How do you tell a malt is in good condition?

[Reg]

It's easy ennough with hops they some with a built in colour "litmus" indicator!!!

[Jim]

I've never really owned any malt long enough for it to go off properly, but as it ages, the smell changes. It should smell really fresh, but when it gets old, it develops a slightly musty, stale smell. I've read that it loses the ability to mash properly as well, so extraction rates go down.

[jean-yves]

the best to keep malt in good condition is to brew more often
I don't keep my malt long enough to know how it could change

[Reg]

Well that is, of course, the best solution...

[full malty]

QUOTE (Reg @ May 24 2005, 09:25 AM)It's easy ennough with hops they some with a built in colour "litmus" indicator!!!
Here's something I posted to the http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/uk-homebrew mailing list recently...

> 2) I have a new sack of grain. I also noticed a small hole in the sack
> so maybe it's "gone slack", I'm not sure how you can tell.

What do your senses say ?

If it's uncrushed, crack a few in your mouth. You should get a pleasant
crunchiness when you crack a few kernels from a good bag of malt.

If you have a grain mill and you crack a sample, there will be more
resistance from a slack (damp) batch of malt.

And look at the flour, especially if you mill it. As William
Cobbett wrote, good malt "is full of flour, and in biting a grain
asunder, you find it bite easily, and see the shell thin and filled up
with flour. If it bite hard and steely, the malt is bad." [1]

If it feels damp, it's slack.

If it smells good, it probably is good.

[1] http://www.jbsumner.com/html/brewinghis ... bbett.html

[Jim]

Nice link f.m. (the Cobbet thing, I mean). I love old brewing technique books!

It looks like that UK Homebrew site might be interesting, but you can't seem to look at it without registering (which I've applied to do).

[full malty]

http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/uk-homebrew is a mailing list. Around five hundred subscribers. It has been around at various addresses since the mid to late 90s. It has a very useful archive of around 30,000 postings (if you can get your hands on a copy of this archive).

I like old brewing books too. And old gardening books.

[Jim]

Ah, I thought it was another forum. I did apply for access, but other than an automatic confirmation email I haven't heard anything back.