Rolled Barley?

[Greg2013]

Not sure what section to put this in but here goes. Strange question perhaps but can rolled barley be used for brewing in any manner? I have a 25kg sack of it here that i feed the chooks and it occurs to me that it will be gone off before they get to the bottom of it. Looks good, looks like rough crushed grain.

[Greg2013]

No i suppose not tbh, just moving the 25kg sack today and it crossed my mind is all.

[Spud395]

Have used it in the past also used rolled wheat in brews.

This was before I discovered that animal safe and people safe are different things when it comes to pesticide and other sprays. Never killed me, but I wont be going there again

[Greg2013]

Ya spud but when you think about it whatever they eat we eventually ingest so if its toxic to a chook chances are it will kill us too.

[Lugh]

Have used it in the past also used rolled wheat in brews.

This was before I discovered that animal safe and people safe are different things when it comes to pesticide and other sprays. Never killed me, but I wont be going there again

Funny you never mentioned that when feeding it to us 

[Spud395]

Part of my long term study Derek.

Maybe the chicken acts like a filter deadman

[Greg2013]

I don't know about that spud but dammit i am defo gonna try a small batch using the rolled barley in some way. I mean i have 25kg of the feckin stuff so i might as well,i don't care about the ickyness factor so long as the beer is drinkable. I think it would be a fun experiment since if i ever get into all grain the chooks will be getting the leftovers from that

Any suggestions as to how i could incorporate some rolled barley into say a coopers kit beer would be appreciated :

[Spud395]

You would really need to do a mini mash for the rolled barley, if not you will just be adding protein to your beer.

I made a beer (I wont add to the confusion by adding my style guide in here at this point  ) But I used 50% chicken food (rolled wheat) to it and it turned out quite well 

[richieh]

Rolled barley is just raw barley. It  will work well in a stout, it will add body and texture. Guinness use raw barley (reputedly about 25% of the grain bill) for example. You'd need to be brewing all grain though or do a mini mash as was said, because it's unmalted it can't convert in the mash. If you use it as part of your grain bill along with malted barley or whatever it will work.

You would really need to do a mini mash for the rolled barley, if not you will just be adding protein to your beer.

I made a beer (I wont add to the confusion by adding my style guide in here at this point  ) But I used 50% chicken food (rolled wheat) to it and it turned out quite well 

[Padraic]

Rolled barley is just raw barley. It  will work well in a stout, it will add body and texture. Guinness use raw barley (reputedly about 25% of the grain bill) for example. You'd need to be brewing all grain though or do a mini mash as was said, because it's unmalted it can't convert in the mash. If you use it as part of your grain bill along with malted barley or whatever it will work.

You would really need to do a mini mash for the rolled barley, if not you will just be adding protein to your beer.

I made a beer (I wont add to the confusion by adding my style guide in here at this point  ) But I used 50% chicken food (rolled wheat) to it and it turned out quite well 

So no fermentables but does it add much body? How do you measure it? OG/FG readings?

[Spud395]

For my Wheat beer Padraic 50% Lager/50% chicken food raw wheat I ended up with an efficiency of around 65% where I'd normally expect between 75 and 80%

[Padraic]

For my Wheat beer Padraic 50% Lager/50% chicken food raw wheat I ended up with an efficiency of around 65% where I'd normally expect between 75 and 80%

So had you used 100% Lager you would expect ~80% efficiency, so my maths say that means you're getting around 50% efficiency from the unmalted grains when using a 50-50 ratio... presumably you'd get better efficiency if you had less raw wheat?

[Spud395]

Something like that  to be honest it was chuck it in and see. I didnt have any great expectations, but did record those figures and gave them very little thought afterwards

[Ale Man]

I did before until I found out that feed barley is sprayed with roundup to dry the crop standing.
Your choice. Now I go along to where malting barley is collected and blag a few bags from the co-op, dry it and your good for the year.