Kamut, specialty grain

[PetenNewburg]

  I brewed a batch of Oat Stout yesterday and incorporating with my specialty grains, Kamut.  This was in it's raw organic form which I gave a medium grind.  I soaked 1/3 lb in 120 degree water for an hour prior to starting the other grains.  I cooked this in grain bags slowly with 20 minute rests at 140 & 158 degrees.  At 160 degrees I pulled the grain to sparge in a second boil pot at 170 for 30 minutes.
  After this I pulled all grains, combined both boil pots and started my boil.

  The other specialty malts appeared well used, but the Kamut grain was really just starting to cook with a lot of it still rock hard!  I am going to try an over night soak or maybe Malting some of the Kamut before using again.

  The Kamut gave a nutty aroma to the mash.

[PetenNewburg]

  Playing with Kamut!  I soaked a pound of raw grain in a bucket, just enough water to keep the bottom 1/2 inch wet.  It soaked up a quart of water within an hour!  It had a very sweet almost honey aroma.  after only 24 hours the majority of the grain has 1/16 inch sprouts!!  I transferred the grain to a cookie sheet lined and covered with a paper towel, keeping the grain damp.  It smells great!
 
  Kamut grain is a ancient strain of Egyption Wheat.  It is almost 3 times the size of "normal" wheat.  It is very high in protein!  With this experiment I hope to malt and light to medium roast the grain.  When complete I'll boil a pound in a gallon of water for an hour and check gravity and color.

 More later as it evolves!

[PetenNewburg]

  10 hours since the grain had root chits appearing.  Some roots are now an inch long or longer!  I've read several articles on malting by John Palmer, Dan Carrol and copied the Briess Malting guide.  I'll give the grain another sprinkle of water this morning and recheck the process this evening.  Meanwhile I'll dig out the dehydrator!  

http://www.bodensatz.com/upage/index.php?page=kiwibrewer_malting

http://www.briess.com/food/Processes/malttmp.php

[PetenNewburg]

   Monday afternoon the roots had reached well over an inch, green leaf sprouts were appearing, some longer than the seed.  I spread the grain out over three large cookie sheets, set the oven at 170, the lowest it would go, and left the door open.  I checked on them every 20 - 30 minutes, stirring the grain with a fork each time.  After about three hours, all the roots and sprouts were dry and shriveled so I shut off the oven, ten minutes later I closed the door and let them sit over night.

  This morning I removed the grain from the oven and stirred it around, still some dampness, but all the roots are dry.  I preheated the oven to 350.  Put all the grain on one cookie sheet and put it in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.  Shut of the oven and let the grain cool in the oven.  After 30 minutes, I pulled it from the oven, raked it around the cookie sheet until most of the dried root and sprout had fallen off.  I bagged it, and further "massaged" the bag until most all of the dried root & sprout have fallen off.  I shook it around in a collander till it is now all out of the grain.  The aroma is of an Multi-Grain Wheat Toast!

  I'll brew a Wheat beer with this malted Kamut and another with a malted regular wheat.  Each beer will get 20% of the grain bill of Wheat!  We'll see what happens!

[wvbrewer]

That sounds like it will make a great beer.  Keep us posted on the results.  I love wheat beer.

[PetenNewburg]

I'm malting the second batch of Kamut.  My goal is to find a happy medium, Kamut has nearly three time the protein of wheat malt.  Therefor it should provide a large in fussion of body feel/ taste /per pound of grain.  First off, I am doing a more scientific approach to this batch, recording anything that seams like it may be important.    Second, it is MUCH more difficult repeating the results with three times the grain volume!  I soaked the grain for 8 hours covered in tap water.  At the eight hour point I drained the grain, spread it out on a 1/2 sheet cookie sheet, about 3/4 inch thick, covered with a wet paper towel..  Pre-soak grain weight was 2 lb 15.8 oz.  Soaked grain weight prior to spreading on cookie sheet is 4 lb 8.2 oz.  I am stirring the grain about every six hours or less to insure that no grain remains submerged.
  After 24 hours, a fair majority of the grains have "chits" appearing!  30 hrs. 75% of grain now has chits.  Some are starting to develop secondary roots.  34 hours; Most are just chits, 15% now has 1/2 inch long root starts, no sprouts.  85% have converted.
  Since at this point I am still doing the boil in bag route, this should really show the difference between roasted and malted grain of the same base.
  I priced 50 lb bag from local Organic Foods Store, $60.  YES!!  I am relaxing and having more than one homebrew!

[wvbrewer]

Wow,  you really got this thing figuered out. It sounds like it takes a lot of planning.  I am sure you can tell the difference in the finished product.

[PetenNewburg]

  3/4" - 1 1/2"  Roots are on nearly all the grain, but no sprouts (acrospires) visible as of yet.  Should be good to go by morning!  I'll dry the grain using the same method as before.  Sunday morning I should be able to roast part of the grain!

[PetenNewburg]

  Sprouts, (Acrospires) starting to appear so its drying time!   Proceeding with the same method of a 170F oven, door open, raking and rotating cookie sheets.  I'll continue until I get to within 2% of the original dry weight.  At that point I'll pull out a pound to roast as I did with the last batch.  As the extra roasting also means extra drying, even though I started with 4 pounds of grain I will likely see only 3 3/4 (+or- a few ounces), pounds malted grain.

[PetenNewburg]

  Dried, Roasted and Done!  One ounce shy of original total grain weight!

  The malted but un-roasted grain came in spot on to the original weight.  The color did not really change much if any.  The Malted grain has a sweet aroma, like a fresh out of the oven loaf of whole wheat bread.  Grain is dry enough to be just crunchy.

  The Malted & Roasted came in 1 ounce shy of the original grain weight.  The roasted grain has a nice toasted wheat aroma, kinda rootbeer reddish brown in color.  I'm guessing a 20 Lovibond.

  I am looking forward to brewing this stuff up!!  I am going to use these in a Bavarian Wiezens.  Low end of the Hop (IBU) numbers, .5 ounce Hallertauer @ 60 minutes on both.  I will use White Labs, Hefeweizen IV Ale, WLP380 for both.  All the ingredients are weighed, just need to make my starters, grind the grain, bag it and go!  Setting my sights on a Tuesday Brewday!

[wvbrewer]

Sounds cool.  How long does it take to brew that way?  I have to master what I do now.  I only have six wheats left so I need to make another batch.

[PetenNewburg]

  I really want to get ALL the flavor out of this grain for the experiment so I'm going to do a Triple Decoction Mash, my first!  According to BeerSmith it is a 3- 4 hour process.

[wvbrewer]

I am stuck working every night till weds morning.  I have a lot of time on the net and I always find myself looking at brew stuff online.  Now I cant wait to get my coopers going.  I need to get some water and just do it.

[PetenNewburg]

  I did several different types of shift work, rotating, Crompton (12 hr), swing and what ever.  They all had one thing in common, they sucked!