Hi all, long time first time here.
We've been working on a project to use corn (maize) grown and
malted somewhat locally (to ~2L). I've been doing some test work to see how to go about best practices for extraction (generally a 50/50 mix of base malt barley and then this malted corn, at various mash temps within the standard all-barley range). I've so far not had great luck. We've got a lot of limiting factors being a small brewery, so I'm trying my best to work with what we have here.
There seems to be some confusion in the articles/podcasts/ect I've stumbled upon about the need for gelatinization of malted corn. It's always been my understanding gelatinization isn't necessary for malt, since it's been "unpacked" during the malting process, but hydration and solubility are of course part of getting extract.
There's also some confusion with corn's gelatinization temperatures anyway -- textbooks list it in the ~149-163F range, however most of the practical applications of
unmalted corn on the distilling side seem discuss bringing to 190F+ for an extended period of time. (In one small test I ran in-house I was not able to get any noticable additional extract from letting just the malt corn rest at ~170F for 20 minutes, before cooling and adding the malt barley back in enzyme range.)
Without going on too long, I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or thoughts on best practices to achieve a reasonable extract. Doing a long series of step ups is undesirable but possible, and doing cereal cooking is not something I'd like to spin up (and, on a related note, makes me wonder why I'm using malted corn instead of raw anyway, because I'm not in need of enzymes for our application).
Cheers!
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Kevin Powers
Owner/Brewer
Powers Farm & Brewery
Midland VA
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