What happened last year (Summer 2021)

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything, I’m still alive, I’ve just been incredibly busy. I’m hoping to get back into malting experiments as there’s just a ton of things on my to do list. Last year I was going to do some experiments growing and malting Amaranth. That’s all I grew, no barley, so I had all my eggs in one basket and that was a mistake. The Amaranth grew beautifully and it was huge but due to my neglect in the final drying process it all went moldy, I had to chuck all of it! What a huge disappointment. Since the plants were so pretty I decided to show you the pictures anyway, perhaps if you grow amaranth you can avoid the mistake that I made.

Started the seeds in Peat packs

The seedlings grew really fast

By the end of the summer they were 8 ft tall!

The seed heads seemed to open up when they were ripe and the seeds started to fall out.

The seeds are tiny

I’ve since read that the best way to harvest the seeds is to shake the seed heads or thresh them as soon as you pick them. I tried to dry them out in the sun for a few days, then we had some bad weather. This was just one batch there was a lot more.

I put the seed heads in paper bags in our garage thinking they were dry, but they were not and after a few days grew moldy. The reason I didn’t hang them is because I didn’t want the seeds falling out all over my garage, but I probably could have put a tarp down or something to catch them.

So Amaranth beer will have to wait until I buy some or grow some again. Now back to barley!