Make your own malt, crafted to your own tastes and needs. Be one-of-a-kind!
Steeping Programs
Steeping is all about "shaping the sugar."
Once you have selected a grain variety to malt, the first step is to "steep" the grain in water, bringing the moisture content up from the mid-teens to an ideal of approximately 46%. Customalting offers a number of steeping programs as developed in the Australian (Steep 1), Chinese (Steep 2) and German traditions (Steep 3). The different steeping programs help to take the grain's natural starches and prepare them to more readily break down into sugars.
Check back for future upgrades that will allow you to program your own steeping and germination programs.
Learn More
To increase brewing fermentability and efficiency, malts with high levels of free amino nitrogen and amino acids are essential. Research at the University of Manchester in 2011 found that steeping and germination affect these.
Germination Times (and temperatures)
Germination of the steeped grain aims to convert or modify the physical structure of the barley grain and allow synthesis or activation of a series of enzymes such that the final product, malt, is more readily used in the subsequent stages of brewing, distilling, or food manufacture. Again, Australian, Chinese and German practices are shown.
The Oxford Companion to Beer definition of