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I've got a small bag of whole barley malt intended for brewing beer. After doing a bit of reading I'm getting conflicting information. Some say the outer hull in not edible, while others say it is fine and a good source of fiber.

Take this yahoo answer for example, which indicates that unhulled wheat is the same as whole wheat. I don't think that's true, as I'm under the impression that the outer hull or chaff is not the same thing as the bran (and germ) included in whole wheat.

Is the unhulled barley edible or not? My intended purpose is simply to mill it and simmer to as a breakfast cereal.

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    With oats the outer hull is papery enough to be unpalatable even after boiling. I'm not sure whether barley hulls would cause the same problem, but wouldn't be qt all surprised if you found little icky inedible bits floating on top of cooked barley meal. If you're milling the stuff, winnowing may be all you need to fix the potential problem: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnowing
    – Wayfaring Stranger
    Mar 27, 2016 at 19:30
  • thanks for your input. i ran an experiment this morning, ground and ate a large bowl of porridge from the stuff. it was fine. there were indeed some little papery particles but they were small enough in size and quantity not to disrupt the enjoyment of the food much. no stomach ache or anything so i guess it was indeed "edible" though not exceedingly palatable.
    – But those new buttons though..
    Mar 27, 2016 at 20:19
  • Billynoah: Good, Oat hulls tend to be a bit to tougher, and you end up with chunks that stick unpleasantly in your throat.
    – Wayfaring Stranger
    Mar 28, 2016 at 0:48
  • Theoretically I could migrate this to homebrew and let them close as duplicate, but I think that's probably more trouble than it's worth for these comments - feel free to copy things over onto your other post.
    – Cascabel ♦
    Mar 28, 2016 at 22:31
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it was already posted on homebrew and the OP wanted to avoid the cross-post: homebrew.stackexchange.com/questions/17355/… (for the record, it'd have been a fine question here too, though)
    – Cascabel ♦
    Mar 28, 2016 at 22:31

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