Smoking Malt

Something I tried just to see how well it works and found that it was pretty good is smoking malted barley. No, I don't mean using Zig-Zag papers and lighting up (God knows I've heard enough of those jokes). I mean using a grill and wood to smoke the malt.

The method I use is pretty much like what Charlie Papazian describes in "The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing." I have used a few different woods to get the smoke and each one is a bit different. I've used apple, mesquite and alder. I really enjoyed the apple and alder but I thought the mesquite flavor wasn't very good.

Here are the steps I use:

  1. Soak the wood chips of your choice in clean fresh water for a minimum of 1 hour. Longer if you are using very large chips.
  2. Light a small charcoal fire in a kettle-type charcoal grill. Use enough coal to keep a good fire for about 1½ hours (or longer if you're doing a lot of malt). You can avoid using charcoal altogether if you have one of those gas fired (or electric) smokers that looks sort of like R2D2 from "Star Wars."
  3. Soak about 2 lbs of malted barley in clean fresh water for 15 minutes. This step is simplified a lot if you first put the grain in a mesh bag or nylon stocking. If you don't use the mesh bag you will have to strain out the grain with a kitchen strainer.
  4. Place a large piece of screen on the grill. Plain old hardware store variety window screen will work quite well. (HINT: Bend up the edges to help keep the grain on the screen. If you don't, a lot of your grain will fall into the fire.) (ANOTHER HINT: Make sure your grill is clean. Leftover grease will mess up your malt.)
  5. Remove the wood chips from the water and place them directly on the hot coals.
  6. Place the screen covered grill onto the kettle grill and cover with as much grain as you can and still be able to easily stir the grain around without knocking the grains into the fire.
  7. Put the lid on the kettle grill and adjust the vents to get maximum smoking.
  8. I usually stir the grains around a bit every 15 minutes or so. Also at this time I can check for dryness.
  9. The grains are done smoking when they return to their original dryness.
  10. After smoking I put the grains in a 5qt plastic pail with a lid and let them sit for a minimum of 2 weeks. This seems to let the smoky flavor mellow a bit.

Here is a pretty good recipe for using your smoked grain:

For 5 gallons OG~1.073

  1. Mill the grains. I mill the smoked grains first so that the following grain will help remove dust ans smell from my grain mill and not contaminate future batches. Even so, you will want to thoroughly clean out your mill after milling.
  2. Mash the grains at 154°F for 1 hour
  3. Sparge the grains to collect 6½ gallons to the kettle.
  4. Bring to boil and add all the hops. I wanted smoke to be the dominant aroma. Some flavor hops might be a nice addition.
  5. Continue to boil for 60 minutes after the hop addition.
  6. I use rehydrated Irish moss about 15 minutes from the end of the boil.
  7. After the boil, chill to yeast pitching temperature - about 75°F.
  8. Pitch yeast, ferment and bottle. I won't mention trivial details. You can do this however you wish.

I've found that this beer tastes remarkably like Rogue Smoke Ale. It's a little too pungent for about 3 months in the bottle. 3 to 6 months in the bottle and this stuff becomes pretty good. After 6 months this beer really hits it's stride. I've also found that a 12 oz bottle is best shared with a friend. A whole bottle is a bit much unless you really like smoky flavored foods. This beer goes great with cheese 'n crackers and meats.

 

Homemade Crystal Malt

I originally tried this as an experiment to see if I could actually do it and was quite surprised at how easy it is. My homemade crystal wasn't quite as full flavored as the store-bought malt but it was satisfactory if I used about 25-50% more than a recipe calls for.

Here are the steps:

  1. Soak malted barley in clean fresh water for 15 minutes. It is best to use dechlorinated water. A gallon of distilled water from the supermarket will be more than enough for a couple pounds of malt. As when soaking the malt for smoking grain (above), it's best to use a mesh bag or nylon stocking to hold the malt while soaking. You could also strain the grain with a kitchen strainer.
  2. Strain as much water as possible from the grain and place the grain in a microwave safe glass bowl with a lid.
  3. If you have a microwave oven with a temperature probe, GREAT! Just set the temp to 150°F, insert the probe into the wet malt, hit the strart button and find something to do for an hour. If you DON'T have a microwave oven with a probe, it's a little more work.
  4. Heat the wet malt on the HIGH setting for 5 minutes and remove and stir.
  5. Take a temperature reading and place back in the wave.
  6. Repeat this heating, stirring and temperature taking until you reach 150°F.
  7. Hold this temperature for 1 hour. You will have to run the wave once in a while to keep the temp up so take the temperature of the grain every 5 to 10 minutes.
  8. Preheat your conventional oven to 200°F.
  9. After holding the grain at 150°F for 1 hour, dump the grain onto a large cookie sheet and spread into a thin layer.
  10. Place the cookie sheet into the conventional oven and dry out the wet malt.
  11. When the malt is nearly dry you can bump up the temp of the oven to 350° or so to give the grain more color.
  12. After the grain is thoroughly dry, I remove it from the oven to cool.
  13. When cool, I place the newly made crystal malt into a plastic pail with a lid or a plastic bag with a twist tie or ziplock closure and let it rest for a couple weeks to let the flavor mellow a bit.