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Clarity

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  1. I wear many hats and one of them is as a process engineer and have put in steam systems. I will be in Haverhill today, but I live in western mass. If you want you can email me your contact info and I could always stop by this afternoon. You can reach me: christian@awnequip.com. Cheers, Christian
  2. You can also check out my website: www.valleymalt.com My wife and I started our own malt house last year and it has been doing great. I would love to supply malting equipment to others to get them started as well, so that like micro-distilling and micro-brewing, micro-malting could grow into an industry of it's own. I have been in talks with some about supplying equipment, and have a business separate from the malt house that I can supply equipment through. I am a mechanical / process engineer as well as a maltster so my malt house is 90% automated (and ever increasing), and I can check the status of my system and change operating parameters anywhere my i-phone gets reception. That being said, I am really interested in floor malting as well, and appreciate the old art. If you are interested in talking more, please send me a message, and we can discuss what you are thinking as far as capacity goes, and put together a cost and time frame for a malt system. Malting like distilling is it's own niche. You need to be as committed to malting as you are to distilling. I always say that the easiest part is the malting, it is the cleaning before and after the malt system that are all the work. Your suppliers switch from a malt house or one supplier to potentially many farmers, and you take on the risk of a farming business. In New York this year much of the spring barley crop was lost due to the heavy rain in the early part of the season. Look forward to hearing from you.
  3. Valley Malt is located in Western Massachusetts and we do contract malting for folks. Price of the contract depends on a few things: how much, how clean it is when it gets to us, and how you want it back (tote or 50 lb bag). You can contact us through our web-site (www.valleymalt.com) or email us at info@valleymalt.com. We typically charge for malting of 1500 lbs as a minimum. You can contract through the big malting companies as well, but it is usually a 100,000 lb minimum and it can only be for your own use - you can not resell it to someone else. This is what Sierra Nevada and others have done in the past. Cheers, Christian
  4. Pete and all this is a really great discussion. My main function in this realm is malting, and I spend a lot of time and money kilning grains. I think there are a couple of points here that i would like to make: 1. Kilning is done to stop germination and preserve the grain in it's "modified" state so that it can be used months or even years later by brewers & distillers. Getting the correct moisture really makes a difference for getting the correct grind when you are using a roller mill, however if you are using a hammer mill you are pulverizing everything and most likely have a way of filtering out the fine particles (mash filter vs. lauter tun in the brewing world). Also kilning helps to remove some of the tannins in the grain, and thereby enhances the flavor. In generic terms, the higher temp the kiln the more flavor develops, however this higher temp kills off enzymes needed for mashing. There are literally text books written on kilning and malting, so I will stop my explanation here. 2. The rootlets are a pain to take off without damaging the grain when malt is green, however when it is dry they literally fall off when you rub the dryed malt together. 3. Rootlets are both high in protein and high in tanins, plus they look bad, so that is why they are removed. The added protein slows a mash and the tannins add off flavors. That being said, I think you should try using green malt in your distillates. If you are malting in your distillery so that as soon as you have full acrospire length you are mashing in, I don't see a problem. You will have very good DP. My only concern would be flavor - if you could use green malt to brew with, believe me Anheuser Busch would be doing it, but they use dry malts because green malt adds to bad flavor in beers. If you are distilling, I don't know this for a fact, but I would hope that most of those off flavors are removed during the distilling process. If you try it in a batch and it comes out good go with it, kilning is by far the most energy intensive portion of malting, and you will save all that effort by using green malt. If it doesn't come out that good, you may be able to dry with a smoker - we do a few smoked grains that I dry with a wood fire, you may not have to dry them down as far as you would if you were ordering this malt or storing it for long periods but again would depend on rootlet removal, and grinding method. As far as consistency goes, I wouldn't be concerned, if you are malting on such a small scale, consistency is going to be a problem whether you are kilning or not. The only reason the big guys are "consistent" is because they have such volume they can blend batches in order to have a "consistent" product. Malt is malt, and you may not get 80% extract, but if you get 60% is that going to be a problem? By using a low or no kilning temp, and assuming your grain is a good malting quality, the diastatic power should be pretty good, even though extract is low. Sounds like a great project you are working on. Cheers, Christian
  5. For grains I would contact Lakeview Organic Farms and if you are looking for malted grains, we can help you out at Valley Malt. Even though we are in Mass we malt our share of grains grown in NY. Our website is www.valleymalt.com.
  6. Hi, I also own a small malt house in New England, and am interested in another part of Lance's questions. At the end he asked what kind of specs you look for in the malt. There are so many variations in the malting world on types of malt. It appears from the discussion that you are mainly looking at extract, but is color, protein, diastatic power, 2-row vs. 6-row and degree of modification a concern? If you look at your malt supply how consistent are the batch analysis sheets - What do they say? Traditionally in the "old country" it is my understanding that most distillers malts are smoked, does the distiller want 100% of their grain bill to be a smoked malt - does the flavor come through in the final product? Enjoying the post. -Christian
  7. For our malting operation we handle as much grain as possible in 2000 lb bulk bags. If you have a forklift you can easily maneuver them from the top loops or by lifting with a pallet below. To feed my seed cleaning equipment and malting system, I lift the bag by the top loops, and then open the emptying spout on the bottom. Once you place the spout into the hopper and grain starts flowing out, it will maintain the level in the hopper, just make sure that you are submerging the spout in the pile of grain in the hopper and not lifting the spout above that pile. As long as you maintain contact between the spout and the grain, the material will maintain the level and in your case be constantly fed into your mill. If you lift the bag above the hopper and lose contact with the hopper pile you will have a pile of grain around your mill as there will be nothing to restrict the flow - a good way to load a vessel, bad way to load your mill. I don't know where your mill is, but if it is floor mounted you could easily auger the ground grain into your mash tun. I can add more, but need to know more about your distillery layout to really help. You can buy industrial shelving that will support the bags easily to maximize storage space. I think the bulk bags are a great way to handle grain, because you don't risk hurting yourself when a forklift is doing all the lifting. I recommend using bags with a duffle top, and spout bottom, there are numerous configurations, but I have found that one to be the easiest way to load and unload them.
  8. Jesse makes great equipment, and has a diverse skill set. At ValleyMalt we are really happy with the workmanship on our malting vessel. Through the process of building the malt vessel I was able to see a couple of the stills he built, and they were Awesome!. We wanted to put copper cladding around our malt vessel after seeing a still, but ran out of material budget, and couldn't do it, but man do the stills with them look great. If you have an idea on something new and creative talk to Jesse, he is great to work with and will run with your initial concept.
  9. Bob, Thanks for the support. We will have Mass malt this fall. Trident welding did a great job putting our malt vessel together and we are now in the process of getting our malt house set up. We will be putting a newsletter out shortly updating our customers with when we will have malt available, you can check out the Valley Malt website at www.valleymalt.com, where we will also be posting updates as malt becomes available. I'll post some pictures of our malt house here when the fit out is more complete. Sorry for the delayed response, I'm still figuring out the ins and outs of the ADI forum. Christian
  10. Hello, My name is Christian, and I'm a mechanical engineer with a keen interest in all aspects of malting, brewing and distilling. I have a passion for locally based businesses and would love to see the spread of even more craft breweries, distilleries and malt houses. Each area has it's own unique characters and what better way to highlight them other then in regional spirits. I know the basics of distilling, but am looking to learn more and am hoping that I can add to the forums with the experience I do have. I'm a long time home brewer, and have worked in industries ranging from fuel cells to energy from waste to minerals processing. In addition to my "day job" I'm also in the process of starting a locally based malt house here in Western Massachusetts. If anyone needs help visualizing changes to their distillery, or building a new one let me know, that's what I do everyday. Otherwise I can't wait to learn, and share my knowledge with everyone here. I've attached some images of projects I've worked on in the past, one a mini-malt house and second a larger industrial site, all currently operating or soon to be operating. Cheers, Christian christian.stanley@stangl.com
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