Millet Malting Methods and Madness

[akueck]

With my leftover millet from my earlier grain experiments, I am trying my hand at malting. I started yesterday, but today I found this article:
http://www.scientificsocieties.org/jib/papers/2004/G-2004-1303-247.pdf
which has some interesting information regarding the malting of millet. My grains are starting to make tiny roots; based on the information in the paper I think I will dry and kiln them tomorrow. I haven't found ref 22 yet, which describes more details about the drying and kilning (I hope). Perhaps Medsen can work his internet find-em magic.

Also here are a couple of papers of interest, though again I haven't found more than the abstracts so far:
Carbohydrate Polymers
Volume 66, Issue 1, 5 October 2006, Pages 71-74

Journal of the Institute of Brewing 1995, vol. 101, no5, pp. 345-350

REF 22: Pelembe, L.A.M., Dewar, J. and Taylor, J.R.N., Effect of malting
conditions on pearl millet malt quality. Journal of the Institute
of Brewing, 2002, 108, 7–12.

I wonder how much the J Inst Brewing subscription would be. Could get ourselves a Patrons site license? Eh? Well I can dream.

I am not following the wetting procedures from the paper (since I started before I found it). Here is what I did: soak millet in water for 4 hours. drain and spread on paper towel. cover with paper towel, spray with water to moisten.

Half the millet went into a warm oven (initially 90 F and 40% RH) and half into the brew cave (steady 60 F and 50-55% RH). The oven obviously cooled to room temp over a couple of hours, but I have since applied another heat pulse or two. After 1 day root/shoots are appearing on some grains, with the oven grains slightly ahead. I am periodically spraying with water to keep things moist. Sounds like I am roughly along the "medium" water path outlined in the paper, though I don't have a space which stays 25 C.

My drying plan is to put the grain in the oven at about 100 F for an hour or two. Then try to ramp the temp up to about 150 for another hour or two. Do we think that will work? This paper also mentioned not deroot/shooting the malt, which greatly increased the FAN content. Thoughts on root beer?

Update: More Google fun-- http://www.ianr.unl.edu/INTSORMIL/smscientificpubs/Guide to Floor maltingSci publ.pdf
http://researchspace.csir.co.za/dspace/bitstream/10204/2043/3/pelembe_2002.pdf <-- REF 22, I found it!

 

[Medsen Fey]

I have to say I'm really impressed with the thought, research and effort you are putting into this project. I'm sure you are going to get something really good out of it. You may even be able to write this up into an article fit for publication. Has Zymurgy ever publish articles on gluten-free brewing or anything on millet?

:icon_salut:

 

[wayneb]

Man, you've struck gold with that paper (and for that matter, the guide to malting as well). Nice find there -- makes me wish that I had co-malted my rice that I used in the neolithic recipe with some millet.

Maybe next time.... ;D

 

[akueck]

Well Medsen, I have to catch up with you yet on the Google-magic, but I'm getting there. I'm really glad some of those papers were available in full text online, there's nothing worse than finding a great abstract but no paper. (except maybe when you find the whole paper and it's in Japanese or Russian, I hate it when that happens.)

I'm excited to try some of the more "proven" methods described in these papers soon, but my "try it and see what happens" method seemed to work ok. Today is day 3 so I am going to dry the malt out. The oven malt stayed wetter than the closet malt. I'm guessing the RH in the oven got a lot higher after I measured it the first day due to the much smaller volume of air. However both sets of malt did sprout a significant amount and look sufficiently similar to the pictures in the how-to guide that I'm pleased.

Here is a picture of the malt:

The oven malt is on the left, you can see that it is darker in color (wetter).

Here is a closeup, though I had a hard time getting a good focus. How do you turn off autofocus? Computers suck at focus.

 

[akueck]

I'm starting the process of malting 250g of millet according to the process laid out in the literature: 8h of 2h wet/2h dry cycling, then germinating for 4 days while dunking in water twice daily and otherwise keeping the grain humid. 4 days is what I decided to try because my "incubator" is the oven which is fairly less than warm. The authors only went down to 20º, and I'm looking at more like 16-17. But I am doing the initial soak in 30º water to hopefully get things jump-started. Maybe 5 days would be better? I'll do it by eye I guess.

If this works out I will try malting another 500 g or so using the same method, which should give me enough to try a gallon batch at roughly 1.040 (maybe). And once my yeast test meads are bottled I will embark on the papaya test. Clear, mead, faster!

 

[akueck]

The soak/dry/soak/dry process is complete and now the grain is hanging out in the oven. Already things are going faster than my last attempt, with signs of sprouting in a good number of grains. I did add an extra 5-min soak after the second air stage, and I added a very small amount of sulfite to this soak water (not enough to be able to measure the weight of the powder, but it was a pinch or so in about 1.5 qt). My "spin dry" technique has left quite a bit of water in the grain bag, so we'll see how that goes. I'm thinking of spreading things out on a sheet like last time to avoid mold problems.

 

[akueck]

Day 2 of post-soak malting, and the little roots are about as large as they were when I stopped the last batch. The grain is soaking in (lightly sulfited) water for 10 minutes now; yesterday I was busy and didn't soak the grain. Instead I (twice) ran the grain under the tap for a minute, shook dry, and put it back in the oven. The oven is doing a good job of keeping the humidity high and the grains remain moist all day.

Also, this batch smells "maltier" than my first attempt. Hopefully that translates to better results?

 

[BBBF]

Cool. The plan is to start malting my next batch of quinoa and amaranth this weekend. It's so time consuming though (well needing to be around every 2 & 8 hour cycle), so one change of plans this weekend could delay the start of the whole process.

 

[akueck]

Yeah, the being unemployed thing is at least working in my favor as far as malting goes. Silver lining, I suppose. I do think you could get away with an 8-hour soak followed by just air, in case that helps your schedule any. The "twice daily" resoaking I'm doing now isn't on any particular schedule, just whenever I feel like it.

 

[akueck]

I have to say I'm really impressed with the thought, research and effort you are putting into this project. I'm sure you are going to get something really good out of it. You may even be able to write this up into an article fit for publication. Has Zymurgy ever publish articles on gluten-free brewing or anything on millet?

:icon_salut:

I contacted the editor of Zymurgy to see if she'd be interested in such an article. I wouldn't write it until after the papaya test, so it would be awhile. We'll see what she says.

 

[BBBF]

Last time I did an initial 4 hour soak, 2 hours air, 8 hours soak, 2 hours air, 8 hour soak and then just kept the grains moist. Actually, I may have shortened the last soak for the quinoa because it was already sprouting. The place where being unemployed has it's advantage is being able to stop the malting process at the percise point you like. My amaranth needed an extra 1/2 day, which turned into a full day because I was at work. I might try to keep the piles of grain a little deeper and see if the added warmth will speed up the process. Although, I don't want to speed it up too much. My two dehydrators can only hold about 4lbs of grain combined and I'll be malting 4lbs of quinoa and 4lbs of amaranth. I need the amaranth to lag by a day.

 

[akueck]

I'm drying in the oven, that seems to work pretty well. Unfortunately there's no setting for 120º, but again I tend to be around a lot so I can turn the oven on every half hour to keep it above 100.

Thinking of stopping the malting soon, some of the shoots are getting pretty big. Roughly at 1/2 the length of the grain right now.

 

[BBBF]

Yeah, the oven would work if you're around to open it up or turn it on and off. I like the dehydrators for now because I can get a low enough temperature and I can put them on a timer. Eventually I'd like to build some equipment that will allow me to malt and kiln on a larger scale. I don't know where that'll fit in with my plans to build a 2 gallon mlt, 5-10 gallon mlt, convert an old pressure cooker into a steam infusion system, restore a 73 beetle convertible and maybe buy a house that will come with it's own list of repairs. Well, I'm pretty sure the house will come before building it. I'm surprised my roommate hasn't kicked me out already for filling her kitchen with carboys.

Keep taking pictures of the millet. That'll be the next grain I try.

 

[akueck]

I just started drying the grains. Here is a picture of them prior to meeting the warm oven:

Hopefully you can see the little rootlets. The sprouting was not entirely even across all the grains. A small amount didn't sprout much, a large portion had small roots, and about 25% had fairly long roots, about as long as the grain. Today they smell maltier than yesterday. I will start another 500 g malting soon, maybe a little more. Then I will toast some and try to brew with it.

 

[BBBF]

That's about where my quinoa is at right now. That grain is awesome for malting. It's about ready after only a 4 hours soak, 2 hour air, 8 hour soak. I'll start kilning it sometime today. I expect the amaranth to take a while. It doesn't show any noticable activity. Unfortionately, I only had 2 lbs of each grain left. I thought I had more.

 

[akueck]

Drying is complete, now I am kilning the malt at 90ºC for one hour--this should be similar to "pale malt" according to what I have read. I will add pictures of the finished malt later today.

the finished malt, all bagged up. The little bag hiding on the left is the first malt I tried. I'll start more early next week, hopefully along with some quinoa, and look forward to brewing it in about 7-10 days. Style suggestions? I was thinking of trying to hit "brown" again.

 

[akueck]

After a lot of thought and discussions with the wife, I've decided to aim for "blonde" as my first all-millet home-malted brew. I'd like to see how the millet tastes without the complications of lots of roasting and/or hops. To that end I'm also forgoing the quinoa for now to make this a 100% millet beer. Here is the proposed recipe:
~2 lbs "pale" millet malt (250g kilned at 90 C, 600g kilned at 85 C)
~0.2 lbs "munich" millet malt (kilned at 105 C)
~15-20 IBU of hops, some Goldings and/or whatever else I find in the freezer
OG roughly 1.050 if it works the way it's supposed to.
FG who knows? hopefully in the neighborhood of 1.010.
Going to mash in the oddball high-gelatinization grain method:
Steep in warm water (100? 140?) for ~20-30 minutes. Separate grains, save steep water (which should contain some enzymes). Boil grains for 30-45 minutes or until they are beat to hell. Cool grains and recombine with enzyme water for the mash. Going to try mashing at 151 F and see how that goes. Or maybe I'll try a two-step mash with a protein rest at ~110? If conversion isn't complete after an hour I'll add some bottled amylase. I've got some rice hulls to help with the mash.

I've got 750 g of grain steeping now, it should be done malting by the end of the week and I'll try to brew late next week or so. If it works and doesn't taste like a$$ I'll try to save a few bottles for anybody who is coming to NHC in Oakland this June. (even more incentive!)

 

[akueck]

For some reason(s), which could include the record high temps here lately (indoor it only got to the mid/high 70s but outside near 100), the larger amount of grain keeping the bed warmer, and my amazingly green thumb, this batch has sprouted much more quickly than the last one and has already passed the point at which I stopped before. I am starting the drying process now. Depending on how you count, this is either day 2 or 3 of the process.

Of note are the several wheat berries I found hiding in the millet. This process is also successful at malting wheat. (At least I think it was wheat.) I found a sesame seed too, but that got pulled out early on.

Brew day could be this weekend!

 

[BBBF]

Where these grains from the bins? That wheat berry is why I won't use them. The warm weather will definatley speed up the process. Also, if you made more this time, the bigger piles will generate more heat.


I went to a food alllergy convention last weekend and spoke with the owner of Green's. He's not a brewer, so he didn't have too much to say, but that was cool. More importantly, I spoke with some sorghum farmers from kansas that were very interested in what I was doing. I gave them my email address and might be able to buy some grain from them.

I stopped malting my quinoa and amarath about a day earlier than I did the last time. If I made a mistake of over modifying my grains last time, I'm at the risk of undermodifying them this time. I'll just have to wait and see what happens. It wouldn't be an worth exerimenting if I knew the outcome.

 

[akueck]

Yeah I got the millet in the bulk aisle. It sits on the top shelf, so nothing is falling into it, but it's not that surprising that some other bits of grain might make their way into the bin. I'm hoping the incidental contact with a wheat berry hasn't "tainted" the rest of the grain in terms of gluten-free-ness. Obviously for those who are really allergic, the bulk aisle is not reliably clean enough.