Gluten-free grain tests

[akueck]

After re-researching malting my own grain and hearing some anecdotes, I think that my wife would have me offed if I tried it. So, I'm using the modern chemistry approach instead.

Idea: see what I can extract out of several GF grains using amylase enzymes.
Process:
Attempt to crack grain with a rolling pin
Cook grains in water
Cool and add amylase
Hold near 150 until conversion
Sparge, crudely
Boil with some hops for 10 minutes
Cool, add yeast, and see what happens

The grains: Quinoa, Buckwheat, Amaranth, Millet, Brown Rice, and Tapioca
Notes: Tapioca may or may not really be "true" tapioca, I have no idea. Quinoa and amaranth were too small to be effectively cracked, and the rice was just too darned hard. I used 1 oz of grain and collected 1 cup of wort, which should come out to the same as 1 lb per gallon.

"Mashing" Results:
Quinoa--Conversion complete in 2 hours, extract SG 1.014.
Buckwheat--Conversion complete in 3 hours, extract SG 1.017.
Amaranth--Conversion complete in 2 hours, extract SG 1.017.
Millet--Conversion complete in 3.75 hours, extract SG 1.018.
Brown Rice--Conversion complete in 3 hours, extract SG 1.009.
Tapioca--Conversion complete in 3 hours, extract SG 1.037.

Mashing notes: the tapioca went from snot-like to watery as the enzyme was stirred in. Wow! Everything but the rice was pretty well dissolved at the end of the process. The low extract of the rice could be due to incomplete starch extraction. Maybe try longer cooking times or repeated cook/enzyme treatments. Quinoa provided a good amount of yellow color, the rest came out kind of milky white. Temperature control was difficult with such small volumes. All I can say is that I stayed between 130 and 155, with probably lots of fluctuations in between.

Brewing notes: all except the tapioca and rice had really funky hot breaks. They all had very clumpy cold breaks. Proteases would be a good idea for these. Do they sell those?

Results of fermentation forthcoming, probably in about a week. Mostly I want to see what the FG is and not so much what they taste like. I will taste them anyway, in case one of them is particularly good or terrible.

I wanted to get sorghum and teff as well, but could only find them as flour. Maybe next time. Also here is a price list ($/lb) for comparison purposes. Malted barley is usually $1-1.50/lb for small quantities.
Quinoa (organic): 3.29
Buckwheat (organic): 1.59
Amaranth (organic): 2.59
Millet (organic): 1.15
Rice: 1.35
Tapioca: 1.69
Prices will probably vary by region and grocery chain.

Using this method and suffering from some poor efficiencies (low to no cracking, incomplete starch extraction, bad temp control, crude sparge), the tapioca is far and away the cheapest sugar. Millet and buckwheat are also good values, while amaranth and especially quinoa are quite pricey. For rice, I'm probably better off buying the pre-made extracts or syrups or suffering a few hours of cooking.

I'm hoping this information is useful for recipe formulations. Getting malted grain is preferable (at least to me), but that may be difficult or impossible based on geography and sleeping habits of irritable spouses.

 

[wildaho]

Wow! Great experiment Aaron! You've done a lot of pioneering on the whole gluten-free front. I wish some of the "professional" brewers would do the same. I get a lot of requests at the pizza parlor (and the beer store before that) for gluten free beers but still haven't found one that 1.) I LIKE and 2.) THE CUSTOMER LIKES. You are paving the way dude!

I'm really curious about the millet. I buy it for my cockatiel at Winco for $0.44/lb. Seems like a guy could come up with some really cheap recipes if you can get the other ingredients figured out to bring some flavor.

How long did you do your cerealization boil for? That might have an effect on your conversion times. I haven't tried any myself but I've "read" that longer boils make for better starch conversion.

:cheers:
Wade

 

[akueck]

Hey Wade, thanks for the encouragement. It was more work than I had anticipated!

I do think longer boils would have helped, especially with the rice. The quinoa, buckwheat, millet, and amaranth were only boiled for about 20 minutes. I knew this was short, but I only had two pots going and didn't want to take too long (it took 6 hours as it was). The rice boiled for about 40 minutes, which I hoped would help more than it did. I'm thinking an hour or so would be best for the small grains to get all that starch out in solution. You'll notice that the first 4 grains were all pretty close in extract efficiency, so I assume the shortcoming is entirely in the process I used. I've also heard of folks doing a boil-mash-boil-mash process to work the starches out in stages. The intermediate mash removes some of the stuff in the way of the center of the seed and makes the second boil more efficient.

I'm curious about the millet too. I sure thought it looked just like the filler seed you get in the wild bird mixes. The birds around here tend to eat that seed last, so I'm not too hopeful of its flavor potential in beer. :confused3:

You should give a batch of GF beer a try! There are several recipes on an Australian homebrew club site and a nice site which I got my first inspiration from here. MoreBeer sells sorghum malt (as do several other places, but I've only ever gotten it there) and you can also use rice extract for a large portion of the fermentables, so you don't have to worry right away about malting or kilning. The chocolate coffee beer I made recently tastes just like "regular" beer to me.

 

[wildaho]

Man, I appreciate your patience. I'd have trouble spending 6 hours doing what you did (have I mentioned I'm partially ADD in a weird way? One thing, yes. But six? I'd have to design an experiment...).

You might review Wayne's thread on his Wolf Moon for the intricacies on the rice. He took some extraordinary efforts to make that one work. Malting and boiling and mashing AND amalyse! (and I'm still curious about the results, his descriptions are good but I want to taste it myself...)

I'd love to do a GF free batch but all my boiling and mashing equipment is still back in Boise (100 miles away) in storage. When winter ever leaves these northern climes...

 

[BBBF]

Have either of you tried both Redbridge and Bard's Tale? They are both made from sorghum, however Bard's is using malted grain and Redbridge is adding enzymes. I'll admit that Bard's tastes better, but it doesn't taste THAT much better. Bard's, Redbridge and New Grist are all in the same ballpark. So although I'm experimenting with malting my own grain right now, I'm equally interested in adding enzymes from a bottle. Depending on the outcome of my malted grain (like getting it to convert), I definately see a side by side comparison in the future.

My $.02 on the grains... Sorghum and millet are most likely the best for a base malt because of the price. I think quinoa will make a nice base, but the cost is discouraging. I did a few tests and after a light roast, I got some nice color and a pleasent nutty wort. Amaranth had a pale color and is also expensive. Buckwheat, from what I read, makes a good adjacent, but has too strong of a flavor for a base. Roasting if for taste and color seems to be popular. Tapioca, corn and rice don't offer much flavor, just fermentables. They're good for lightening a beer, but that's not really needed with the other GF grains. By the way, you can buy tapioca syrup for gf brewing.

My girlfriend and I have been doing a lot of gluten free baking (I make a mean deep dish pizza) and what I've learned is that you get the best flavor from using multiple flours. I think you have to do the same with beer.

Here's a couple more links links that might help you.
http://aggieotis.blogspot.com/2008/10/malting-gluten-free-grains.html
http://aggieotis.blogspot.com/2008/10/malting-gluten-free-grains-part-2.html

 

[STLBrewer]

There is an Australian commercial beer (available in St. Louis now) that I believe is made with millet...I'd have to look at it again to know for sure, but I think it is. It starts with a "T", but I can't think of the name either...darn my feeble memory!!

 

[akueck]

Oh man! The French coffee press idea in that blog post is genius. I wish I had read that yesterday, haha.

I love quinoa and the nuttiness it has. I think it lends itself well to beer, especially the browns I am fond of. (also the curried quinoa recipe from Moosewood is great!) It is expensive, but I think with better process you could reasonably expect at least 1.020 per pound, which makes it only twice the cost of sorghum or rice extract at the LHBS. "Only" twice.

6 things at once made the day go pretty fast actually. Usually brewing involves some waiting (boiling, sacch rests, etc), but with 6 things going at once I was always having to check, stir, or strain something. That's perfect for ADD! The oven was kind of full though, and I nearly burned myself on the 150º bowls more than once. Tip: Al foil is less scalding than earthenware, which is less scalding than glass. Small bowls are best.

I am giving serious thought to using a millet base, since it is so cheap and I can't currently find whole grain sorghum. I can find flour, which with enzyme you could convert. But it would be a horrid mess to strain. Maybe it would gravity-separate enough? Next time, I'll give it a shot and use teff too. (I love injera!)

 

[BBBF]

I used the french press idea, but it didn't help me. I completely pulverized my grains in a coffe grinder and the powder slipped through. Although, now that i think about it, the problem might have been that I didn't usea a large enough sample and my french press doesn't go down far enough, leaving me with a cloudy solution. I'm a little unsure how best to deal with this in the actual brew, since I'll likely end up with something similar. I'm not planning on lautering this time around. If all goes well, I'll make an MLT and use rice hulls in later batches. I'm thinking of just findng a fine enough bag to put the pulverized grains in or filtering through it. I'm not sure if there's a drawback to pulverized grains, assuming I can filter them out. These are huskless grains, so I don't think I have to worry about tannins and on the plus side, it'll improve my efficency.

Another way to bring the price down is to buy in bulk. You can save yourself $.50 to over a $1 a lb. 25lbs of quinoa sounds like a lot, but it's really only 2 or 3 batches of beer, as well as something you can eat on it's own. I'm seriously thinking about getting a good mill and making my own gluten free flours, while I'm at it.

 

[akueck]

I checked out some prices for bulk grains online, and I can actually get most of them cheaper in the bulk aisle of the supermarket here. Granted, it's the best bulk aisle ever; you can even get quinoa pasta and about 15 different kinds of rice--there is even green rice stained with bamboo. Maybe I'll stick to millet for the base grain and see how it goes, $1/lb isn't dirt cheap but it's the same as getting base grain at the LHBS. I wish the quinoa price was the same as 3 years ago though....

My little test batches are fermenting, though it's kind of hard to tell through the brown glass bottles. (I can hear them working.) They do seem to not have formed much krausen and some are doing the weird layering thing I've seen in my two previous GF batches.

Anybody have experience cracking grain with a pasta roller? We have one that attaches to the KitchenAid stand mixer. I'm wondering if the rollers are hard enough to stand up to dry grain. On the plus side, the width is adjustable so I could easily do both small and large grains and hopefully not get too much powder. We have a hand-powered one too in case I need a workout.

 

[BBBF]

They have the bulk bins at whole foods and at an asian market near me, but both places put the gf grains right next to or below the gluten grains. Maybe I could convince them to just order me a bag at their prices.

 

[osluder]

Anybody have experience cracking grain with a pasta roller? We have one that attaches to the KitchenAid stand mixer.

Not sure the KitchenAid pasta roller would stand up to cracking grain. There is actually a grain mill attachment available. -- Olen

 

[STLBrewer]

There is an Australian commercial beer (available in St. Louis now) that I believe is made with millet...I'd have to look at it again to know for sure, but I think it is. It starts with a "T", but I can't think of the name either...darn my feeble memory!!

Yeah, I was way off on this one...sorry. It is Barron's (still from Australia) and they are using (Black) Wattle.

I warned you all about my feeble memory! ;D

 

[BBBF]

Not sure the KitchenAid pasta roller would stand up to cracking grain. There is actually a grain mill attachment available. -- Olen

I'm not sure if that's adjustable. It also has a really small hopper and is pretty damn expensive. You might as well just buy a better mill that was designed to mill, than an attachment for the same price.

 

[osluder]

I'm not sure if that's adjustable. It also has a really small hopper and is pretty damn expensive.

I have one and while it does a bit more than cracking at the coarsest setting, it has worked fine for me. I use it for specialty grain (for mostly extract brewing), so the throughput is not a problem: it easily handles the 1 to 3 pounds of grain I mill at a time. Can't comment on price as it was a gift. Plus I can grind masa de harina for tortillas and tamales. ;D -- Olen

 

[akueck]

Yeah, I was way off on this one...sorry. It is Barron's (still from Australia) and they are using (Black) Wattle.

I warned you all about my feeble memory! ;D

My sister brought us some wattle seed. I'll have to dig that out. Now I'm really curious. ;D

 

[akueck]

Ok, the test is done. Not really complete, but done.

Everything tasted pretty similar, and bland, and not really anything like beer. I guess that's not too surprising but they tasted worse than I had hoped.

Also it seems like none of them actually finished fermenting. None formed a krausen. All but the amaranth were layered (clear liquid on top, thick crud on the bottom). The ones with the thickest layers of crud fermented the most, and it was evident that the crud layer was the one that was doing the most fermenting. The layering and the lack of complete fermentations point to nutrient deficiency (like keeving a cider). This is probably due to the lack of protease activity in the unmalted grains and would hopefully be fixed if the papaya meat-tenderizer idea works. [hello next experiment!]

Here are the results. I really only had enough for a hydrometer sample so the buck stops here. Like I said they were not tasty so I'm not disappointed to be rid of them anyway.
Quinoa: 1.008, milky with a yellow tint. faint grain smell and strong but pleasant grain flavor.
Buckwheat: 1.010, milky white-grey, not much aroma, toasty grain flavor.
Amaranth: 1.011, milky white, grainy smell, faint grain flavor.
Millet: 1.006, milky white, not much aroma, faint grain smell.
Rice: 1.004, milky white, almost no smell, grainy flavor.
Tapioca: 1.025, pale milky white, slight tapioca aroma, very little flavor.

The millet and tapioca were half crud, half clear. The buckwheat was 1/3 crud, and the quinoa and rice were 1/5 crud. The amaranth had a dusting of hops debris and yeast at the bottom, but no crud layer. Everything fermented out about 6 points except the millet and tapioca which chewed through 12. As I said, the greater attenuation accompanied the largest layer of fermenting goo. And the crud really was goo-like, quite nasty. Did taste it for the tapioca but it was the same as the clear liquid, only stickier. Blegh.

So, things I learned:
1) Protease is not only a good idea to reduce hot/cold break volume but will likely greatly improve fermentation kinetics and yeast health.
2) The quinoa and buckwheat were the only grains which seemed to have distinguishable flavor characteristics carry over into the "final" product. Neither tasted bad, but the buckwheat was a more distracting flavor.
3) The quinoa and buckwheat were the only grains with color contributions, giving a slight yellow and slight grey cast to the milky-white color. Neither would likely interfere with the coloration imparted by toasted grains.
4) It's hard to see into brown glass bottles.

 

[Medsen Fey]

This is a really fascinating study Aaron!

I would have expected active dry yeast to be able to ferment 14-18 gravity points easily without much in the way of nutrients, so I'm not sure if protease activity and increased amino acids will really help. Perhaps there were still a lot of dextrins and starches that the yeast couldn't attack.

Did you check the starch conversion with iodine?

 

[akueck]

I did check with iodine, so I figured it had worked. I expected things to be able to chew up such small amounts of sugar too, but we'll have to wait for the protease test to see if that is the culprit. I checked the meat tenderizers in the supermarket today. Even the ones labeled "unseasoned" contained salt.

My birthday is coming up, maybe I'll ask for papain powder.

 

[Zem]

Cool experiment AKueck

I had a few questions/ideas after reading it, maybe you can provide some insight?

Is the reason you con not use ground flour (as with the teff) because it will muddy the works and be too hard to strain out? I have an extra fine hop bag that is such a fine mesh it can basically hold water (though it's leaky...) a simple filtration and a pass through that bag should get anything pretty clear. Do you think that would work?

For the grain cracking (it works better when cracked?) I thought of this simple cast iron grinder my dad has, it looks a lot like this. Set on the loosest setting it would probably grind the grain pretty coarsely though it would take a little elbow grease.

Do you think that toasting the grains would have improved the results at all?
(Btw--malting involves sprouting then toasting then cracking the grain correct? Does that normally provide a little protease?)

Finally your discussion of protease reminded me of an experiment I read about once, it calls for protease and uses a little pineapple juice as one availabe source (the others being meat tenderizer and contact lens cleaning solution, which seem to be out of the equation here...) You can read up on it here. I thought the whole thing was pretty simple and interesting, this is probably one of my favorite sites next to gotmead?

Still, this and the GF Double Chocolate Coffee Stout have given me some ideas (and maybe hope of a good fall braggot) let me know what you think.

Wolfie

 

[akueck]

Yes, malting should create proteases, if gluten-free grain sprouts are anything like barley. The plant stores sugar and amino acids as starch and protein. These need to be broken down for the growing plant sprout, so the sprouting process creates/activates enzymes. By halting the sprouting, we keep the enzymes around and they should still work (unless we heat it up too hot and destroy them). It's my understanding that the proteins in most modern barley malts are mostly broken down by the time you get them in the store, thus protein rests are usually unnecessary. Certain types of grain (oats usually) and "undermodified" malts benefit from protein rests, either due to low enzyme activity or high protein contents. (caveat!! sorghum sprouts and malt contain cyanide and should not be consumed raw. kilning and mashing should lower the cyanide to safe levels.)

Pineapples and papayas are common sources for protease. The meat tenderizers in the supermarket had one or the other in them (bromelain or papain). I've heard canned pineapple has very low to no enzyme activity due to the heat involved in canning, but you could use the fresh juice or fruit of either to get your enzymes. (Dry fruit might work too.) The risk of course is adding the flavors of these fruits as well. I'm hoping to buy some papain powder soon which would be just the enzyme without any hitchhikers.

I didn't want to use flour for exactly that reason--it's hard to get out. It will eventually settle, of course, but the goal is usually a clear wort and flour makes that hard to accomplish. If you could strain it out, use flour. It is the most cracked you can get a grain. Cracking just helps expose the insides to the water, so you can get the starches out in a reasonable length of time.

I do think toasting would have helped the flavor a lot. I doubt it would have done much to the other results, though if you toast it too much you can form carbohydrate-protein complexes which are unfermentable (and brown). Most recipes I've seen for grains like millet, amaranth, quinoa say to toast the grain before adding water, so next time I'll probably do that before "mashing" as well. Malted grains are toasted to varying degrees.

The key to a good beer recipe is going to be using different grains with different heat treatments, each adding a particular flavor. Even the most plain of beers usually contains at least two kinds of malt. The base malt will probably be lightly toasted (e.g. pale malt), then you layer the other grains on top to get the flavor you want. Light beer gets small additions of lightly toasted grains, brown beers get some medium toast or a little highly toasted, and black beers get lots of toasted/roasted/burnt grains. The more toasted the grain, the less sugar you'll get from it (you burn it away and/or form those unfermentable melanoidins). But also you'll get more distinct flavors which will depend on how exactly you heated it.