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Malting rye


PeteB

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Does anyone have any definitave information about malting rye?

I would like to know at what stage of shoot and/or root growth to stop the process.

There is plenty of information about malting barley, but little about rye. Barley has a husk, rye doesn't.

Thanks, PeteB

ps. if anyone wishes to email me directly, pbignell@itechnologies.com.au

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I want to use 20% malted rye and 80% unmalted.

The question is still the same, at what visual stage should the germination be stopped?

Thanks

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If we're just talking eyeballing it, and not looking at things like Friability, then we're talking acrospires that are 3/4 the length of the kernel.

IMHO, unless you're planning to add exogenous enzymes, you'd have to do a heck of job of malting (and germinate longer) to get enough DP from the malted portion to completely convert the unmalted portion.

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Thanks for your interest. 3/4 length is what I had deducted from reading about barley malt, but I was not sure if rye was the same.

One distillery that malts its rye said 3/4 was far too much and would have consumed too much sugar. He used root length only as a guide!

I have done a couple of small trials comparing barley malt with my rye malt and the rye was slightly better, but when I went to a production run I was disappointed with the alcohol yield.

There are lots of places to go wrong but I decided to enquire about malting first. I have been adding beta glucanase for thinning wort.

I am not familiat with the abbreviation "DP" !

PeteB

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Thanks for your interest. 3/4 length is what I had deducted from reading about barley malt, but I was not sure if rye was the same.

One distillery that malts its rye said 3/4 was far too much and would have consumed too much sugar. He used root length only as a guide!

PeteB

That's why I was asking about how you would use this malted rye. If you're only malting a 20% of the total grist, you're asking that portion to convert a lot of unmalted grain. It needs high diastatic power (DP) to accomplish this. Since you don't really have a way to measure DP and you just want to eyeball it, I suggested a longer germination time in the hopes of creating more enzymes than a malting that was intended for using 100% malted rye. Make sense?

Although if you're already planning to add exogenous enzymes, I'm not sure what the point is to malting 20% of the rye, with the rest of your grist being 80% unmalted rye. Maybe I'm missing something.

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I looked up some old notes, and lab tests with Congress worts using malted rye have shown DP as high as 600, so I suppose if you do a nice job with that Rye, germinate for 7 days or so, and kiln at low temperatures, you'll get the enzymes you'll need.

Cheers.

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Thanks for the above info. I will try to get some commercially malted rye to compare. I suspect it may be hard to find in Tasmania.

I thought I had read somewhere that rye had a high DP, higher than barley malt. What do your "old notes" say?

(I did try to send a long response but it all vanished when I tried to post so I will do it in small bits)

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That bit got through so here is some more.

Denver Distiller said "Maybe I'm missing something" The reason I want to malt rye myself is because I want to keep my whole operation farm based.

I will try to keep it brief. I am a farmer growing my own rye. I built my copper pot still from scratch. It is direct fired with biodiesel that I make from waste cooking oil from a roadhouse next to my farm. Hot water is also biodiesel heated. My tractors forklift and truck also run on Bio. The only significant material I bring to the farm is waste oil and the only product to leave will be whiskey. Cooling water comes from my dam and the used water will irrigate the next rye crop. Brewing water is harvested from my roofs. I have a lot of farm sheds. I hope to reuse yeast when production starts running smoothly. (I have only done 3 wash runs to date) There are catch words such as "sustainable" "closed loop" "small carbon footprint" "green" "farm based" "value adding" "craft" "low food miles" (does anyone have any more suggestions??) and because of this I have caught the attention of the media (free advertising :)

This is why I want to malt my own rye.(I won't mention the small amount of added enzymes if I am not asked)

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That post went through so here is some more that might create a bit of discussion.

I can't see the point in kilning the malted rye. I have read that kilning destroys some of the enzymes, but I am no expert. I use it green and grind it straight into the mash with an industrial size meat mincer as soon as I estimate the enzymes are at optimum stage. I only malt enough for each batch.

I don't want to malt 100% of the mash because I am concerned that too much mashed roots and shoots might cause a taste to carry through to the spirit.

Kilning malt for beer production is very important to enhance the flavour, but as far as I know the main reason to kiln whisky malt is to stop the germination at its optimum. (and sometimes to add smoke) This also stops it rotting in storage and makes it easier to transport.

That is it for now, I hope I have created a bit of interest and discussion.

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You are absolutely going to have to kiln that malt.

Let me save you a whole bunch of posting here:

Call Frank Vriesekoop at the University of Ballarat. As a farmer, there's a mess of programs that are designed to help you do exactly what you're doing... brewing and distilling in Australia. They'll likely help you with lab services, too.

Cheers. And for the love of everything holy, please don't turn your spent yeast into Vegemite. : )

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Vegemite, now there's an idea!

I was hoping no one would come up with with an essential reasom to kiln the malt. It is an extra step, more heat, more time, more equipment.

I will get in touch with Frank, thanks for the lead.

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You are absolutely going to have to kiln that malt.

Let me save you a whole bunch of posting here:

Call Frank Vriesekoop at the University of Ballarat. As a farmer, there's a mess of programs that are designed to help you do exactly what you're doing... brewing and distilling in Australia. They'll likely help you with lab services, too.

Cheers. And for the love of everything holy, please don't turn your spent yeast into Vegemite. : )

I'm trying to think why he would need to kiln the germinating rye, but my morning coffee is failing me. Can you walk me through that one?

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Just to be sure we're using the same terms: I'm talking about kilning, not roasting. He needs to arrest the germination process, among other things.

Rereading his questions, he's also talking about not deculming the malt.

You need to remove the rootlets, Pete!

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Germination needs to be arrested, kilning is a common method, but a meat mincer is just as effective.

Roots and shoots are removed after kiln drying, part of the reason is that a lot of them just fall off anyway, they look messy, are dusty, and cause an uneven product, and probably influence the flavour and the head of a beer. There are probably other reasons, I certainly don't know it all.

There was an English distillery (I think North British) that used to use its own "green malt" so why can't I?

I have a science degree (many years ago) and if I shouldn't use green malt I would like to know WHY.

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I'm just giving you my opinion here, and I certainly don't have the corner on wisdom either.

All I'm trying to give you is the Best Brewing Practice. A term that's used to say: here's part of the standard way of doing things, and if you follow this procedure, you'll be most likely to get the best, repeatable results. You can go off book all you'd like (I do all the time), I'm not stopping you. I'm just telling you what I'd do, and I don't mean any offense in giving this advice.

But to answer your question, IMHO, you need to get the moisture out of the malt, and get it stable so that you have repeatable fermentations. That moisture content, particularly when you run it through a hammer mill with the intent of stopping the germination process, can lead to biological problems in that relatively wet, milled rye--- particularly if it sits for long periods of time. And you started a biological process (germination), and I have to say that I haven't the slightest clue if milled germinating malt is going to continue to change after being run through a hammer mill, particularly with that elevated water content.

If you're planning on using exogenous enzymes no matter what, you can add poorly malted rye and, as you know, you'll get by just fine. IMHO, there's not much point to buying all that equipment, and spending your labor costs on malting, if all you're going to do is add enzymes in the end.

All just my opinion.

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It seems to me that the biggest reasons to kiln it would be that arresting the germination would give results that where easier to duplicate. It would also be easier to do a large batch and store it rather then having to malt a fresh batch every time you wanted to do a new ferment.

That said since your just eyeballing it I don't know that your going to get consistent results, so you might as well use it green if you don't mind the hassle of malting all the time.

It's also easier to knock the rootlets off of kilned grain.

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Thanks for the replies Denver D. Your advice in no way offends me. Different ways of doing the same thing is all helpful information, and will eventually help me decide what method suits my situation.

I am not trying to get a product that is exactly the same year after year. If that is what I wanted I would certainly buy commercially malted grain, and it would probably be barley and in this part of the world I would make a "scotch" style. But I want to be different and hopefully there are enough adventurous customers out there who will buy all my little distillery produces.

Back to the green malt, it is not hammermilled, the mill would be hard to clean. I use a big meat mincer with a fine extruder plate. It is easy to dismantle to wash and dry. My unmalted grain is ground through an old set of French Buhr millstones.

FYI green malting on a small scale requires no capital investment. Some 20 litre plastic buckets and a thermometer that I already have. I wash then steep the grain in the buckets then tip it on the floor on a sheet of plastic and turned and dampened as necessary. As soon as it is malted enough it all goes throught the mincer into the mash. Very little labour and very cheap.

But if there is anyone out there on this big forum who can give me a scientific reason why I should not do it this way, please post. I would rather know now than thousands of litres down the track.

PS. I have just finished my third wash run with my pot still and will be doing my first spirit run tomorrow.

Thanks all for the discussion

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I'm not an expert on malting. I'm just starting my own research in plans to build a large commercial malting house to add to my new distillery operation. I say go for it and see how it works. The process you describe sounds easy. And it may produce a great product. There are tried and true ways of doing things. BUT, the micro-distillers have been experimenting over the past 20 years and now the big boys are starting to look at the 'wrong' way we do things, and question the old ways when they see the good results that can be gotten through experimentation. I have been having conversations with a few head distillers from Scotland and other countries. They are avidly following what is going on. A few are reading everything on this forum. A distiller for one of the biggest names in single malt Scotch is a regular lurker here, he personally told me so last year.

The only thing about using the green malted rye is consistency. Different temperatures will affect malting times, the amount of starches converted, etc. This will affect the fermentation. Flavors developed in fermentation will control those that come through the distillation. I would keep very detailed notes. As the product flavor profile changes, over day to day, month to month, you will learn what changes in the process do to the flavor at each step. As you make changes, do it in only one part of the process at a time.

Please let us know about your experiments and the results. If you are having problems we may be able to troubleshoot. And of course we want to know about your successes.

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Hello Jonathan, thanks for your interest and encouragement.

The reason I started this thread was because I am getting a low alcohol yield. Because my malting technique was a bit "outside the square" I decided to start there. (one thing at a time)

I now suspect that I might be feeding the pigs with a lot of sugar that is left in my mash. I am using a lauter screen, and because rye wort is so viscous I think too much sugar is being left behind. I am going to play with mashing / lautering technique, but if I am still losing too much sugar I might have to put mash into the still. If I do that I will need to fit an oil bath and an agitator to my still. (still is direct fired with biodiesel)

Fermentation seems OK. Someone on this forum suggested diabetes test strips so I bought some, and my wash does not have diabetes, ie. no sugar left so it must have all fermented.

Jonathan, you will have the same question as I do, exactly when should the sprouting be halted?

At this stage for rye I am using 3/4 length acrospire. Are there any other physical or chemical indications that are easy to use?

I am feeling more confident that my green malt technique is OK, but I would still like to hear from others.

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Pete, we've found that when lautering a 100% rye mash, even a handful of rice hulls make a huge difference. That's probably not an option for you, but if you have some manner of neutral, safe chaff to add to the lauter tun when mashing in, you may have a much happier time. Being able to wash more sugar out of the rye-concrete is a potential bump to your yield.

We use only malted rye, so I haven't done my homework but 20% malt feels a bit low given rye's different mix of amylases than barley.

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Thanks Denver D.for telling me about Dr.Frank Vriesekoop.

I had a long conversation with him on the phone today. He said green malt was OK to use. He also confirmed that North British distillery still uses green malt

He offered to get some of my malt samples tested. He is also very keen on biodiesel.

Andrew, I think you are right about too much sugar left in my spent mash. I had a load of mash on my truck to take to the pigs. When I got back the truck smelled like toffy apples. Some of the leftover wort dripped onto the muffler and got caramelised.

I have been using grass seed husks. I think without them the mash would be completly "stuck". I suspect that 100% rye malt may run off quicker than 20% malted. Have you compared runoff times for rye and barley mash?

I couldn't find anything on Finger Lakes web site about green malt so I sent them an email.

Thanks all.

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