A lot of feed variety barley is actually a malt style 2 or 6 row barley that just didn’t make grade. Malt varieties are simply chosen for their traits to be more efficient at what all barley can do, which is to add sugars and enzymes to the wort. I grow “malt” varieties like Sirish and Synergy but I don’t expect to make malt, and frankly, I don’t even bother because the premium if it made germination and low protein levels is not high enough to delay getting it sold. But those varieties have good production and other harvesting traits I like.
I have malted our own barley and it works fine. Some things to look for are ergot; get all the black stuff out that you can, which will also get rid of stones and mildewed kernels. Ergot isn’t something you want to brew with, since it can produce a hallucinogen. Also, the less mildew in it, the less likely you will get molding when you malt. High protein that you might find in a feed grade just makes it more effort to clear the beer afterwards but a lot of styles don’t care, and if you do you can whirlfloc it or filter it.
Overall, I will say it’s hardly worth the trouble. At least where I am, I can get a sack of 2-row malt for about a buck a pound and that will do a few 5gal brews. It’s not really a large factor in the cost of a beer when it comes down to it. And malting takes up a lot of space and time.
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
Malting it for base malt is probably not worth the effort indeed (kind of weird that there are a few small-scale enterprises around where I live who try to make small batches of malt - and it’s base malt. Of course it’s inferior to large scale, sadly, I had sad experience trying to use super-local. Why don’t they see the real market potential for weird stuff? Maybe I should take that space when I set the process?), but there are limitless potential specialty varieties you can try. Roast it differently? Skip toasting altogether and use it asap to see what happens? Reproduce some historical process? So much fun (probably).
ikidd@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Barley quality depends a lot on location. I’m in Alberta and we produce a majority of the malt barley for the world because of our climate. Its used for whiskeys and beers across the globe. So if you arent getting cold winters and intense hot summers, that might be the difference.
alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
Yeah, I wanted to move to Alberta many years ago to join your university and have fun with bitumen. But I’m in Finland now, so winter is ok, and now summers are intense and hot everywhere. I don’t know why exactlt anybody would crop grow these grains south of here, where other things thrive. Leave hardy grasses for arctic steppes.