Freezing grain? Can it be done?

[Journeyman]

Background: On Buy Swap Sell someone offered 20 kg barley for $5 and that got me thinking about the malting process - I decided the extra I pay for malted barley is well worth it given the hydrating/drying that I'd need to do.

But it didn't stop there - I thought about what we will do if/when the world economy goes tits up, which is looking more and more likely by the day - where will we get our ingredients for beer?

The next thought was about being able to get unmalted grain and mashing it - enzymes are not alive so AFAIK we should be able to freeze them - so here's the question...

Could we do a mash of grain, pour off the wort and then freeze the grain and expect the enzyme to still activate later for another batch? I can't find an answer but it seems to me the enzyme would still be there. It is a catalyst after all, not an ingredient. If possible it would mean we could have packets of frozen enzyme to add to a mash of unmalted grains to get the conversion happening.

I think you would need to remove the grain BEFORE raising the temp at the end of the mash to avoid denaturing the enzyme. (if that is what happens to stop the conversion)

What do you think? Does anyone know of a reason why this would NOT work?

Alternatively, do they sell the enzyme so you could just add it to an unmalted grain for a mash?

[Journeyman]

6 minutes ago, Journeyman said:

Alternatively, do they sell the enzyme so you could just add it to an unmalted grain for a mash

This was a last minute thought so I went looking and both alpha amylase and beta glucanase are available - beerco has 5L of each for $120 & $240 respectively - and that's enough for hundreds of mashes. (alpha = 0.13 - 0.22 ml/kg grist, beta is about the same)

[ozdevil]

it can be done   

freezing grain you will want to make sure you keep the moisture out of the grains

thats my thought  as i was thinking doing this myself

 

[Breaktrainjack]

2 hours ago, Journeyman said:

Background: On Buy Swap Sell someone offered 20 kg barley for $5 and that got me thinking about the malting process - I decided the extra I pay for malted barley is well worth it given the hydrating/drying that I'd need to do.

But it didn't stop there - I thought about what we will do if/when the world economy goes tits up, which is looking more and more likely by the day - where will we get our ingredients for beer?

The next thought was about being able to get unmalted grain and mashing it - enzymes are not alive so AFAIK we should be able to freeze them - so here's the question...

Could we do a mash of grain, pour off the wort and then freeze the grain and expect the enzyme to still activate later for another batch? I can't find an answer but it seems to me the enzyme would still be there. It is a catalyst after all, not an ingredient. If possible it would mean we could have packets of frozen enzyme to add to a mash of unmalted grains to get the conversion happening.

I think you would need to remove the grain BEFORE raising the temp at the end of the mash to avoid denaturing the enzyme. (if that is what happens to stop the conversion)

What do you think? Does anyone know of a reason why this would NOT work?

Alternatively, do they sell the enzyme so you could just add it to an unmalted grain for a mash?

"I thought about what we will do if/when the world economy goes tits up, which is looking more and more likely by the day - where will we get our ingredients for beer?" i rekon the Climate Warriors should do their part and stop consuming malt  ..more for MEEEEEE 

[Journeyman]

15 hours ago, ozdevil said:

it can be done   
freezing grain you will want to make sure you keep the moisture out of the grains
thats my thought  as i was thinking doing this myself

I had that thought also but what I was wondering was if it is possible to do it so as to re-use the grain to pull fermentables from other (non-malted) grains. As in, make a wort and preserve the grain used, not in expectation of it producing more starches but to be an enzyme source.

[Journeyman]

15 hours ago, Breaktrainjack said:

i rekon the Climate Warriors should do their part and stop consuming malt  ..more for MEEEEEE 

I'll drink to that!