I've done a few homebrews and am looking to expand it. I picked up the necessary materials to start making a 100 bottle batch every week. Now I just need to figure out how to make the ingredients for homebrewing, such as the Yeast and Malt. Does anyone know how to make these (or anything else you could use in your brews) out of everyday ingredients in a normally stocked kitchen)??
Read ' How to Brew' by John Palmer. Then, after a few more suggested books, come back in 3 - 6 months. Slowly, my friend. Not a race, rather a journey...
To make malt, you plant malting barley seeds across many acres. When you harvest these you then dampen them and keep them dark and cool until they are about to sprout and then you kiln them... To make yeast, you leave wort out to capture natural yeast then propagate that. That process is unlikely to create ales or lagers so consider buying yeast and saving some to make starters. I am interested to know what your setup looks like.
You can't really make yeast. But you can propagate large amounts of it from small amounts of it. Read "Yeast" by Zainasheff and White. But there are lots of homebrewing basics to get down before jumping into that.
Tell us about the beers you have brewed and the materials (equipment?) that you have -- maybe someone will be able to suggest a next step. And definitely visit howtobrew.com to read a free early edition of a homebrewing classic that is highly valuable reading.
After 20 years of homebrewing, I propagate yeast and use it several times before a new vial/pack is bought, and I grow hops in the backyard. The work is more for the hop growing, and growing and malting barley would be the most work. I don't know if I will ever plant barley to malt. Malting is a skill set and knowledge set that have to be learned. Kilning and roasting specialty malts is another thing that would have to be learned. If you roast coffee, you might be able to make roast malts, but making black malts is a problem at home, as you walk a fine line between getting it right and having the malt burst into flame.
More along the lines of your question than my original response: malted barley is a fairly specialized commodity that is almost universal and indispensible in beer and generally not stocked in kitchens. While it is possible to malt your own (and grow your own), very few homebrewers go this route. However, there are things in your kitchen that you can use to augment your brewing. Things from my kitchen than I have used to supplement malted barely in homebrews include: -ordinary sugar, straight up or modified on the stovetop to caramelize (maybe not technically) and create something like Belgian candi sugar. -brown sugar -molasses -flaked oats and steel cut oats, either unmodified or toasted in the oven, -spelt -corn grits -along the lines of grains in my cupboards, I could do something with bulgar wheat and pearl barley, but I haven't yet. Another thing you can do is modify the grains that you buy at the homebrew shop in your kitchen to put a personal touch on your beer: you can toast malts and even make your own crystal malt from base malts. My experiments with this have been promising but I have not scaled it up to batch size. I have heard/read about people using boxed cereal (e.g., frosted flakes, Frankenberry) in their homebrews, but it's not for me. I guess I could do something with pasta, too. But making my own beer and then adding something highly processed to it feels wrong. I also have used spices from the kitchen and fruits from the kitchen, but generally not to great effect. Others will have more to say on this topic. They have even been used in the absence of hops in historical (and a few modern) recipes. On the topic of hops, growing your own is an option that many homebrewers pursue. The book Radical Brewing is a really nice treatise on ways you can personalize the beers that you brew, often taking advantage of ingredients you might have in your kitchen.
??? That's kind of like saying if you can grill a steak, you can make an omelette. The only thing the two have in common, IMO, is that they both require a source of heat. But I'm just bustin' yer chops To the OP, propagating an existing strain of yeast, perhaps from a commercial beer, is not uncommon among homebrewers. I would recommend you read up on the process if you're so inclined. Starting from scratch,OTOH, is a whole 'nuther realm - analogous to smelting steel to make strings as an adjunct to your guitar building hobby, from a "what's the point?" perspective. As far as using items in a normally stocked kitchen, many people report success with baker's yeast (pennies per batch), but the results tend to be just ok. Growing and malting your own barley is similarly distracting, IMO. Unless you're actively engaged in growing this kind of stuff, it's probably not worth the effort. Commonly available cereal grains from the health food store or even from a well stocked grocery store could probably be coaxed into beer, but they're not optimized for that purpose, so, like baker's yeast, the result would probably be underwhelming. Though it would be beer! Hops lend themselves to a DIY effort, as they're easy to grow pretty much anywhere in the US. I find it too labor intensive, so, while I still grow them (I can't kill them ), I usually use store-bought. I admire your 'made from scratch' drive, but you need to know where to draw the lines. It's good to pose the questions here before blindly embarking on a frustrating journey that may, in the end, sour you to the hobby. Nobody wants that.
When you say "Malt" I suspect you mean "Extract". If You want to make your own extract from malted barley you need to research "All grain brewing". Palmer's How to brew is an excellent starting point as others have stated above. As far as yeast is concerned, one does not "Make" it. You can only encourage and facilitate its growth.
There are some nice $$$ drum coffee roasters. Even with those you have issues going beyond full city, do to the fire hazards.
My medium $$$ drum roaster is similarly afflicted. (FWIW, I've only had one fire). Fortunately, I've discovered far too much flavor and nuance before Full City to push it to that point anymore. Ironically, Starbucks showed us what the roast can do for coffee while simultaneously showing us what the roast can do to coffee. It took me some time to figure this out for myself. But my point was that neither my coffee equipment nor the skills I've developed over the years translate into roasting malt. IMO.
I have a Behmor drum roaster, every time I roast at least a couple of beans fall through the mesh drum, they're ten times as big as a barley kernel. I suppose there are other types out there but roasting coffee and roasting freshly malted grains.
I use a Behmor roaster. There's no way you could roast barley in that roaster, or any other drum roaster, for that matter, without some mods. (FWIW, both Kenya AA and monsooned Malabar beans are big enough to eliminate that problem. Assuming, of course, you're willing to limit your options to that extent. Personally, I'm willing to live with the occasional lost bean. Fortunately, I love Kenyan beans )
Yeah, that's lot of beer for personal consumption, basically 10 gallons per week which will put you either 420 or 320 gallons over the legal limit, depending on whether there are one or 2 adults in the household. Unless you live in a frat house or hope to sell that's a shit ton of beer. How are you going to keep it fresh, will it be bottled or do you expect to start kegging soon? Start buying everything in bulk-malt by the sack, hops by the pound and learn to re-use yeast. Otherwise you're gonna go broke fast(it's slower if you buy bulk). And one more bit of advice-trying to brew 10 gallons every week will turn this hobby into a chore. I'm a pretty hardcore homebrewer and most months I'll do 2 batches(10 gallons each), some months I may do 3 but that's rare and it's too much beer to have on hand before some of it starts to age poorly.
I would like to offer help, but WTF did I just read? http://www.howtobrew.com/ From the word of DunkelFester, wherever he is - Read. Digest. Repeat.
