Roast your own!

Hey, TB... I went to barleypopmaker.info and ended up buying his kindle book ($3). Learned a lot about malt - now I wanna roast too!!
 
Thurston Brewer said:
Hey, TB... I went to barleypopmaker.info and ended up buying his kindle book ($3). Learned a lot about malt - now I wanna roast too!!
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Well I better head back there and grab a look at that kindle book... I read the comments section below his roast malt post and the Brewers who tried it seemed like they had great results following his method! Why not I say:)
 
Trialben said:
Thanks for the correction jmcnamara if you had never said anything it would have eaten away at ya. So na no tincture a small test sample ;)
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Funny. I was kinda biting my tongue too but I knew whatcha meant. Hey good news! Came back from walking the dog in the snow up the mountain in the bush and have just put my 1.5lbs of 4hr soaked wheat malt in the oven 30mins ago. Starting to smell mighty nice around here.
 
Aye nothing like the smell roasted wheat in the mornin :p.

Yep when I toasted roasted my barley mmmm it filled the house with malty goodness! If anything I'll do it again for this reason ;)
 
You wait when them wheat malt starts letting out its malty roasted aromas your neighbors will be inviting them selves over in hopeful anticipation of an lusty roasted malty creamy headed homebrew!
 
Ok I've got all me malts in my test jars ready to get ground up and mini mashed in a pot of water. I'll leave these jars immersed in this water to try and stop temps sways for my mash I'll prob mash 20-30 mins then I'll strain through sive and boil in jars in pot for 30mins and I'll post a pick at the end:).

Looking at em lined up like this my dark roast is darker than special b. That's my darkest malt I've got on hand to go by.
 

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Here the Carawheat are all done. Was aiming for a mid 30's L. Haven't gone and found my John Palmer book to see how they line up but they taste good. I Did the Amber Roast after soaking, 1 1/2hrs @ 180, drying out 250 for 2hrs and roasting at 350 for 30. Letting them sit and prolly start the Dunkelweizen in 2 weeks. Wooohoo!
 

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They look toasty mike! How'd it smell when your were roasting em? Good idea in the alfoil tray;). I'm just giving my test jars a boil ATM I'm glad I did some test mashes I've got a great indicator how they will contribute for colour. I'll post em up soonish.

What do they taste like?

OkanaganMike said:
Here the Carawheat are all done. Was aiming for a mid 30's L. Haven't gone and found my John Palmer book to see how they line up but they taste good. I Did the Amber Roast after soaking, 1 1/2hrs @ 180, drying out 250 for 2hrs and roasting at 350 for 30. Letting them sit and prolly start the Dunkelweizen in 2 weeks. Wooohoo!
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Ok they are all mashed cooled and ready for taste test.
I took a gravity reading of each sample as well to see what sort of conversion or diastic power left in the malt.
From right to left is Pilsner base 1.026, light roast 1.014, dark roast 1.007 and special B 1.014.

As is expected of the base pils it's got that lovely grainy sweet flavour and straw colour.

The light roast is sorta light brown/caramel colour tad sweet but nothing really stands out to me.

The dark roast turned out not as dark as I thought more like Amber honey colour not sweet so not much conversation no crystal type qualities I can't taste them raisins but it's hard to judge on such a small sample but on colour I'm happy with this.

The Special b gee it's dark eh? More dark brown than black I'm tasting dark coffee a little bit of lingering bitterness and a little dark chocolate type smell. It smells roasty and a tiny bit coffee on the nose it smells like it tastes. But the colour I way darker than I expected.

So cheers on all your interest everybody! I'm going to try a different crystal type mashing technique I saw on YouTube before and mash my soaked grains in a ziplock bag at mash temp then roast. I was hoping on more caramels from my roasts but I feel better about the amounts to use in a brew now.
 

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Taste great, I'm not the best on pulling and identifying flavors but if I had to describe them I'd say a bit nutty/biscuity. Not picking up any sweetness but maybe that comes out in the mashing and mabye its because its wheat and not barley.

Bought a 3 pack of the foil trays about 9"x9" at Wally world for under $3Cdn. Figured it was way safer than trying not to introduce any fat or grease from the regular pans. Used one for the 180F mash, then split it up between 2 for the drying and again balanced the 1.5pounds into all 3 for the roasting. Worked great as the depth for the first kept the 2" decent and moisture in the grain. Thinning the depth down each step worked to my benefit too. One thing I'll note though is even though I was stirring and shaking and re positioning in the oven every 5-10 mins during the 30 min roast, 1 pan was a bit darker than the others. At the end though they get mixed together for the greater average roast.

Need all of the wheat for my recipe so won't be doing a sample mash but sure am curious. Did you dry roast any those you did TB or did you do the Crystal/Caramel soak first?
 
OkanaganMike said:
Figured it was way safer than trying not to introduce any fat or grease from the regular pans.
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I hope you washed them first. Manufacturers will typically use some sort of lubricant on their forming equipment to ensure that product comes off the die easily, and that the die stays in good shape longer. Most likely it came from the store with something un-beer-like on it.
 
Shit! You know, I thought about giving them quick soap and water but thats as far as I got with it. Well.....I guess we'll see what happens next. Its only 1.5# in a total 10-11lb recipe but if I get no head retention I'll know why. Either that or I may just do another batch next weekend.
 
You'll probably be fine... we wouldn't be homebrewers if we weren't paranoid, now would we?
 
Thurston Brewer said:
You'll probably be fine... we wouldn't be homebrewers if we weren't paranoid, now would we?
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Yeah heh, Don't really want to go through the 8hr's again if I don't have to BUT....Whats a pound and a half of wheat vs a ruined beer? That the decision to make. I'll sit on it til next weekend and ponder. ;)
 
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