What is Barley? What is Malt? #farming #malting #beer

You can malt at home! See    • How to make Barley Malt at home   from    / foodieswok   We're talking about barley. What is barley? What is malting? What is brewing? How do they work together? Barley is a grain like wheat, rye, oats, rice. It can be used for lots of things like soup and bread and feeding animals but this video is about making beer from barley. Different parts of the world grow different varieties of barley. Popular two-row varieties of barley are synergy, copeland, fraser, violetta, endeavor. What about 2-row versus 6-row barley? Go with 2-row. Why? Brewers prefer 2-row because they have a higher malt extract. Barley is unique because brewers will track a great (or horrible) product all the way back to the farm and variety it came from. Now for malt. Some other grains like wheat and rye can be malted for beer but mostly it's all barley. With malting you’re taking barley grain and converting it into malt, which is done by softening the grain with water and allowing it to germinate. After barley is fully and perfectly germinated, it's called 'malt'. With brewing, you’re taking that malt and soaking it in hot water to release the sugars which makes food for yeast. The mixture will ferment and turn partially into alcohol. Larry Judge has a malt business where he converts barley into malt. Larry is a 'maltster'. Larry Judge from Mitten State Malt www.facebook.com/mittenstatemalt I'm a small malster up in the Lansing area. I'm a veterinarian by trade but I got into malsting out of sheer craziness. My family farm when I was young grew barley so I've always had an interest in barley. Always had an interest in beer thanks to my Irish and German background. Spring barley doesn't like our hot humid nights and they have to grow longer into August. Winter barley as you can see it's got a real head start here because it was planted last September so now it's going to be ready to harvest probably in very early July and as Brooke will talk later we can double crop soybeans behind and you can't do that with spring barley. So we've evolved to two main varieties that I've malted in winter barleys and that's violetta and calypso varieties brought over here. Violettas work best for me so I think that's mainly what we're growing and malting in Michigan right now. All the violettas I've got right now is grown in the thumb of Michigan which a good growing area but I think it will grow elsewhere. I plan to plant it in my family farm in the Mt. Pleasant area this fall. It malts really well. Calypso is a little harder to malt and it doesn't have as good a germination long term. Winter barley is planted in the fall and harvested the following summer. I'm Chuck my Youtube channel is aroundvanburen. Thanks for watching - and reading - tell me what you think! - see you next time.