Brown Malt

[barney]

Has anyone made their own Brown malt?
Should I start with pale, mild ale or amber: as its almost brown , what are the temperature/time cooking guidline?

Cheers

[seymour]

Yes.
Any of the above.
Medium-hot.

There are many free online guides, all of which take it far more seriously than I do. It's really a no-brainer, though, just take some of your base malt and give it a try. I got the idea from some award-winning brewpubs which use the restaurant ovens to caramelize some of their base malt the night before brewday, thus dramatically enhancing their brown ales. Not roasting, per se, but toasting/baking/lightly caramelizing. To me, it's the unevenness that gives so much complexity; it's like using tiny amounts of many different specialty malts.

If you own an oven or a toaster or a fire pit, and know how to operate them, you already have all the equipment and know-how necessary. Ron and Graham have even written about kilning their own brown malt over straw and wood fires, which is awesome but I haven't yet gone to those lengths.

I know you've heard me say it before, but you could simply try this and tweak from there (several members have and all reports are good):
Take 500 grams (a little more than a pound) of your base malt, soak it in a bowl with some water, spread it out on a cookie sheet, then bake it in a medium-hot oven until it looks golden, maybe some browner edges, when it smells nice and biscuity. Don't stress out about it, that's about as scientific as it gets. Relax, don't stress, have a home-baked home-brew.

[greenxpaddy]

Has anyone made their own Brown malt?
Should I start with pale, mild ale or amber: as its almost brown , what are the temperature/time cooking guidline?

Cheers

Let me know how you get on! Sounds brilliant

[SamT]

Tempted to try this and then bang it over my cold smoker - properly authentic(ish) C19th Brown Malt

[Bierhaus]

There are a few ways you can make your own brown malt. Toasting some pale malt in an oven for an hour or so works pretty well, although it doesn't quite have the same flavor as the real stuff. Or you can get some wood, start a fire, and make a historical version.

Fuggledog and I have made a few different 'historical' versions and have brewed beers from them. Give it a try!

I wrote about my attempts here:

http://perfectpint.blogspot.com/2011/12 ... -malt.html

http://perfectpint.blogspot.com/2012/05 ... again.html

[seymour]

Great info, Bierhaus, thanks for sharing! You should speak up more often.

[TC2642]

Good little blog you've got there, added to my bookmarks.

[barney]

Well I found a toasting guide in my "Old British Beers and How to Make Them"

Its in the oven as I write
45 mins at 100 °C
75 mins at 150 °C
30 mins at 175 °C

[seymour]

There you go. Good find, my man. How'd it turn out?

[barney]

Not very dark on the outside, rightly or wrongly I was expecting a roasty type colour. The colour inside the grain looked very nice though a nice dark tan colour.

Now just need to get a brew on with it.

[Blackaddler]

I've tried it a couple of times with crushed pale malt, but now realise that it does really need to be uncrushed.

By toasting crushed malt, I think that it possibly denatures some of the enzymes. I noticed this both times, but particularly on the second attempt, where my FG was about 6 points short.

[seymour]

...By toasting crushed malt, I think that it possibly denatures some of the enzymes...

The oven certainly would kill most enzymes, but to the same extent as uncracked grain. As long as your toasted malt is a smallish percentage of the overall grainbill, and the majority is still fresh pale malt, it should convert with nearly the same efficiency as store-bought caramelized malts.

[Blackaddler]

I was using 10.5% brown, so that would have accounted for about 5 points...

[seymour]

I was using 10.5% brown, so that would have accounted for about 5 points...

Yeah, that makes sense. I like to ferment grainbills containing home roasted malts with the McEwans yeast strain (Wyeast 1728 and White Labs WLP028) which chomps right through anything while simultaneously preserving malty, caramelly, fruity flavors, somehow.