Peating your own malt

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Peating your own malt

Postby fattypatty » Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:52 pm

rather than Hijacking another thread I thought I'd make a new one for this

r.c.barstud wrote: i find using 6 row and malting it myself is the best solution, malting or peating is piss easy and you know how clean it is rather than a potential variable compounding the issue......


Where do you get your peat from?
what sort of process do you use to kiln the malt using the peat as fuel?

I have found 20kgs of whole barley for $11 and compared to $125 i was quoted for 25kgs of heavily peated malt if i could do it myself that would be fantastic. Any help would be greatly appreciated
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby crow » Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:27 pm

somewhere on here is a thread from scarecrow about how to build a peat smoker (not sure where) reckon they were just getting peat from garden centres
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby fattypatty » Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:46 pm

cheers crow, I had a read through this (not sure if it was what you were referring to):
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3597&start=20

I have some of these Peat pellets at home for the garden and they are not I would have expected peat straight from a bog would be like. they really don't smell like the peat flavour I am used to and am after.

If only i lived in Tassie, SA doesn't seem to have much in the way of peat bogs

EDIT:
Is this more what you were talking about?
http://www.bunnings.com.au/products_pro ... 10202.aspx
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby waza » Mon Jun 24, 2013 10:40 pm

crow wrote:somewhere on here is a thread from scarecrow about how to build a peat smoker (not sure where) reckon they were just getting peat from garden centres


Is this what your looking for viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1862
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby r.c.barstud » Mon Jun 24, 2013 11:11 pm

bunnings sell peat for like $9, i light it under a slightly modified fish smoker to give it a good smoky peat flavour, then i dry my malted grains in a food dehydrator, makes it easy to weigh out malted dried grains. i have tried all sorts of ways, but i find the way i do things now by far the easiest and the cheapest..
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby Bushy » Tue Jun 25, 2013 11:14 am

C'mon Mr Barstud,
We need a little more than that. How have you modded yr smoker so as not to overheat the grain.
Maybe you could put a piccy up or a diagram or even paint a thousand words for us. Something.
Please

Edit-Who r u new guy
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby r.c.barstud » Thu Jun 27, 2013 1:52 pm

ok, i had put up a post on another thread about liquid malt extract, this is the same post, I just copied it from there and pasted it here. keep in mind, this is how I do it, there are hundreds of ways of doing this, when i worked at Jack Daniels, i had seen some fucked up, tossed up and never come down ways on how to malt and peat, i have even seen people bury the soaked grains in horse/cow crap for a slow yet consistant heat :scared-eek: :scared-eek: :scared-eek: so here is the cut and paste

Ok, this is how I do my malting. There are numerous ways of doing this, but I find this is by far the quickest and easiest, taking into account I live in the tropics, so I don’t get any mould delemas, or delayed starting.

• I weigh out my grain and allow 10% extra (just in case)
• I then soak my grain in a bucket with clean water for 24 hours and remove any ka ka runja that floats to the surface
• I soak old potato sacks thoroughly and soak the ground until the water pools around the area im using
• Spread the soaked grain evenly onto the potato sacks and cover with some hessian and soak again. (the top covering hessian cant be too thick so that the sunlight cant penetrate it)
• Keep the grain moist, not soaked, I rarely have to re-wet the grain, cause pre-soaking the ground really well and capillary action from the top layer of hessian will draw up the water
• 4 days later, walla !!! you will have perfect malt.

Peating, once again, there are lots of ways to do this.
• I use a slightly modified fish smoker, instead of the tray, I use some crim safe, it’s a stainless steel woven mesh that works just great for peating, remember, you will need to remove the powder coating from the mesh, I used a sand blaster, usually it wont cost you anything to get somebody to blast it if you bribe them with a bottle………
• I use some busted arse peat from bunnings, its about $9 a kilo
• Soak the peat for a few hours in some clean water and then fluff it up and place it under the fish smoker
• Spread the moist grain evenly onto the mesh of the smoker and light the peat
• The peat will just smolder away and the smoke/heat will penetrate and circulate the grain giving you peated malt

Points to remember
• Weigh the crim safe mesh, just the mesh and nothing else
• Don’t get things above 50 deg C
• Vary your smoke output for different drying/smoke ratios, the tighter the soaked peat the slower it will smolder (more smoke), the more open the peat the hotter but less smoke
• This is where you need to remember you required grain weight, some recipes require say 18% moisture, so if you had 1 kilo of grain and it needed to be at 18% it would need to weigh 1.18 kilos. Place the grain and mesh onto the scales and subtract the weight of the mesh and keep a tally on the grain weights as you go.

For malt I cheat a bit here, I use a food dehydrator, they are cheap and work just great, they don’t get hot enough to denature the malt and it saves a bit of time, you could use the oven to dry out the malted grain, as long as you don’t go over critical temperature (65 deg C).

De-husking, well I just use a garden sieve, a good shake, rattle and roll and ya done, ready for processing.
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby fattypatty » Thu Jun 27, 2013 9:40 pm

:text-thankyoublue:
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby scarecrow » Fri Jun 28, 2013 5:09 pm

Why not make your own peatreek. It's shitloads easier.
Harry put me on to this a few years ago.
Works great in single malts.

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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby Petulance » Sun Jun 30, 2013 7:33 pm

and what exactly is a "peatreek"?
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby scarecrow » Sun Jun 30, 2013 8:23 pm

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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby crow » Mon Jul 01, 2013 8:38 pm

Ok scarecrow now for the 64,000 dollar question : in your honest opinion which produces the best flavour (regardless of effort) 1/ peat smoked barley or 2/ peatreek
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby scarecrow » Mon Jul 01, 2013 10:34 pm

Peat smoked barley is too subtle for me. I could never get enough peat note to it, even at 100% peated malt.
Peatreek allow me to control the level of phenols much better and easier.
I make peatreek with the hearts from a single malt wash, therefore I can post add a few drops to the final product if need be.
It took me a few goes to work out how much to add, but once I found what I liked, it was very reproducible.
I also found that the peat flavour diminished after a while. It was still there, but not as strong as when straight off the still.

My single malts are getting to 12 months old. I should know if I need to change the level of peatreek in a few weeks.

As far as flavour goes, it was too close to pick. Hence I went the peatreek method.

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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby 5 o'clock » Sun Jul 14, 2013 7:03 pm

Ok so I am trying to make some peatreek.

I have put some peat moss from Bunnings into a milo tin and put it on the BBQ.

The lid keeps on popping.

My understanding is that I want to trap the smoke.

Solution?

Cheers,

Richard
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby scarecrow » Tue Jul 16, 2013 2:47 pm

5 o'clock wrote:The lid keeps on popping.

Maybe too much heat? I use a 1 litre tin and lie it down length ways rather than standing it upright. It's on a BBQ grill about 4-5" above the flames.
Every 15 mins I give the tin a good shake (with oven mits on because it's farkin hot!) This is where it will pop. That's OK.
Continue to heat and shake.
The peat moss will end up looking like ground coffee.

5 o'clock wrote:My understanding is that I want to trap the smoke.

What you are doing is activating the phenols in the peat moss. You don't want or need the smoke.

After it cools down, add the alcohol. This will dissolve the phenols.
When you strain the gunk out of the alcohol, you will have the phenols in solution in what looks like strong tea. The smell will make you :puke-huge:
It's the phenols that give you the peat taste and smell. These compounds are very potent. 20ppm (parts per million) will give you a nice peated scotch.

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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby 5 o'clock » Tue Jul 16, 2013 3:11 pm

Thanks scarecrow,

maybe I will put it on the BBQ when I am not trying to cook the meal at the same time so I can turn down the heat more.

Kids were not impressed with possibility of peat on their chicken the other night when the lid popped. Wife would have been even less happy so had to tell the daughter to keep quiet.
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Peatreek

Postby shotchas » Sun Jul 28, 2013 9:09 am

peat3.jpg
peat1.jpg
peat2.jpg


Has anyone tried this stuff to make peatreek? The health warnings make me a bit wary but it's the only stuff I can find around here.

Cheers
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
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Re: Peatreek

Postby r.c.barstud » Sat Aug 03, 2013 11:03 am

shotchas wrote:
peat3.jpg
peat1.jpg
peat2.jpg


Has anyone tried this stuff to make peatreek? The health warnings make me a bit wary but it's the only stuff I can find around here.

Cheers

the health warning is for inhalation, either way thats the exact same gear i use
:handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby shotchas » Sat Aug 03, 2013 5:05 pm

Thanks for that.
I've just finished fermenting the first two batches of B&B pale pilsener for my first attempt at a single malt. Two more batches to go before the stripping run so I'll make up the peatreek for that.
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Re: Peating your own malt

Postby haze » Mon Aug 05, 2013 1:53 am

I just stumbled on this vid about peat and remembered this thread. i thought it was a good watch


Last edited by 1 2many on Mon Aug 25, 2014 4:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Fixed link
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