How to cook beer malts in the oven?
Once your oven is preheated, place your baking pan in the oven and let the malts roast. Use your thermometer to verify the temperature inside the oven and adjust as necessary. When the roasting’s complete, take your malts out of the oven and let them cool.
Is home roasting a good way to make beer?
Whether you need lightly roasted biscuit malt, or dark brown and chocolate malt, home roasting is a great tool to add to your brewing skillset. Malted barley is the base for almost all specialty grains. Starting with high quality, high-modified malt will help you produce the most consistent roasted grain.
How long does it take to roast malt?
Dark crystal malt, about 100°L, needs around 45 minutes. Very dark roasted grain, like black patent malt, has a Lovibond color rating of over 500°L. At home, achieving this level of roast without burning the grain is difficult. Commercial maltsters use a water spray to prevent grains from scorching in specially designed kilns.
How do you make crystal malt at home?
In a pot, add enough water to just cover the grain. Heat to 155°F and hold for an hour. Next, strain the grains and spread them out on a roasting tray, ½” deep. Roast in a 250°F oven for about 2 hours, or until completely dry. At this point, you will have something close to crystal 10°L. For darker crystal malt, turn up the oven to 350°F.
Who Should You Roast Their Own Malt?
Home-roasting is a fun complement to homebrewing for all levels of brewers. Although there are hundreds of commercial specialty malts, roasting your own malt has a certain romantic quality. It also falls in line with homebrewing’s DIY spirit.
What You Need To Roast Your Own Malt
Roasting your own malt can be done with basic kitchen tools you already have. The longer you roast malt, the more color and roasted flavor you’ll get. Whether you need lightly roasted biscuit malt, or dark brown and chocolate malt, home roasting is a great tool to add to your brewing skillset.
How to Roast Your Own Malt
The whole process of roasting your own malt takes between 45 minutes to 90 minutes.
Advanced Techniques
Crystal and caramel malts add sweetness and mouthfeel to beer. Through specialized roasting processes, the sugars in these malts are caramelized. Crystal malts are typically roasted in a drum at 150°F which creates steam, causing the starches to convert to sugar inside the husk. This is kind of like the mashing process when brewing.
Fundamentals Of Malt Video Course
If you want to learn everything you need to know about malt, check out this Craft Beer & Brewing video course:
Final Thoughts
Roasting your own malt is straightforward, quick, and surprisingly easy. It also offers a great insight into how particular roasted flavors are developed in malt, and how those flavors translate to beer. With very basic equipment and a little experimentation, you’ll quickly become a home-roasting expert.
Frequently Asked Questions
Determining the color and flavor contribution of home roasted malts is a trial and error process. It’s difficult to know the color the malt will produce in wort without performing a test.
Making Specialty Malt From Roasted Base Malt
The process described above is enough to get you started roasting your own malts but if you want to get the desired results your going to need to know a bit more about how to get specific malt types out of your chosen base malt.
The Difference Between a Brown and Amber Ale
When it comes to brown ales and amber ales I always knew ambers were sweeter but I didn’t understand why. What it comes down to is how the specialty malt is roasted.
The Difference Between Caramel and Crystal Malt
There is a lot of confusion between the two but when it comes down to it they both have one thing in common. They are both moistened before they are either roasted or kilned.
Ways to Roast Malt
While the most common way to roast your malt is with a simple home oven the professionals typically use a drum to spread heat and get an even distribution.
Create Unique Grain Products
There are a lot of various adjuncts that there is a distinct lack of in the beer industry. For example have you ever thought about creating toasted rice to add to your brew? Or even a more common ingredient like wheat that comes in a caramel color?
Roasting Husk-less Varieties
Barley is typically the only beer ingredient that has a husk so any of the others like rye or wheat need special attention when roasting. If these huskless grains get too dark it will result in a much darker beer than intended.
2-Row vs 6-Row
2-row is the predominant barley grain in North America. 6-row is more common in Europe. The difference between the two is that 6 row typically has higher protien levels but is harder to grow.
About Specialty Malt
Traditionally, beer is made with one main type of malted grain – the base malt. There are many different base malts, and historically these have been based on location, with names such as Pilsner malt, Vienna malt, Pale malt, Ale malt, and so on.
Why Roast Your Own Malt?
If you are able to walk into a local homebrew store and order any malt type named in any recipe, consider yourself a lucky customer. Generally, however, you can find whatever you need either in-store or online. However, several experiences brewing in Asia have taught me that this is not always the case!
Difference Between Specialty Malts
Remember the two main groups of malts – Toasted and Caramel or Crystal malts? Well, the easiest to identify are the Toasted malts. These have been malted and dried and are ready to be used in beer. However, after being dried, these malts are then toasted until they reach the desired profile.
How to Tweak Results
Start with a different base malt. Each type, each maltster, each farmer, will have a slightly different taste and will yield a different result. Experiment and have fun!
Cheers!
I hope you have as much fun roasting your own malt as I do! If you have any questions or feedback, please do leave a comment.
