How do you decide between malting-saccharification and cooking-saccharification to make a grain mash?

[perfection]

I understand that if an alcoholic beverage is based on barley as raw material it would go for the malting -(self saccharifcation) route to make a  mash for fermentation as barley has high diastatic ability

Possibly that holds good for wheat too?

Theoretically, if a spirit or liquor steam is to be made from rye, corn, millet can it be done by the malting the grain followed by saccharification using the grain's own amylase assisted by malted barley or does it have to be done by cooking the grain or grain bill before adding malted barley (as cooking will destroy any amylase) to do the saccharification.

Will the results of say, cooking the rye grain and malting the rye grain result in a mash that tastes the same (only different routes to get there)?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but  would like to settle  it my my mind

Thanks folks at ADI

Stay safe

 

[kleclerc77]

Malted grains definitely have a different flavor profile than their unmalted counterparts. The spirit will come out tasting different for a malted vs. an unmalted rye mash, for example. Malted barley's diastic power is much greater than most other cereal grains, that's why you only need a relatively small amount of it at the right temp to saccharify the starches from a large amount of unmalted grain, ie: adding ~15% malted barley should be enough to fully convert an otherwise unmalted grain mash, where with other malted grains like rye or wheat, you'll need a much, much higher percentage. If I'm not mistaken (I may be) the malting process of any grain will make the starch readily available for saccharification, so high cook temps for malted grain wouldn't be necessary. Everyone has different setups/priorities/flavor preferences that steer them one way or another. I am happy with both the price of unmalted grain and more importantly the flavor it yields in the final product, so we use unmalted grain accompanied by exogenous enzymes and a percentage of malted barley. I'm sure others feel differently. Hope this helps.