Continuing germination
Yesterday I soaked the grain for a second 8 hour stretch. At the end of this soak, I spread the grains out on baking trays and sealed airtight in trash bags (clean!). This is to keep moisture in. The instructions I'm using say I need to leave the grain for 4-6 days, until the main shoot of each grain is 75-100% the length of the grain. I'm following http://byo.com/feature/284.html.
Well, 12 hours after bagging, the shoots seem to be ahead of the schedule, especially the barley. Most shoots are at least 25%.
This is pretty exciting. I was somewhat skeptical that I'd see any germination at all with this grocery-store grain, but at this stage, both the barley and the wheat appear to be very-much alive! Maybe I'll get some usable malt out of this yet!
The remaining TBM is still secondary-fermenting in the glass carboy. It looks like a lot of yeast has dropped out of suspension - the colour is darker, and much less hazy. I plan to bottle this next weekend.
I got a used Warsteiner mini-keg at a party this weekend. It is 5 litres / 1.3 gallons. I might use this for ultra-small test fermentations. It has a nice tap at the bottom, and a cored rubber stopper at the top, which should take an airlock or blow-off tube. Unfortunately the empty mini-keg has a persistant solvent smell, something like turpentine. I'm not really sure what is causing this. I think the beer in it was OK. I've tried sokaing it in dishwashing soap, baking soda and oxiclean to get rid of the smell. The oxiclean diminished it, but it's still there.
Well, 12 hours after bagging, the shoots seem to be ahead of the schedule, especially the barley. Most shoots are at least 25%.
This is pretty exciting. I was somewhat skeptical that I'd see any germination at all with this grocery-store grain, but at this stage, both the barley and the wheat appear to be very-much alive! Maybe I'll get some usable malt out of this yet!
The remaining TBM is still secondary-fermenting in the glass carboy. It looks like a lot of yeast has dropped out of suspension - the colour is darker, and much less hazy. I plan to bottle this next weekend.
I got a used Warsteiner mini-keg at a party this weekend. It is 5 litres / 1.3 gallons. I might use this for ultra-small test fermentations. It has a nice tap at the bottom, and a cored rubber stopper at the top, which should take an airlock or blow-off tube. Unfortunately the empty mini-keg has a persistant solvent smell, something like turpentine. I'm not really sure what is causing this. I think the beer in it was OK. I've tried sokaing it in dishwashing soap, baking soda and oxiclean to get rid of the smell. The oxiclean diminished it, but it's still there.
posted by number9 at 1:18 PM
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