Project Overview
Home-brewers typically purchase the malted barley required to brew beer, because there is currently no cost- effective way to produce high-quality malted barley in small batches. Many home-brewers are interested malting their own barley if a cost-effective, repeatable process is available for producing small amounts. In addition, over 40 universities in the United States offer some sort of brewing certificate or degree, including the University of Kentucky. A table-top barley malter would allow students to more easily learn the malting process.
The end objectives of our Home Malting project is to design a system that:
• Can effectively malt up to 10 pounds of dry barley at a time.
• Can be used for various types of barley.
• Is as low-cost to the consumer as possible.
To meet our end objectives, we designed a system that can successfully contain and malt 10 pounds of barley. This was accomplished by using a wire mesh cylinder that will hold the barley and allow water and hot air to flow through it, allowing it to undergo Steeping, Germination, and Kilning. As well, we calculated the needed torque to rotate the cylinder, and picked according a motor that can accomplish this task at 6.5 RPM.
Next, the process meets the requirement for all different types of dry barley, therefore a home brewer can purchase any type of barley they would want.
The choice of using the cheapest effective motor as possible helped bring down the cost of our design significantly compared to last year. As well, the simple design of a cylinder resting in a box allows the design to be easily fabricated in a shop, therefore cutting down on time and cost.
