Home roasting pale amber question...

[coatesg]

Here's a question for anyone who has done home roasting of malt to pale amber. The Durden Park book says that (for the slow diastatic method) you stop after the grains show the first hint of buff colour...

I did this last night for the first time, and it took about an hour and a half at 120C (after an hour at 90C, 30min at 100C and 30min at 110C!) to get the slightest hint of any yellowing of the starchy material inside the grains, and even then it was really only the faintest change. There doesn't appear to be much in the way of a change of colour of the grain husk, though there is a definite change to the aroma - something nutty/roasty in contrast to the usual malty aroma.

Does this sound fairly normal here? I'd like to have a go first on the Simonds recipe, but if this is all correct, I may move onto a 100% pale amber grist in the future - but I kinda need to have an idea if I've got it right first.

Thanks chaps.

[EccentricDyslexic]

Watching this post with interest.....

steve

[bellebouche]

I've found home roasting that kind of grain to be the most challenging...

Couple of questions... how dry was the grain before you roasted? Are you measuring a %humidty at all? How are you roasting it ... oven type, depth of the grain bed etc.

Your cumulative roasting times look really long.. but there are so many imponderables!

In the end I largely gave up on doing pales... and now mostly steam kiln the germinated grains to kick off the enzyme reaction and do some sugar conversion before blast roasting for making crystal malts.

[coatesg]

It's just roasting it in our fan oven - grain depth probably about 3/4". Not an idea on the humidity - it is already malted and kilned to normal pale malt specs - but I guess the hour at 90C does the drying pretty well, before the slight roasting afterwards...?

[WallyBrew]

I think judging the colour of when it's done is difficult.

Here's a pic of brown malt production at various stages. You get a better idea of the colour by grinding it rather than cutting the corns.



The temp was +/- 2C and the EBC are real determined figures

[coatesg]

Interesting stuff - thanks for the picture that's some interesting stuff. The pale amber should be about 30-40EBC according to the book, though obviously I'd need to blitz it to find out. I think maybe I've underdone it a little, but I think it's not far off. I'll definitely get an over thermometer for the next stab as I think using the oven thermostat is probably not good enough...