Millet Malting Methods and Madness

[akueck]

The last of the grain is being kilned now; I hope to brew tomorrow.

I found (and removed) a bunch of sesame seeds now that the grain is dry. Turns out you can malt sesame as well. Anybody up for a sesame beer experiment?

I'm trying to decide whether or not to mash all the grain together. I wouldn't have an independent measure of the "Munich" millet extract, color, etc. But it would be so much easier! I'm not sure I could get a very accurate measure either, using such a small amount of grain (2 oz or so) and normal water ratios (2/3 cup water for the mash). Ah, science is so demanding....

 

[akueck]

So, that was interesting. Unless it turns out a lot different than it looks right now, I think I'll be sticking to the sorghum syrup and rice extracts from now on....

1 lb 10 oz "pale" malt
4.5 oz "Munich" malt
3/8 oz hops (roughly half Goldings and half Tettnang) 30 mins

I steeped the malts separately in 1 qt/lb 100 F water for 20 mins. Grains transferred into 1 qt/lb water and boiled for 30 mins. Transferred back into the steep water, which brought it close to 150. Added rice hulls until it looked good. Heated until 150, then put into a warm oven.

After 1 hour, still failed iodine test. Lots of temperature loss. Reheated to 150, added amylase enzyme. Repeatedly checked on things, took until 3 hours to convert. Had a hard time maintaining temperature.

Boiled for 10 or so minutes before hop addition. Cooled in a sink of water. Final volume about a gallon, should be roughly 1.035 but I didn't check. My wife commented that it looked like potato leek soup. It does. Really scary looking right now, we'll see how it goes.

Collected about a gallon from the pale malt. SG 1.031 so 19 pt/lb/gal which is pretty bad. Collected about 2 cups from the Munich malt, SG 1.024 so 48 pt/lb/gal which just doesn't make any sense at all. Huh. I blame small volumes. The millet absorbed a lot of water. A LOT of water. Draining was pretty poor, even with the rice hulls. The millet was very well beat to hell, even though I barely crushed it (meat hammer!).

It's finishing cooling in the closet, I'll leave it overnight and see how it is in the morning. Going to use US-05 yeast. Not a lot of hope for this batch, but hey it could surprise me.

 

[wildaho]

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

I've never tried anything like this but I have to wonder. By boiling your total mash after the 100F steep, didn't you denature all of the potential enzymes in your grains? From my vague memories of reading about cerealization mashes, it seems you need to retain a certain amount of enzyme-viable grains unboiled to keep things going, kinda like a decoction mash. And why 100F? Wouldn't 122F-132F be a better amalayze rest?

I'm speaking out of my nether regions on all this, never having tried multi-step mashes or a cerealization step but it seems like a traditional three stage decoction mash might be your best bet on this. You would retain the enzymes and allow them to work at the appropriate temps. By boiling 1/3 of your total mash each time, you would still achieve full starch conversion but you'll still have some enzyme action available.

I have no idea if the temps would be the same for millet as they are for barley but it might make a good starting point for the next batch. If the same enzymes are involved, it seems like a good model to follow.

Just a thought!

:cheers:
Wade

 

[akueck]

I saved the steep water to keep the enzymes around. Not sure how many there were though, since I had to add more after an hour. I chose 100F so that it would be low enough not to destroy anything, but it was pretty random. 3-step decoction might be a good idea in the future.

The gelatinazation step (boiling) worked great, I got a thick starchy goo. It thinned out during the sacch rest so something must have worked. I don't know the exact temperature you need to solubilize the starches in millet, but consensus is that the gluten-free grains tend to need temps higher than typical mash temps. Boiling is easy.

Pitched my yeast (US-05) this morning at 68F. It looks...kind of gross.

 

[wildoates]

It sure sounds a lot more complicated than mead.

 

[akueck]

Brewing beer is more complicated than mixing up a mead must. But, it's a lot less work after that. Honestly I'm done at this point, no racking, no waiting 6 months, no oak, no clarifiers or stabilizers. Now, this might not end up as beer, but in general all that still applies. ???

 

[akueck]

My wife wanted me to share this with you all:

The hops still haven't settled out due to the odd thickness. Saw the same thing in my smaller scale tests earlier too. Honestly I'm not sure what exactly this is caused by, it shouldn't be starch if the iodine test works the way it is supposed to. Whatever, we'll see how it goes.

 

[akueck]

Thoughts on the thick liquid: suspended solids?

Anyway, it is fermenting now so I'll update in a week or two when it settles down. There is a clearish layer on top that is slowly working its way down, it's about an inch deep right now.

 

[akueck]

Time for the "results" of my experiment!

"Fermentation" "activity" lasted a day or two. There were occasional burps from the cloudy layer over the next week. This level of separation was achieved after about 6 days and has held steady since then. Swirling didn't accomplish much as the bottom 1/3 of the jug was pretty thick.

I siphoned off the top and collected 1.2 quarts with SG 1.024. ??? Not very attenuative. I doubt it will do much more so for giggles I mixed in 1/4 oz corn sugar and got 3 bottles worth. They're in a plastic bin in case of explosion.

The taste is predictably thin and grainy. Honestly it's not the worst homebrewed concoction I've tasted, but it's not exactly good either.

The sludge in the jug had the consistency of gruel. Smelled kind of like it too.

So, I'll call this a near-total failure to produce beer. But I did learn a lot about malting and that I should really stick to professionally prepared varieties. Who wants me to send them one of the precious three bottles?

 

[BBBF]

Aside from the toasted bag, I seemed to have had better luck, but it's not too great of a comparison because I used amaranth and quino, not millet. I still haven't roasted my grain yet. I'm going to put together my 2 gallon MLT this weekend and make an small, "regular" batch of beer before I give the GF one another go.

 

[akueck]

What I find most interesting about this experiment is how similar the results were to my previous one. I got the same extract from the malted millet as from the raw millet (1.019 vs 1.018 per lb per gal), and roughly the same layer of crud (about half the volume). Earlier it looked like the crud layer was the fermenting layer, but not this time so perhaps my earlier conclusions were incorrect. (I will still do the papaya test at some point, unless I get a high-paying job to occupy my time first.) The malted millet does taste a lot better than the raw, untoasted stuff but that isn't surprising.

The quinoa and amaranth had little or no "crud layer" in my earlier attempts, maybe the composition of the grain is better suited for non-professional malting?

Does anyone know the threshold for the blue color when starch meets iodine? I'm wondering if I got the starches small enough to not react, but still too large for yeast to eat (so bigger than 3 glucose units per molecule). That would explain why I might pass an iodine test but end up with only 32% attenuation. Maybe I need to try beano in the mash as well.

 

[wayneb]

It sounds like your results with the millet pretty much paralleled mine with rice, which is why I added alpha amylase during the mash in my Wolf Moon recipe. Working with these grains is certainly different than working with barley malt.

Sorry, I don't know when the iodine test stops indicating starch, but I'll bet it is at a point higher than when everything is reduced to simple sugars. That was one of the things suggested to me when I continued to get conversion, even after fermentation was over. If you recall, I never "mashed out" the Wolf Moon mash because I added the alpha amylase after I'd peaked in temperature, so it stayed active throughout fermentation (and aging, and to a certain extent, even after bottling). The Wolf Moon in bottles today is definitely sweeter tasting than the Wolf Moon I had in a bulk carboy last year.

Beano's combo of alpha and beta amylases will definitely work for you, but I'm afraid that you'll end up with nothing but simple sugars which the yeast will burn through, and you'll be left with very little character from the grain itself, and no residual sweetness.

 

[Medsen Fey]

In reading the article you found, I'm wondering if you would get better results by allowing the grains to germinate longer. It seemed that the diastatic power of the grain increased by almost 50% by going out to 5 days, and with that they got higher extraction rates. It looked like you stopped after 3 days, or did I read that wrong?

There are some natural sources of amylase that could be incorporated into the process. Ginger root is one. I've read banana peel (especially the white part on the inside) may as well.

 

[akueck]

All good points. I did only malt for 3 days. The roots were getting pretty big. I guess they can get bigger.

The beano would eventually leave only simple sugars, but I would probably add it near the end of my "normal" mash to try and improve conversion, then mash out. It would take some tweaking, but I think it might work. The enzymes are fungal so they will work slightly differently than the plant-based ones (if I understand these things correctly). I might also try an overnight mash--after 3 hours it still wasn't completely done so a few more hours probably won't hurt. Might sour a little overnight though....

I do want to try boiling the grains in batches rather than all at once. They definitely gelatinified (if that is a word) but maybe I hadn't extracted enough enzymes before that step. Ah, so many experiments to try! I need more gallon jugs.

 

[wayneb]

I do want to try boiling the grains in batches rather than all at once. They definitely gelatinified (if that is a word) but maybe I hadn't extracted enough enzymes before that step. Ah, so many experiments to try! I need more gallon jugs.

Hey, it may not be a word -- but from personal experience, I know exactly what you mean!

 

[akueck]

Decided to try one of these just now...and I'm not entirely regretting it!

Still immensely cloudy, though some sediment had dropped in the bottle. It did carbonate so the millet is not poisonous to yeast. The aroma was, in a word, scary. Not really sure how to describe it but it didn't smell good. Once you got past that, it didn't taste all that bad, though that could have been because it didn't taste like much. There was a clean hoppy bitterness and a slight sweetness. Otherwise, bland. Still better than I thought on bottling day, so that is a plus.

I got a response from Zymurgy and they said an article on this stuff would be a good idea. Anybody want in on the fun? I'd like to try my hand at malting again and conduct the papaya test for protease effects. I'll do all this with millet to stay consistent. But I'd love to get some data on other grains if anyone is willing to send me their results. BBBF?

 

[wildoates]

Mmmmm...science...

That's the coolest thing about brewing...it's science you can drink! Had a GSI when I was an undergrad at Cal who did mycology because he liked mushrooms and figured getting a PhD in them would guarantee he'd be able to eat all the interesting mushrooms and know which ones to avoid.

 

[BBBF]

Decided to try one of these just now...and I'm not entirely regretting it!

Still immensely cloudy, though some sediment had dropped in the bottle. It did carbonate so the millet is not poisonous to yeast. The aroma was, in a word, scary. Not really sure how to describe it but it didn't smell good. Once you got past that, it didn't taste all that bad, though that could have been because it didn't taste like much. There was a clean hoppy bitterness and a slight sweetness. Otherwise, bland. Still better than I thought on bottling day, so that is a plus.

I got a response from Zymurgy and they said an article on this stuff would be a good idea. Anybody want in on the fun? I'd like to try my hand at malting again and conduct the papaya test for protease effects. I'll do all this with millet to stay consistent. But I'd love to get some data on other grains if anyone is willing to send me their results. BBBF?

What kind of time frame are you looking at?

 

[Medsen Fey]

But I'd love to get some data on other grains if anyone is willing to send me their results. BBBF?

I saw someone mention trying to use a grain called Teff (which I am not familiar with) in a thread HERE. There isn't much detail there, but it might present another option.

 

[akueck]

@BBBF: maybe 6-8 weeks or so? Doesn't sound all that rushed though so I'm sure we could push that back if necessary.

@Medsen: Teff does sound like a good option, but so far I have only been able to find it locally as flour. No way am I going to do flour. I'll keep my eyes out for it though, I am a big fan of Ethiopian/Eritrean cuisine and teff is the grain of choice there.

Update: after extensive research ("I feel lucky"), here is a company that will ship you teff grain (or flour) for $20/5lb or $60/25lb. Bob's Red Mill also sells it, and you can apparently get that on Amazon for $22/6lb + shipping (free super saver etc etc). I love the internet!