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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Old grain (Thomas Rohner)
  Re: Shelf life of grain (Fred L Johnson)


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Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2012 12:32:02 +0200
From: Thomas Rohner <t.rohner at bluewin.ch>
Subject: Old grain

Hi Steven

I don't think the base grain deteriorates much. I used it without 
noticing anything.
The darker specialty grains may loose some of its bite.

At one point, we rounded up all of our really old grain(5+ years) and 
mashed it. We didn't lauter and boil it, but fermented it after cooling.
Then we brought it to a distiller, who distilled our first "brewery whisky".
It was a huge success... It was only aged 9 months in oak and we filled 
some bottles as christmas presents.
We repeated it, but we had to take fresh grain this time ;-))

Cheers Thomas

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Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2012 07:05:37 -0400
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Re: Shelf life of grain

Steven asks if his 4-5 year old base malt, stored in the bag in the basement
is worth using. 

I have no experience with grain this old, but if it were mine, I'd do a very
small mash of about one pound on my stove top and test its ability to convert
and taste it. Put in an exact amount of grain and an exact amount of water
and mash it. If you have a refractometer, measure the gravity of the wort
every 15 minutes and plot out the gravity over a 90 minute period and
determine if it is converting as expected. 

After your convinced it is converting properly, pass some of it though a
coffee filter and taste it. It should taste good (of course). You can use the
wort for a starter after you boil it if you don't want to waste it.

Fred L Johnson

Apex, North Carolina, USA

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