Written By: Peter Evans
Date: December 15, 2009 How important is it that you pour a foundation when building a house. How important is it to you that your car has an engine? Yes, malt is just than important. It is key to your success in brewing and will always be the keystone to your end product.

Brewing is defined as:

•    To make (ale or beer) from malt and hops by infusion, boiling, and fermentation
•    To make a beverage by boiling, steeping, or mixing various ingredients. Well we’re certainly not making tea here so let’s concentrate on the process where it applies to making ale or beer. Or specifically, malt.

Malt is typically made from wheat or rye. Malt is made by allowing your grain to germinate, that is grow little sprouts. How you achieve this is not something we’re going to go into right now, but there are several apparatuses that claim to help in the process.

After your wheat or rye has germinated it is then dried in a kiln and sometimes roasted. Roasting takes a lot of attention to detail, but will produce a rich flavor and dark color. This makes the painstaking process well worth the effort to some brewers.
 
The germination process creates a number of enzymes that convert the starch in the grain into sugar. As said earlier, the time spent roasting is important as the malt will take on a dark color and will strongly influence the color and flavor of the beer.

You don’t need to go out and buy a kiln either. If you happen to have one just lying around somewhere, feel free to use it, if not, there are alternatives. Roasting equipment is easy to come by and chances are very good you have what you need already. That is to say, you can roast your malt in your kitchen oven. It’s a crazy concept, but it’s just crazy enough to work.  Place the malt roughly and inch deep on a baking sheet and set the desired temp. Check your malt every so often to make sure that things are progressing the way you’d like them to.
 
How long the malt stays in the oven is really dependent on you and the recipe you are using as well as what type of malt. Obviously, there are preferences, but a good rule of thumb would be that the longer you roast, the dark the malt: the darker the malt, the darker the beer and deeper the flavor. Write that down and put it on the refrigerator if you have to.

Making your own malt does add a step over the “box brews” but this further adds to your ability to choose your own beer and your own flavor for your beer. This is one more step towards the independence that you are looking for by being a home brewer and makes you a little more hardcore than most. In a pinch you can rapidly heat the malt in what’s known as the “short and sharp” method, but you’re a craftsman, remember?