It's time for malting...It's malting time!

So the Nebraskan Sorghum finally arrived in the mail, which means that I get to do some malting!

For those not in the know, malting is a process by which grain seeds are allowed to germinate for some time, thus converting all their sugars to a digestable form. Then they are dried out, killing the sprout and leaving a starchy, sugar-packed grain which can be mashed into wort. In Africa, this is traditionally done in a very simple way, often by allowing the Sorghum and Millet to sit in a pot full of water for some time, then drying it in the sun once it has sprouted. Other techniques involve things like letting the grain sit in a bag immersed in running water.

Given my inexperience working with these grains, I am going to need as efficient a malting process as possible. Thus, I am being slightly more sophisticated and using a malting procedure I found at this website.

On the right is my malting set-up. The coarse grain in the bucket on the right is Sorghum. The fine grain in the bucket on the left is Pearl Millet. The pearl millet behaved very bizzarely when I filled the bucket; the water got sudded up! I hope that this doesn't mean anything bad was on the sides of the bucket. I did rinse it several times.

I have placed both buckets next to the radiator so that the water remains somewhat warm. From this point on, it's just a question of waiting and waking up at wierd hours to drain the buckets.

Here's hoping it works!