Grain self life?

Mashing
1

I took a 3 year break from brewing and I want to start up again. Got a couple questions.

  1. What is the shelf life of malt? I have various amounts of different three year old malt, it looks good but is it good? Will the beer taste stale?

  2. Have an unopened 50lbs bag of 2row, it was stored in a rubber made container. When I open the
    container there was a lots of dead Mill worms on the outside of the malt bag. There are several small
    holes in the bag where the worms ate their way out. I opened the bag and the grain looks good, no dead worm bodies. Any danger with this grain?

Thanks for any advice. Thanks, Bill

2

No problem at all; go ahead and brew with it, then throw a party so we can all try it.

Sorry. Can’t make it that day. I have a dentist appointment.

3

I would not use malt that had worms eating into the bag. I mean, that just sounds really bad.

But aside from that, if the bags were intact and the grain looked good, I would use it. I might go ahead and mix it 50/50 with fresh malt though, just in case the enzymatic activity degraded over time. This way, the diastatic power of the fresh malt could make up the difference, and at the same time you could use up your previous supply.

4

Thanks for the replies. I went out and bought new malt. Figured it was not worth the risk of stall tasting beer.