Gluten Free Beer: Good News & Bad News

[BBBF]

Saturday I tried brewing with some amaranth (malted), buckwheat (unmalted) and quinoa (malted). I used enough grain for either a two gallon, all grain batch or a partial. I wasn't sure which one I would end up with. I planned on making that an in process decision. In the end, I guess I ended up going all grain, but I wasn't left with much choice. You'll understand in a minute.

So I started off with the following ingredients:

Vienna Roast Quinoa (1lbs), Pale Roast Quinoa (2lbs), Pale Roast Amaranth (2lbs), Dark Roasted Buckwheat (.5lbs)

I decided to grind them in a coffee grinder. Partially because I don't own a grain crusher and partially because I wanted to maximize my efficiency. These grains do not have husks, so I didn't have to worry about tannins.



And now for the bad news: I tried brewing in a bag because I don't own a lautering tun and I wasn't sure the best way to deal with grain that has been completely pulverized. This resulted in part of my bag getting scorched and making the wort taste like cigarette butts. The batch was ruined. I tried to cheer myself up by saying it was only a 2 gallon batch and not too big of a loss, but I spent a lot of time malting and kilning this grain, as well as removing the roots before brewing. I also used 90% of the grain I malted, so I don't have enough to give it another go and I'm not sure when I'll be able to devote several days to malting some more.

I decided to move forward. Sure it would be undrinkable, but I could at least make sure I could convert the starches.

Here's my wort after sitting in a 2 gallon cooler for 1.5 hours. A lot of fine powder, that made it through the bag has settled. When it went into the cooler it looked like coffee with way too much milk. I performed an iodine test after the first hour. It mostly stayed brown, but I could see some very fine specks of black. I gave it another 1/2 hour and it was fully converted. I did try a little and it was definitely very sweet.

Here a sample in a glass. The color looks pretty good. It would have been darker had I gone with my full recipe and added molasses. I thought this was the end of the journey because I didn't want to bother wasting any hops or yeast on it. I took a gravity reading and I got 1.055. There was still some unsettled flour that might be causing that to go a little high, but the final results aren't too bad.

I did end up tossing it in a bucket with some bread yeast, just to see what else happens. It currently has a think krausen on it.



So I guess the good new is it works. I just need to figure out a better way to do it.



So.... Any suggestions on better handling the grains? I could try building an MLT and adding rice hulls, but I'm worried so much flour would give me a stuck sparge. I could line a bucket with a grain bag and pour the wort through it to strain it, but that won't absolve the problem of the fine powder and I'd be worried about oxidization.

 

[STLBrewer]

Personal opinion only, but you could make a mash tun and use S/S braid in it AND put a grain bag or something similar in as a "filter"...also adding rice hulls may help, but I still think some of (if not a lot of) the flour you created will make it through.

Not much help, but at least it's an idea for you to play with...

 

[akueck]

Congrats on successful malting & mashing!

My LHBS has a grain mill that is self-serve. The idea is that you buy the grain there and then crack it, of course, but I'm sure they'd be ok with me bringing in homemade malt and later a few bottles of the results. Even if yours is not self-serve you might be able to convince them to crack your grain.

Also I would suggest checking in on local homebrew clubs and seeing if anybody has a grain mill. You'd want to really clean it out well to maintain the GF-ness (same goes for the LHBS). Compressed air should work, you generally don't want to get those things wet.

You might be able to get away with a good gravity settling and a coarse filter like rice hulls or whole leaf hops. Be sure to mash out first (170 degrees), then let things settle, covered, for a couple of hours. Siphon out the wort into your boil kettle, pass through a filter if it's not clear. You'll end up leaving some liquid behind but you should end up with clearer wort if you siphon off just the top clear layer.

Do you have a food processor? You should have a little more control over the crush with one of these vs. a coffee grinder. A few pulses should be enough to crack things without pulverizing them.

So how did the malt turn out? Does it look at all similar to barley malt? (no hulls, of course) Is the malt easier to crack than the raw grain? How long did you soak/sprout/kiln the grain? Which was easier, amaranth or quinoa? I've still got some grain left from my (not so successful either) experiment, and I might just give malting a shot.

 

[BBBF]

My girlfriend is very sensitive to gluten, so I don't think I'd be comfortable with using a mill that has been on barley. I did try a food processor first, but wasn't too impressed. The grains are just too small.

I may try building a MLT now that I know I can get the grains to self convert. It's a less risky investment. I was thinking about converting the 2 gallon cooler into a mini mash for partials and test bashes, but if I can get a full size cooler it might be better to go that route. Especially since I'm considering converting an old pressure cooker into a steam infusion system.

You might be right that I have to just let it settle for a couple hours.

I've never made beer before, so it's hard to make too much of a comparison to barley malt. One thing I'll say is that both amaranth and quinoa malt nothing like what I read about barley. There's a little ring around the grain and that is what becomes the roots and aspire. There so small, it's hard to tell when they are at the optimum growth. I pretty much just stopped it when I thought it was close. The amaranth is so small, I was really uncertain, so I kilned half of the malt and let the other half go another day.

I'd say the quinoa was the easiest. It started sprouting during the initial 4 hour soak. The roots were more visible and the grain was larger and easier to work with.

The amaranth lagged behind the quinoa by a couple days. This is beneficial because my dehydrators can only hold so much grain and I can start kilning the quinoa while the amaranth is still malting. I'm not sure if I'll have the luxury when the weather gets warmer and the process speeds up. It's hard to judge the length of the roots on the amaranth because the grain is so tiny. As I said, I split the batches and the second batch started turning pink. I'm pretty sure I was close to being over modified. The worst part is the grain went everywhere it's small size and round shape has resulted in me sweeping if up for the last 6 weeks.

 

[wildaho]

I'm no expert (and have never actually tried to malt anything myself) but from what I've read, I think that the quinoa in particular was over-sprouted and you may have lost some enzymes, starches and sugars. My memory is like a sieve but shouldn't the acrospires on barley be in the 0.10" range before drying? And barley grains are in the 0.25" to 0.35" range, or in a 1/3 ratio for proper acrospires. If looked at in proportion to the total length of each individual grain, you have acrospires that exceed the length of the quinoa grain by ten or twelve times.

I may be totally speaking out of my a** here but that's the first thing that strikes my eye. Your pictures are great and quite frankly, are the first pics I've ever seen on any board that document the malting process for altertinative grains. I think that is a beautiful thing.

I wish I was in a better economic position to take part in these experiments. I love pushing boundaries and the whole GF thing intrigues the hell out of me!

:cheers:
Wade

 

[wayneb]

I'm also no expert, having done all of one attempt at malting a non-traditional grain (rice), but Wildaho is correct in that there is a very short "sweet spot" for all sprouting grains, where the saccharification (alpha and beta amylase) enzymes in the grain are at their peak and where other plant constituents haven't yet developed (when present, those other plant compounds can lend a "bitter" or "green" flavor to your malt). The 1/3 ratio of acrospire to seed kernel length works for barley, but I suspect that for rice at least, it may be too long (based on personal experience).

Unfortunately I haven't found much documentation out there that talks about when the optimal point is in the malt for these alternate grains. Anyone who knows where we can get such info. please post it for us! ;D

 

[akueck]

I think sillyyak said to shoot for 1:1 with sorghum, but I'd have to look that up again.

I might just try malting some quinoa. Some got stuck in a strainer and sprouted in the dishwasher! I'm also intrigued about the little round things turning into the roots. I always liked that part of the grain, it makes it more fun looking when you cook it. ;D FWIW, quinoa and friends are not grass (like barley & co), so the rules for malting are bound to be different. For one thing you don't get the single shoot coming out the top, it will develop into the pair of leaves like the alfalfa sprouts you get on your sandwich.

Thanks for the pics, they are very cool. I'm sad the food processor didn't work, that was my plan. Maybe I'll give the pasta roller a shot and see what happens. If my TEM session goes well Thursday I'll start playing around with this on Friday. 8)

 

[BBBF]

I agree that both grains could have had the malting processesd stopped sooner. There were two reasons I let them go as long as I did. The first being that the grains have their own schedule and it didn't agree with me leaving for work and coming back 11 hours later. The second was that I cared more about finding out if they could self convert than getting the optimum startch to enzyme ratio. I may be wrong here, but my understanding was the closer the grain was to becoming a plant, the more enzymes would be present and less starch because the plant would be eating it.

 

[wayneb]

The saccharification enzymes actually start to denature once the majority of starch is converted, as well. Plants are very efficient little organic chemistry factories, and they start converting enzymes into other chemical compounds as soon as they are no longer needed.

 

[BBBF]

I think sillyyak said to shoot for 1:1 with sorghum, but I'd have to look that up again.

I might just try malting some quinoa. Some got stuck in a strainer and sprouted in the dishwasher! I'm also intrigued about the little round things turning into the roots. I always liked that part of the grain, it makes it more fun looking when you cook it. ;D FWIW, quinoa and friends are not grass (like barley & co), so the rules for malting are bound to be different. For one thing you don't get the single shoot coming out the top, it will develop into the pair of leaves like the alfalfa sprouts you get on your sandwich.

Thanks for the pics, they are very cool. I'm sad the food processor didn't work, that was my plan. Maybe I'll give the pasta roller a shot and see what happens. If my TEM session goes well Thursday I'll start playing around with this on Friday. 8)

You should definately give it a shot. The more of us that are experimenting, the better the results. Let me know if you have anymore questions. And you can still give the food processor a try. You may have better results.

 

[BBBF]

Last weekend, I attempted my 2nd beer with homemalted, gluten free grains. It was a 2 gallon batch consisting of:

Vienna Roast Amaranth - 1lbs, 8.2 oz
Pale Roast Amaranth - 1lbs, 13.6 oz
Pale Roast Quinoa - 1lbs, 9.5 oz
Hops - Fuggle (.5 @ 60 min., .25 @ 15 min., .18 @ KO)
Yeast - Windsor Ale Yeast


I did things a little differently this time around. First, I did not malt my grains for as log as I did in the previous experiment. Instead of the roots being several times as long as the grain, they were 1-2 times as long. I don't have any pictures, but they looked similar to the pictures of homemalted millet that akueck shows in his thread.

In my previous experiment, I decanted off some of the mash to preserve the enzymes, boiled the remaining wort, cooled it, added the enzyme wort back to the kettle, brought it back up to 153F and transferred it to my cooler, which lead to a full conversion in 90 minutes. I tried to filter through a grain bag, which left a very cloudy solution.

In this experiment, I used a decantation and a decoction.
1. Started off with a beta glucan rest at 104 F for 25 minutes
2. Added boiling water and did a protein rest at 131 F for 25 minutes
3. Decanted off some of the mash to preserve the enzymes
4. Added more boiling water, heated the mash to 158 F and held it for 20 mintues, hoping to get some conversions and reduce viscosity.
5. Boiled the mash for 30 mintues
6. Cooled it to 158 F, added the enzyme solution back into the kettle and held the temperature at 152 F for 2 hours.
7. Performed an iodine test on some of the clear solution.
8. Added 7oz of rice hulls and transferred to the lauter tun.

And then all hell broke loose. There was a major stuck sparge (using a steel braid) and I just couldn't get anything going. I had a cooler full of oatmeal. After screwing around for an hour, I gave up and poured it through a grain bag, squeezed the bag to get the wort out, put the bag back into another pot of boiling water, squeezed the bag again and added the added the boiling water to the kettle. I now had an extra 1.5 gallons that I was going to have to boil off, just to get to the gallon I was planning on boiling off during the hop additions.

Once I was back to my predicted, pre-hop volume, I decided to do another iodine test. This time it completely failed. I'm not sure if the extra flour in the wort gave me a false positive or if the clear wort I tested previously gave me a false negative. I had already denatured all the enzymes, so I added some powdered alpha amylase and transferred it back into the lauter tun. After another hour, I got another negative iodine test. It crossed my mind that I was only testing the top half again, but the wort tasted sweet and it was 1AM, so I decided to start boiling it again and adding the hops.

So here I am a week later. The beer has been fermenting in the primery that's sitting in a bucket. It is wearing my old Tortoise t-shirt and enjoying the cool breeze of a fan. It still has a nice krausen floating on top. I haven't decided if I'm going to move it to a secondary or just let it stay in the bucket for a couple more weeks.

 

[BBBF]

So I'm open to any suggestions on ways to improve my process. Right now I'm considering doubling the amount of rice hulls I used or I'm wondering if I could make a mash fitler by putting the mash into another bag or two and pressing it in some sort of grape or sausage press.

 

[akueck]

I definitely needed to use more rice hulls than I did last time. I would try that approach first.

Did you measure your OG? I'd be curious to see what kind of fermentability you have with the wort you made. I had a hell of a time getting the millet to pass muster with the iodine, and still wound up with piss-poor fermentability.

I will be moving next weekend but plan to do my papaya/sweet potato/beano test pretty much as soon as we have enough stuff unpacked.

 

[BBBF]

Technically, I measured the OG. However, my measurement isn't worth the paper I wrote it on because the sample was still very cloudy. It was 1.056.

 

[BBBF]

I racked the beer to a secondary. It was a nice golden color before I stirred up the yeasts and flour. Hopefully this settles well because I'd rather not rack again. I'm not a very good judge on green beer because it all tastes bad to me. It can only describe it as sweet and nutty right now. The trub smelled awesome. It has me craving an IPA, with a lot of fuggles.

 

[BBBF]

Well, sometime between my last post and now:
I got an infection
Racked under the surface mold & bottled
Tasted some at 2.5 weeks - not good
Tasted some at 4 weeks - bad initially/almost skunky, impoved with a a minute to breath, but still not very good.
Tasted at 5 weeks because I wanted to take a picture. It has improved. It still a little sour, but you can get an idea what the GF grains are contributing. It isn't bad. I can definately see a good beer being made from GF grain. I'd like to try giving them a darker roast, so there is something to hide any off flavors.

 

[Medsen Fey]

Nice! It certainly looks like a beer.

 

[zxcvbob]

I think sillyyak said to shoot for 1:1 with sorghum, but I'd have to look that up again.

Isn't malted sorghum poisonous? Sorghum sprouts are dangerously high in cyanide compounds, but I'm not sure when it develops.

 

[wayneb]

FWIW, quoted from an article in the Journal of Food Science (ca 1984):

The seeds of four cultivars of grain sorghum and four of sweet sorghum (Sorghum blcolor (L.) Moench) contained only traces (1 or 2 ppm) to 29 ppm of potential hydrocyanic acid (HCN) that could be generated as free HCN by digestion and steam distillation. Sprouts of the same cultivars grown for 3 days in the dark at 30°C, however, contained from 258–1030 ppm potential HCN relative to the weight of the ungerminated, dry seed. Drying at 50°C and grinding of sprouts to produce a meal did not reduce the potential HCN content. The consumption of sorghum sprouts or products made from them may be hazardous. The average amount (61.3 mg) of HCN obtained in our laboratory from sprouts grown from 100g of seed exceeds the average fatal dose for an adult.

I would not make any beverage out of malted sorghum.

 

[zxcvbob]

That's what I though. Sorghum (either grain or syrup) probably makes a fine adjunct, but not malt.