"Jaques d'Alltrades" wrote in message
...
The message nMN0c.2447$zu.2073@newsfe1-win
from "Andy Hunt" contains these words:
A friend of mine suggested having a go at making some organic beer, from
scratch. I hope he knows what he's doing.

I presume that you are proposing to grow your own barley, if you are
starting from scratch? You will probably need quite a large plot to ensure
you have enough grain for several attempts at beer making - you should
accept that you may not get it right first time :-)

This is not something to attempt lightly if you mean *REALLY* from
scratch. You need strictly controlled temperatures when chitting the
barley and malting it, also it must be turned (gently) regularly or it
goes sour.

Not rocket science - at one time loads of smallholders made their own beer.

Malting the barley is a difficult part of the process because you need to
control the temperature and humidity and turn the grain over a long period.
Not something you can do in a couple of hours, or leave for a few days then
come back to.
However there is an excellent description on how to malt barley on page 69
of "The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency" by John Seymour ISBN
0-7513-0426-3
This description implies to me that 'kilning' the barly (cooking it at above
120 F but below 140 F to prevent it growing further) is more difficult than
the initial malting.
It is also important to get the colour right, from pale to dark, depending
on the beer you want to produce.
You will also need some kind of mill to crush the malt before brewing.

So you will need a certain amount of infrastructure - a plot to grow the
barly, a floor to malt the barley, a suitable kiln or oven to cook the
malted barley, and a coarse mill to crush the malt.

You will also need to dedicate quality time to it - malting seems to take
about 14 days.


Then when you mash it, the maltose has to be extracted within a very
tight temperature band, about ±1°F for lager malt and ±1°C for English
type beer malt.

Here is where Rusty/Jaques and I part company.
Real home brewers use fresh malt, and can make outstanding beer with home
mashing. You can get mashing tubs with electric heaters and thermostats
which can turn the art into more of a science. You may not get the same
extraction rate as a commercial brewery, but then you just accept that you
are going to be a little less efficient and allow for that in the
quantities.

If the growing and malting is too complex, find a supplier of organic
crushed malt.

e.g. from http://www.beersunlimited.co.uk/grains.html

"Also offered is the organically grown Golden Promise, primarily grown for
distillation but which produces excellent beers."

It is much more sensible to buy spray-dried malt extract.

The (not good but vaguely competent) brewer in me recoils from this heresy
:-))

snip

Cheers

Dave R