The Brewing Dutchman

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Making your own malt at home

Without any prior experience and armed with only a basic understanding of how malt is made, I decided to dive right in. I didn’t spend hours researching or studying beforehand —I wanted to learn through hands-on experience.
For me, figuring things out for myself, making mistakes, and learning from them is the most rewarding way to understand a process. It helps me uncover what’s truly relevant to my situation and allows me to set my own priorities along the way.
What follows is a reflection on my first year of making malt—a journey of trial, error, and discove

Planting barley

Luckily I know a very friendly farmer who supplied me with a few kilo of barley seeds.
And with a hammer (yes) and a shovel I started digging the garden for my barley field.

Harvesting barley by hand

Thanks to my super scary scarecrow, no other animal except for some grasshoppers, ate my barley.
I had a result!

Threshing barley

Threshing is another word for 'really doing your best to separate the barley seeds from the straw'.
I managed, but I also came to the conclusion that next year I will try out some other techniques.

Making malt at home

BMy first attempt to make malt and a visit to Warbro Kvarn, a company in Sörmland that grows and refines organic grain since 2002. Making malt at home; steeping, germination and kilning. Brewing beer the hard way.

Testing the diastatic power of my malt

I'm brewing a beer on an open fire to test out my homemade malt. Does it have enough starches and enzymes? Will I have sugars and will it ferment all the way out? Is it tasty?