We have Amber Malt!

It's been an interesting process but I have officially malted my first batch of barley.  

After spending too much time in the dehydrator I removed the rootlets.

At this stage I now have my basic pale malt and it tastes slightly sweet.  However, I decided I wanted to do a specialty malt and roasted the malt to create an Amber malt.  Below you can see the color difference between the pale malt (left) and the Amber malt I roasted (right).

 The roasted malt will settle its flavor in the next two weeks.

There are several things I will do differently in my next batch.  I'm also looking into buying something to help me determine the moisture content of barley.  I found that much of the process centers around moisture and you can't rely solely on average times for steeping, germination, and kilning.  The average times for each part of the process can very greatly depending on many factors including amount of grain being malted, moisture content, etc.