Swaen Grain

[HerbMeowing]

Swaen is a 100+ years old Belgian maltser.

"Swaen pale ale malt is used to correct over-pale malts, to produce "golden" beer and to improve palate fullness. For this: a steeping degree of 44 to 46% is used, the malt is normally modified, not overmodified ..." whatever that means.

Anyone mashed-in with Swaen grains?

I've brewed Castle grains.
Low protein. Very nice.
Wondering how the two might compare.

[mashani]

Never used it. I can vouch for Castle malt though, it's what I use when I use Belgian Pale or Belgian Pilsner malt.

This will sound wacko, but you can toss grains of malt into water and determine how modified they are. Say you throw 100 grains into a water bath. If at least 75 of them float, the malt is "fully modified". Powerful witches as such. The more that sink, the less it's modified.. IE they are either lesser witches or not witches at all, and will not perform their magic so well in a single infusion mash.

That's the best way without a lab I know of. It does actually work. You do need to throw 100 grains in though to get a big enough sample in case you just pulled out a handful of losers.

So to compare it with Castle, just do that with both. And see who is the more powerful witch.

[Brewbirds]

Never used it. I can vouch for Castle malt though, it's what I use when I use Belgian Pale or Belgian Pilsner malt.

This will sound wacko, but you can toss grains of malt into water and determine how modified they are. Say you throw 100 grains into a water bath. If at least 75 of them float, the malt is "fully modified". Powerful witches as such. The more that sink, the less it's modified.. IE they are either lesser witches or not witches at all, and will not perform their magic so well in a single infusion mash.

That's the best way without a lab I know of. It does actually work. You do need to throw 100 grains in though to get a big enough sample in case you just pulled out a handful of losers.

So to compare it with Castle, just do that with both. And see who is the more powerful witch.

Mashani, have I told you that I love you lately?

[HerbMeowing]

This will sound wacko, but you can toss grains of malt into water and determine how modified they are. Say you throw 100 grains into a water bath. If at least 75 of them float, the malt is "fully modified".

Never heard this before. Where does it come from?

[mashani]

I don't know where he got it, but a dude I used to call my "crazy Belgian brewer friend" on the old Mr. Beer forum taught me that trick because I started to use lots of European Continental malts, many of which are less modified, but the documentation of such wasn't as clear "back in the day" as it is now. I wanted to be able to know if I was going to run into trouble, and might need a longer mash or a step mash. This trick let me know.

[BigPapaG]

This url http://www.mosquitobytes.com/Den/Beer/H ... /Malt.html

References the following info: (I think this is from DeClerk's "A Textbook of Brewing", 1957)

Edit: I hope I have attributed this correctly...
Edit: And I agree with Mashani that a larger sample size of 100 is more accurate...

Protein modification is one of the most important processes to take place during germination. Starch granules comprising the endosperm are embedded in an insoluble protein-glucan matrix. Unless this matrix is broken down the action of amylase enzymes is blocked. The degree to which the protein-glucan matrix is broken down is referred to as modification. Modification is accompanied by a physical change in the grain. Prior to modification the grain is very hard or steely. After modification the grain becomes soft and friable or mealy.

Since the release of enzymes and their action is to provide food for the growing plant, modification mirrors the progress of the acrospire as it grows up the kernel. The longer the acrospire the greater the degree of modification. Of course, some of the starches are consumed by the growing acrospire so modification is, to some extent, at the expense of malt yield. The acrospire is generally allowed to grow to 2/3 to 3/4 the length of the kernel before modification is halted by kilning. It generally takes 6-10 days of growth before the acrospire reaches this length.

The progressive degree of modification which, more or less,corresponds to the growth of the acrospire is indicated by the shading. A, B and C represent the third day, the fifth day and the eighth day of germination respectively (DeClerk, 1957).

A simple method of determining the overall level of modification of a batch of malt is by means of the "sinker" test. In this test 50 kernels of malt are shaken into a pan of water. After 10 minutes the number of horizontally floating kernels is counted; undermodified kernels either sink or float vertically in the water. At the very minimum at least 35 or 70% of the kernels should float. With good malt, nearly all of the kernels should float with only two or three kernels sinking or floating vertically.

[HerbMeowing]

Gotta try this.
Science FTW!

[swenocha]

yeah-science.jpg (75.07 KiB) Viewed 1900 times

[HerbMeowing]

Found a malt analysis sheet over the weekend.
Protein: 11.5% (~average; on par with Maris Otter)
D-power: 94

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http://theswaen.com/download-pdf/43/ale

[HerbMeowing]

Tested 100 kernels from each of four grains.
Avangard pale ale malt... Castle pale ale malt ... Golden Promise ... and Maris Otter.
Grains were purchased at an LHBS.

Kernels soaked for 10'.
Floaters counted (higher the better).

Results
Grain / Floaters / %Floaters
Avangard / 38 / 38%
Castle / 22 / 22%
Golden Promise / 62 / 62%
Maris Otter / 42 / 42%

If this test is valid ... very disappointed by the results.
Causes me to wonder whether maltsters dump their lower quality malts on LHBSs.

---
Edited for clarity.

[BigPapaG]

Interesting Herb...

I will try the same on my next brew day...

Wonder if water hardness has an effect...

Mine is medium hard...

[HerbMeowing]

Digging into this a bit more; malts with a greater number of 'sinkers' were found to have lower diastatic power and needed twice-as-long (60' v 30') sach-rest to convert.

The latter finding is interesting in light of the current 20' v 60' mash schedule debate.

[The_Professor]

Digging into this a bit more; malts with a greater number of 'sinkers' were found to have lower diastatic power and needed twice-as-long (60' v 30') sach-rest to convert...

I'll go ahead an compare apples to oranges while I say that the above comment is interesting given that before one malts barley one is told to discard any that float.

[mashani]

Before they are malted, if they float they are desiccated (potentially rotten, bug eaten, etc.) husks.

After they are malted, they are desiccated delicious husks.

There lies the difference

But yeah, the whole point of this back when the dude showed me the trick was to decide if the malt needed a longer mash. The more that sunk, the more likely this was.

The 20 mash schedule probably works fine with 'Merican malts. But European floor malted stuff isn't the same animal.

BTW/FWIW, it should be mentioned that lower diastatic power is not the same as lower quality. The malting process and the amount of kilning changes the disastatic power, but also affects the flavor. Sometimes the flavor is a trade off. And even in the same exact type of grain, the old world floor malted stuff tends to have lower diastatic power but better flavors. IE floor malted Maris Otter tastes better then the more modern method versions, even though it's the same grain from the same field. Just sent to two different facilities and malted using a different method. Munich has low diastatic power compared to Vienna but is richer. Some a 'Merican Munich has higher diastatic power then the German stuff, but that's because it's made from 6-row. (really some of the Briess Munich is). So it doesn't taste the same. So basically YMMV, and I don't stress about it. The only purpose is to know if you should mash longer or not.

[The_Professor]

Before they are malted, if they float they are desiccated (potentially rotten, bug eaten, etc.) husks.

After they are malted, they are desiccated delicious husks.

There lies the difference ...

RE: the malted grains that sink, would they be the grains that didn't sprout as well?