# Barley? For beer?



## icy (Mar 11, 2009)

hi. 
Forgive me for putting this question here but i dont know where else to put it.

Im planning to brew some beer, even before i decide to make wine.
anyway, i was able to find all sorts of recipe. And in
my search for the raw ingredients, i was only able to find barley. Im from the philippines, so its hard finding those ingredients especially hops.

So anyway, all i could was raw barley. Which most people here would just give it to their fighting cocks. It seems pretty clean though, just maybe some washing, but i think its edible. Assuming these barly
i found is good for human consumption. Can i make malt out of it?
Perhaps someone can share some insights on how to make malt and beer using barley?
as for hops, i decided to use some flavoring tea instead. I read it somewhere that you can.

Please share your comments, advise, reactions.

Thank you.

Icy


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## Skyhawk (Mar 11, 2009)

Oh man, I don't know where to begin. It's a complicated process to malt barley yourself because it involves germinating the seeds. Beer from scratch is much more complicated than wine, but very rewarding when you get practice. You can do it, but the practicality of doing so given your location may be hard to justify if you don't mind cheap San Miguel.

On the other hand you might crave authentic British pub style beers. For that I can't blame you - that creamy head and substantial mouth full. Those beers have nothing in common with San Miguel, Coors, Budweiser, or Labatt Blue. If you're rich, you could import some UK beer kits from eBay. Otherwise, you can do the whole thing from scratch, but do the research first. Lots of do-it-yourself equipment and methods can be found on Internet forums.


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## non-grapenut (Mar 11, 2009)

Here are your instructions for making malted barley, icy:

http://byo.com/stories/article/indices/44-malt/1097-make-your-own-malt

I grow my own barley, malt my own barley, grow my own hops, dry my own hops, grow wheat to make wheat-based beer and make wine out of anything that's not nailed down.

Jump into it all fearlessly and know that sometimes you will have libation success and sometimes you won't. Take it from a recovering perfectionist---if life is just a series of learning from our mistakes, we have to make some to learn something. Feel free to quote me.


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## Skyhawk (Mar 11, 2009)

non-grapenut said:


> I grow my own barley, malt my own barley, grow my own hops, dry my own hops, grow wheat to make wheat-based beer and make wine out of anything that's not nailed down.



Wholly crap, that's amazing! You should be writing a book yourself on the subject (if you haven't already).


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## non-grapenut (Mar 12, 2009)

Skyhawk said:


> Wholly crap, that's amazing! You should be writing a book yourself on the subject (if you haven't already).



WHO has time to write tending to all this stuff? It's amazing I have time to drink the stuff I make. Thank God there's 24 hours/day.

It seems I spend more time reading on how to do this stuff then doing it!


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## harry.campbell29 (Oct 9, 2009)

Brewing thrassing and mashing are the basic principles for making the beer. Brewing is integral part in making the beer from barley... continue learning... for any help contact me through mail or post.


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## smurfe (Oct 16, 2009)

It isn't hard to malt and roast your own barley as shown from the excellent article posted. There are numerous ancient recipes out there that don't have hops in the recipe as hops aren't all "that old" in beer history. But you may have just as hard a time finding various spices as you may find obtaining hops. Don't expect the beer to taste anything like any commercial beer as well. Some will actually more resemble a wine or mead. Also they will be very sweet without a bittering agent. 

The most important job of hops though isn't as much the bittering but more as a preservative to the beer. A non hopped beer will sour very quickly. I don't know what import laws are there but if you can't import hops or they are out the box expensive, you might looks for hop extract that you can bitter beer with. I don't know what the laws of importing hop rhizomes would be as well to be able to grow your own, if they would even grow in your climate. 

I have a local brew shop that I believe will ship internationally. I have no idea what shipping, customs, etc charges would be. If I were you I would look into ordering hop extract and dry packaged yeast from somewhere and learn how to malt and roast your own barley. Once you got that established it isn't hard to make a home made brewery for little money from a cooler and a few plumbing parts.


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