· James Torr · Personal · 1 min read
First attempt at malting. Had some wheat berries. Wanted to try something that wasn’t commercially available so I’ve gone for a light smoked Munich wheat. Smoke comes from a fruit wood blend. Photo is from day 3 or so during the germination period. Will make a grodziskie next week some time.
Guess what I be doing with @trenchmore_farm wheat? I won't keep you. The plan is to make some Munich style wheat malt, kiln it in my smoker and hopefully make some amazing grodziskie, since we kicked a keg in on afternoon the other day.
Little experiment this year with a tiny crop of barley. I found some growing last year, so I've used them and some harvested from fields to create a little square metre patch in my garden. If I have a bit more space next year, I'll use these to seed hopefully enough for a small batch of beer from home harvested wheat, hops and some wild yeast. Though it may very well not be enough for even that!
A lovely day out in the woods yesterday making a beer heated entirely with stones. This is I think the fifth time we've brewed in the woods. The first 3 or so times we were direct heating over the flames, only last time my friend suggested we try the old method of using stones. They work like a dream, no nasty soot or smoke to worry about, pretty good temp control. We didn't get up to a rolling boil, but got pretty close to it.
No idea how they got here but it looks like I've got some barley randomly growing in my garden! I'm kind of wondering whether to preserve the seeds and sow them in a small patch next year, then do the same till I get enough to malt for a batch of beer. Commercial yield is about 600g/m2, so I'd need 10m2 to even think about it. Anybody got a bit of allotment space free in a few years?!