Blown Brown malt: making it at home Part II

[Fuggledog]

Thought I'd post an update in case someone is still interested in this topic. Sorry its probably going to be a bit of a long report ...

Since my last e-mail I've had a go with making some blown malt using re-hydrated pale ale malt and blowing it over a hard wood fire (in this case sycamore as i had run out of hornbeam). The key difference from my last post, is that this malt was kilned over the fire whilst it was wet/damp versus the brown dry malt i made before.

Unfortunately I adapted my methods of 'kilning' so this has added an additional variable, but I'll return to that in a minute. I soaked 5kg of pale ale malt in a bucket of water for 2 hours (intended to just soak for 1 but was busy with something else). Then I used a galvanised incinerator (bought for purpose and 'pre-seasoned' to get rid of any gunk) as the 'kiln'. I found last time that with the open fire I was loosing a lot of heat from the side of the fire (although also presumably loosing smoke, 'fumes' etc). Initially I placed the wet malt in a large metal mesh basket over the incinerator, using sycamore as the fuel (I'd run out of hornbeam and it's pretty expensive buying in firewood). In the last experiment, sycamore burnt well but hornbeam is better (hotter, less smoke, sweeter aroma etc). As the fire was burning very quickly (as the incinerator has air ventilation of course to help make a very hot fire), I put the lid on the incinerator, then rested the malt on the 'chimney' with the hot air (and any smoke) coming through the malt from below. At the time I guessed that this might be a bit like a vent in a kiln, but then again it also funnelled all the fumes through the malt, whereas I think the option of suspending the malt over an open fire (in the incinerator) was the most like the old kiln approach with a mesh floor over the open fire below.

To my excitement the malt started really snapping and puffing up. Perhaps more snapping than the first batch I had made. I had to turn the malt constantly to stop it from burning and setting on fire (which it would do in a matter of seconds if left). Perhaps as one might expect, the malt was decidedly smoky after being kilned this way. However I think that I opted for 'worst case' scenario with regards to smoke. Had I stuck to kilning without using the chimney + lid setup I think the smoke would be less. Also had I used a 'proper' fuel, such as hornbeam I would have had less smoke, and a more pleasant & mild smoke at that. My wife was cold smoking bacon at the same time over oak and I was very jealous of the pleasant aroma she was getting from the cold smoker (after 10 hours of course!). Of course I wasn't trying to smoke the malt at all, but rather dry it rapidly in about 1 hour. At the time, doing it on a small scale, the procedure felt very much like stir-frying fresh vegetables, where the idea is not to stew them or degrade the nutrients too much. I wanted dry, coloured malt but also wanted to retain diastatic activity. The malt changed to the same brown colour achieved with the dry-brown malt.

I think in my imagination I thought ithe malt might look a bit like popcorn. It didn't, but it was noticeably swollen and puffy. in fact I'd almost forgotten about the 'blown' feature of the malt until it came to bagging it again (my mind had been focussed on the possible crystal-like possibilities of roasting a damp malt as suggested by G.W.). When I came to bag the malt it almost wouldn't all fit in the bag due to it having swelled up. It had grown in volume by approximately a 1/3 compared to a bag of the dry-brown sat alongside (same starting weight). When I carefully inspected the malt I could see that it had indeed swollen, but it wasn't immediately obvious when looking at a single grain unless you compared it with the dry-brown (but that is perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with whole-malt generally - I usually use pre-crushed). Interestingly the bag of malt felt different from the dry-brown malt I had made: due to the puffing the bag felt 'spongy'! I've taken photographs of all of this, so hopefully you'll be able to see for yourselves (although these things don't come out well in photos)

I think I read on Ron Pattinson's blog (perhaps a post by Mr Wheeler again?) that wet malt will take colour and flavour from the fire more quickly than dry malt, and this seemed the case in my experience. I probably should have kilned the malt when it was hand-dry but had absorbed water, rather than being actually wet. Regarding the smoky question: was this batch smoky due to being wet, or the kilning method, or fuel or a combination? I intend to replicate this process by controlling for the kilning method (i.e. will replicate it without the incinerator). Unfortunately I haven't got any more hornbeam so that will muddy the waters a bit (but I'm working on my wood-supply issue - looks like i will have a good supply of oak for my next few batches).

Appearance: with bags of dry-brown and blown side by side - apart from volume the malts look very similar in colour and tone. I performed a mini-mash/starch test on the blown malt - yes its diastatic and 200grams converted a 1L wort in 1 hour. The flavour of this wort was very similar to the dry-brown (except of course for the smoky hint which was actually rather pleasant and blended well with the nutty, malty slightly roasty flavour). I really like both these malts - there isn't a modern malt that is similar in my view. Maybe if you blended a dark diastatic german Munich with modern brown, but even then I doubt it would be quite the same. In terms of the colour of the worts: both produced an almost black/deep brown wort. I can see this malt working very well alongside a pale and amber (or by itself). I can see that you could make a porter-type beer from 100% of both malts and it would have the expected colour. I think as the malt took colour more quickly (due to being wet?) it didn't need as long on the fire. Certainly when I split the dry brown malt and blown malt, the colour of the starchy interior was different. Dry-brown had an off-white, slightly tan look, and the blown was white. I'd probably need to actually brew with both malts to see if there were more subtle differences between them, but at the moment i can see why both varieties might be regarded as branches of the same 'brown malt' style.

I had some trouble crushing the blown malt, and I think this is due to it being not fully dry. 2 hours is way too long in the water bucket. I would try 1 hour next time, and making sure the malt was hand-dry before going on the kiln.

Of course both the dry and blown brown malts produced so far are 'pseudo-historical': being made from pale ale malt. My second project - producing old-time pale and blown malt from scratch is going really well. The 2nd attempt at malting is working better than I expected: I have 10kg of green malt that should be ready to be dried in the next day or so and have a method that I think works well for home-malting in the UK. I plan to split batch this into a modern pale ale malt (to 'control' for the malting process when I make comparisons), old-time pale, and blown. I'm hoping that this experiment will show that we can use modern pale ale malt without sacrificing too much with regards to flavour/character in our blown/brown malts. Having said that i can see myself doing more malting, its quite satisfying once you have a method that works (although i shouldn't get ahead of myself, haven't kilned it yet or tested it out). I also plan to make a diastatic amber malt soon.

So in summary:

Blown and dry-brown malts (as produced in these experiments) look very similar (excluding volume, and overall 'puffed' appearance of the blown malt), and produce similar worts with regard to colour/flavour (ignoring the smoke aspect). The blown malt may lend itself to being the sole malt in a wort over dry-brown (which took longer to convert, albeit with temperature fluctuations in the mini-mash dropping below 60C). I can see that both malts could have been regarded as variants of the same 'brown malt' type. The flavours they produce are similar to one another but quite different to other malts I have tried. Both malts snapped over the fire - and this snapping seems to be both unavoidable and a good audio signal that you have your fire hot enough and that you aren't just stewing the malt.

The blown malt I produced was smoky. The dry-brown wasn't. However these were kilned using different methods and different fuels. More results to follow...

[Eadweard]

Good work!

[Fuggledog]

Cool, thanks for the reply and slogging all the way through the post! probably bored folk to death but i've got a bit obsessed with this brown malt stuff.

I had a look at your blog - really interesting work you're doing, and the 1911 AK sounds like a great project. Hope to hear how it turns out.

if you're interested in the brown malt experiments let me know. I'm hoping to find a reasonably simple way of producing a semi-authentic version.

cheers,

ben