.
While 2lbs of your malt rehydrates, work on your toasted malts. For these you will only need the other 2lbs of dry malt, your roaster, and your thermometer. I roasted a quarter to a half pound at a time. It's very difficult to see the grain as it roasts and if you open the hatch to look inside anyway you will start losing heat rapidly. It's also very difficult to maintain an exact temperature. After a few trials what I did was heat the roaster to about 20-30 degrees higher than my target temperature so when I added the cool grains to the roaster it wouldn't drop the interior temperature too low to catch it up within the short time it takes to achieve good results.
I started with a target temp. of 250*F and roasted for just 10 minutes. I did this for the first pound in quarter pound increments. At this temperature and time the result was a lightly toasted malt. Compared to malts you may be familiar with, it might fall between vienna malt and light munich. Slightly more or less time will get you something closer to either of these respectively.
For the next half pound I stayed at 250*F and roasted for 20 minutes. This achieved a slightly darker roast, not quite as dark as victory or biscuit malt. Next time I'll probably try 25-30m to get a home-roasted victory malt.
For the final half pound of dry grain, I increased the target temp. to 350*F and roasted all of it at once for between 15 and 20 minutes until when I took a peek it looked pretty dark. This is where I learned how much heat you lose when you open the hatch. Despite losing heat a couple times, the outcome was a beautiful, robust malt similar to brown malt. I really look forward to brewing with this one.
Now for the rehydrated grain. Before roasting them you must convert starches in the grain to sugars just like you were mashing them (don't crush them!) They will have absorbed most of the water you rehydrated them in at this point, so add a little more water so you have a similar grain/water ratio you would use in your mash. Heat to 150*F and hold for an hour. While your doing this, preheat your oven to 250*F.
After starch conversion, I spread all of it out over a large cookie sheet and set it in the oven to dry. I seriously underestimated how long it would take to do this. Every 30 minutes or so I would open the oven and stir the grain to keep it even and each time there would still be a substantial amount of moisture in the kernels. I kept this up for around 4 hours (at this point it was getting pretty late and I had to just move forward with it) I removed half of what was on the cookie sheet to roast on the stove top and the rest I spread evenly over the cookie sheet and left to roast in the oven at an increased temperature of 350*F. I removed it from the oven as soon as it appeared most (if not all) moisture had been cooked out. The result was a beautiful light crystal similar to honey malt.
The grain I'd removed for stovetop roasting was still slightly moist, but it dried out quickly in the roaster. I did two roasts at 250*F for about 10 minutes each. These two roasts ended up almost identical to what had been left to roast in the oven, so I added it to the oven batch and ended up with a 1.5lbs of the home-roasted honey malt.
The final two roasts were at 350*F for 10 minutes and 15 minutes. I combined these two for a slightly darker crystal than the first, but not quite as dark as a medium crystal.
Roasted grains will need to mellow for a few weeks and they'll need to breathe so don't seal them up air-tight. Most resources will suggest paper bags for this, which is what I use as well. After a minimum of a couple weeks they'll be ready to be brewed with.
I took a half oz of each grain and steeped it for 10 minutes in 1 cup of water at 150*F to make a "tea" demonstrating the color of each one. The picture below shows each tea (from left to right) base malt, lightly toasted malt, medium toasted malt, "honey" malt, light-med. crystal, and brown malt.
Materials:
Stovetop roaster
Small stockpot
Large cookie sheet
Paper bags
Stove or hotplate
Digital thermometer
Stirring utensil
4lbs Domestic two-row base malt
Before getting started set aside 2lbs of your grain to be toasted malts and rehydrate 2lbs to be crystal malts for 24hrs at room temperature in just enough water to fully submerge the grains.
Note: I've never rehydrated for more than a few hours before, but had been reading about 24hr rehydrations and decided to give it a try this time. Towards the end of my 24hr soak the grains started to smell like they were souring and I was concerned it would affect the finished flavor. The crystal malts turned out just fine despite this, although I have not brewed with them yet as they'll need a few weeks to mellow beforehand. As of now, I would say do not be alarmed by the sour odor.
While 2lbs of your malt rehydrates, work on your toasted malts. For these you will only need the other 2lbs of dry malt, your roaster, and your thermometer. I roasted a quarter to a half pound at a time. It's very difficult to see the grain as it roasts and if you open the hatch to look inside anyway you will start losing heat rapidly. It's also very difficult to maintain an exact temperature. After a few trials what I did was heat the roaster to about 20-30 degrees higher than my target temperature so when I added the cool grains to the roaster it wouldn't drop the interior temperature too low to catch it up within the short time it takes to achieve good results.
I started with a target temp. of 250*F and roasted for just 10 minutes. I did this for the first pound in quarter pound increments. At this temperature and time the result was a lightly toasted malt. Compared to malts you may be familiar with, it might fall between vienna malt and light munich. Slightly more or less time will get you something closer to either of these respectively.
For the next half pound I stayed at 250*F and roasted for 20 minutes. This achieved a slightly darker roast, not quite as dark as victory or biscuit malt. Next time I'll probably try 25-30m to get a home-roasted victory malt.
For the final half pound of dry grain, I increased the target temp. to 350*F and roasted all of it at once for between 15 and 20 minutes until when I took a peek it looked pretty dark. This is where I learned how much heat you lose when you open the hatch. Despite losing heat a couple times, the outcome was a beautiful, robust malt similar to brown malt. I really look forward to brewing with this one.
Now for the rehydrated grain. Before roasting them you must convert starches in the grain to sugars just like you were mashing them (don't crush them!) They will have absorbed most of the water you rehydrated them in at this point, so add a little more water so you have a similar grain/water ratio you would use in your mash. Heat to 150*F and hold for an hour. While your doing this, preheat your oven to 250*F.
After starch conversion, I spread all of it out over a large cookie sheet and set it in the oven to dry. I seriously underestimated how long it would take to do this. Every 30 minutes or so I would open the oven and stir the grain to keep it even and each time there would still be a substantial amount of moisture in the kernels. I kept this up for around 4 hours (at this point it was getting pretty late and I had to just move forward with it) I removed half of what was on the cookie sheet to roast on the stove top and the rest I spread evenly over the cookie sheet and left to roast in the oven at an increased temperature of 350*F. I removed it from the oven as soon as it appeared most (if not all) moisture had been cooked out. The result was a beautiful light crystal similar to honey malt.
The grain I'd removed for stovetop roasting was still slightly moist, but it dried out quickly in the roaster. I did two roasts at 250*F for about 10 minutes each. These two roasts ended up almost identical to what had been left to roast in the oven, so I added it to the oven batch and ended up with a 1.5lbs of the home-roasted honey malt.
The final two roasts were at 350*F for 10 minutes and 15 minutes. I combined these two for a slightly darker crystal than the first, but not quite as dark as a medium crystal.
Roasted grains will need to mellow for a few weeks and they'll need to breathe so don't seal them up air-tight. Most resources will suggest paper bags for this, which is what I use as well. After a minimum of a couple weeks they'll be ready to be brewed with.
I took a half oz of each grain and steeped it for 10 minutes in 1 cup of water at 150*F to make a "tea" demonstrating the color of each one. The picture below shows each tea (from left to right) base malt, lightly toasted malt, medium toasted malt, "honey" malt, light-med. crystal, and brown malt.
