wheebz said:
milled grains will start losing their efficiency after around 3 weeks to a month, I wouldnt use them past a month and a half unless they are roasted grains
unmilled you are good for a year or so, that shouldnt cause you any problems
storing them at room temp is fine, no need to refrigerate or anything like that
if I could store pre-milled grains at Darwins in 80 degrees and still make good beer you are ok
getting back to RM's ?, because i was slammed w/ work that day, but had some questions on the same topic ... lab topics ...
do you guys test diastatic power in-house, or rely on the maltsters to spec it for your high-volume orders in their malt analysis? ...
is there basic testing solutions (like pH), or a way to take a measured amount of grains and perform mini-mashes on them, or something like that that folks do in-house in a brewery, that can be done at home ... or ? ...
i understand that you want a diastatic power of the total grist to be at least 50 ... i'm not sure what that's a measurement of, exactly, hence my question ...
i understand, now, that one should consider chewing a couple of grains from each of the items in the grain bill, to verify they are relatively crisp, and don't taste rotten or otherwise ruinous ... which I have not been doing at all.
i'm guess what i'm trying to ask is, what should a homebrewer do to verify their dry ingredients ...
Bob, the maltster from Briess was really forthright in mentioning that the bags they ship the grains in are sealed, but not particularly good for long terms storage, because they are 3 ply plastic that allows humidity and oxygen to pass through it .. albeit slowly.
an example he gave was interesting to me ... he said that a lot of homebrewers do things breweries don't because small-scale costs aren't the same, so for instance, they'll brew a beer using 100% munich as the base malt, which i guess, doesn't even contain the diastatic power to convert itself, without the addition of a adjunct grain w/ a higher diastatic power, to raise the average up to at least 50 ...
so, when it comes to our grains, what can we do, and what can't we do, and what should we do based on those etc etc? ...
apparently it's not a bad idea to crush your hops, similarly, to at least investigate those for off smells etc before tossing them in ...
as things seem to not always be what they are supposed to be, and beer taking a long time (for me) to brew, this is something i know i'm trying to get more wise about and wondered what your advice would be ... and yes, just brew beer and STFU since you only have a $50 ingredient cost/batch is a valid answer if that's what it amounts to ...
CHEERS!
