# Gluten Free Malting & Brewing



## Millet Man (16/7/06)

I've had a few enquiries about how to make gluten free beer so I thought I'd post these two artices I have written covering both malting and brewing (in next post).

If you know anyone who may find this useful please pass it on.

I will also start a recipes thread (recipe database will not handle my malts) as a resource as well.

Cheers, Andrew.

View attachment Gluten_Free_Malting___EB_2006.pdf


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## Millet Man (16/7/06)

Here's the brewing article.

Cheers, Andrew.

View attachment Gluten_Free_Brewing___EB_2006.pdf


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## deathjester (16/7/06)

Thanks for your postings. Very interesting for me as I am doing a project at uni in malting and brewing sorghum.

Cheers,
Bill


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## Joel (17/7/06)

Thanks for the great articles Milletman! Very informative. I'd found a few scientific papers on malting millet, but was struggling to translate them into a practical method. I particularly like your ARSE (thats "Aerodynamic Roots and Shoots Extractor" for those with filthy minds!).

Just a few questions:

1. for the steeping air rest, is using a SS air stone to aerate the steeping water acceptable, or does the grain need to be removed entirely?

2. Is there a particular reason you've settled on 25C for the steep temp? The studies I've read suggest that 30 to 35 C steeping temp yields higher diatastic power and alpha amylase. Just curious.

3. How thick is the grain in the germinating tray? And would you recommend a tiered setup with several trays stacked on top of each other (with a decent air space between).

4. What did you seal the wood with (to prevent the fungal growth)?

Onto some questions about the mash:

5. I assume you can add the rice hulls at the beginning of the mash(never used them before). Rather than transferring the hot mash onto the rice hulls for the lauter, I'd prefer to have it all in one vessel at the same time and mash and lauter in the one mash/lauter tun.

6. How important is getting the pH right? I don't bother with my current all barley malt mashes, and I turn out fairly good beers. Is it critical to the gluten free mashing process?

7. How do you think a millet base wort will go with the 'no-chill' method? I assume that it will be the same as a barley based wort?

Thanks again for providing this info.

Joel.


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## Millet Man (18/7/06)

Bill said:


> Thanks for your postings. Very interesting for me as I am doing a project at uni in malting and brewing sorghum.
> 
> Cheers,
> Bill



Bill,

There a heaps of technical papers on malting and brewing with sorghum, mostly from the IOB Journal. If you want a copy PM me.

Cheers, Andrew.


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## Millet Man (18/7/06)

Joel said:


> Thanks for the great articles Milletman! Very informative. I'd found a few scientific papers on malting millet, but was struggling to translate them into a practical method. I particularly like your ARSE (thats "Aerodynamic Roots and Shoots Extractor" for those with filthy minds!).


I'm proud of my ARSE.  


> 1. for the steeping air rest, is using a SS air stone to aerate the steeping water acceptable, or does the grain need to be removed entirely?


You need to change the water after about 8 hours or so anyway to as it leaches out undesireable compounds, so I just leave it dry in between. I have used a fish tank bubbler during steeping but it seemed to promote germination before the grain had finished taking up water.


> 2. Is there a particular reason you've settled on 25C for the steep temp? The studies I've read suggest that 30 to 35 C steeping temp yields higher diatastic power and alpha amylase. Just curious.


Anywhere between 25-30C seems to work well with millet, I have tried steeping at 35C but the germination temperature would then be hard to control and would run up to 45C. At 25C steep the germination temperature does not try to "runaway" until the last 12 hours.

The lab studiers are done with small samples in a controlled environment which is difficult to replicate. Also malting losses are higher at 35C.


> 3. How thick is the grain in the germinating tray? And would you recommend a tiered setup with several trays stacked on top of each other (with a decent air space between).


The germinating tray is 10cm deep. My first attempt was to build a stacked germinator/kiln but it did not work too good. I couldn't get decent airflow during kilning as the cumulative bed depth was too great. Keep it shallow and a low watt axial fan will do the job easily.


> 4. What did you seal the wood with (to prevent the fungal growth)?


A 2 part timber sealer that I had lying around that we used on the timber benchtops in the kitchen, can't remember the name.


> 5. I assume you can add the rice hulls at the beginning of the mash(never used them before). Rather than transferring the hot mash onto the rice hulls for the lauter, I'd prefer to have it all in one vessel at the same time and mash and lauter in the one mash/lauter tun.


I have tried this method and prefer to add the rice hulls at the end for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, if the rice hulls are in the mash then more mash water is required to maintain the same lt/kg ratio for workability. For a 4 kg mash I use 18 lt of mash water and 15 lt sparge. If I add the 0.8 kg rice hulls in the mash then I would end up with 21.5 lt in the mash and 11.5 lt sparge, and my mash tun would overflow.

The second reason is that I prefer to use a separate lauter, I have tried mashing and lautering in the same vessel with generally poor results and have tried many setups; HERMS, slotted copper manifold, SS false bottom. Because of the need to have a number of temperature rests and lots of stirring I always ended up with fine particles and ungelatinised malt clogging the manifold, resulting in a stuck sparge (2-4 hrs) and crappy efficiency.

My current method gives better efficiency and the sparge is 90 minutes at the most (darker beers) and as quick as 45 minutes (fly sparge). I have found this is what works best for me.


> 6. How important is getting the pH right? I don't bother with my current all barley malt mashes, and I turn out fairly good beers. Is it critical to the gluten free mashing process?


Enzyme levels are much lower so anything that can be done to halp them will improve the conversion - keep the calcium level up and the pH in the right range. I was probably mashing my beers at around pH 5.7 before I started checking, now I do it at 5.4 and get about 10% more efficiency, less haze and no astringency. I was making good beer before pH adjustment but now they're better. 


> 7. How do you think a millet base wort will go with the 'no-chill' method? I assume that it will be the same as a barley based wort?


Should be fine, I've done one no-chill with a sorghum malt wort and it worked fine.

Cheers, Andrew.


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## Millet Man (20/7/06)

Bill said:


> Thanks for your postings. Very interesting for me as I am doing a project at uni in malting and brewing sorghum.



Bill,

Here's some research papers for your thesis, mostly from the IOB Journal.

Cheers, Andrew.

Sorghum malting - Lipase View attachment G_2002_0612_02R.pdf

Sorghum malting - Beta amylase View attachment G_2002_0827_079.pdf

Sorghum malting - Storage View attachment G_2004_0810_206.pdf

Sorghum malting - DP measurement View attachment G_2004_1229_210.pdf

Sorghum malting - Protein View attachment Paper18Dewar.pdf


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## Joel (20/7/06)

This is where I found some stuff on millet malt. http://www.scientificsocieties.org/jib/contents/current.htm

Just click on "search abstracts" on the left and type in your key words.


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## Kai (20/7/06)

Bill says thankyou, millet man. He has the 3/5 of those already but the other two are useful too apparently. He is also a clown who forgot his login details.


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## Joel (1/8/06)

O.K. Where is a good place to get bulk millet? I've tried ringing around produce places in Newcastle, but the best I could find was seed grade stuff (which is no good for brewing).


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## berazafi (1/8/06)

I think i saw grain and grape in melbourne had some


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## Millet Man (1/8/06)

Joel said:


> O.K. Where is a good place to get bulk millet? I've tried ringing around produce places in Newcastle, but the best I could find was seed grade stuff (which is no good for brewing).



Pet food or stock feed stores have it, if there's not one in Newcastle you should find one in Maitland for sure. I pay around $30-40 for a 40 kg bag. I go to an independent place here but Petstock also have it (and any other grain for that matter) and they may have a store in your area.

Cheers, Andrew.


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## nabs478 (21/4/09)

G'day,

I have built some items as described in your articles. Thanks, they are very helpful.

I have got to the stage of using my ARSE, and have had some toruble with it. I have run various feeds, leaving two buckets - rejects and usable malt. They seem just as they should on first inspection, but if you grab a handful of malt and have a closer look, there are still a lot of small pieces of root or shoot hanging around along with a small number of grains that have still got small roots and shoots attached to them. I am just wondering how clean you need to get it to avoid the impact you describe in the final beer? I am also interested in knowning what the distinctive flavour in the final beer tastes like, so that I may be able to identify it if the malt isnt clean enough. 

Thanks


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## Millet Man (22/4/09)

Pip. said:


> G'day,
> 
> I have built some items as described in your articles. Thanks, they are very helpful.
> 
> ...


Hi Pip,

Just looking back through my records I normally get 200-250 g of roots and shoots from 10 kg of grain and it would look fairly clean but still have a few roots in the malt on closer inspection as it's hard to get it all out. The taste is quite bitter and astringent if it gets through to the final beer, and you can smell it as soon as you mash in if there is too much, the mash should smell nice and malty but if there are too many roots in it there is a wierd smell (sorry been a few years since I smelt it so I can't recall the smell exactly but it's not pleasant).

Keen to hear how the beer goes.

Cheers, Andrew.


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## Thirsty Boy (24/4/09)

Millet Man said:


> Hi Pip,
> 
> Just looking back through my records I normally get 200-250 g of roots and shoots from 10 kg of grain and it would look fairly clean but still have a few roots in the malt on closer inspection as it's hard to get it all out. The taste is quite bitter and astringent if it gets through to the final beer, and you can smell it as soon as you mash in if there is too much, the mash should smell nice and malty but if there are too many roots in it there is a wierd smell (sorry been a few years since I smelt it so I can't recall the smell exactly but it's not pleasant).
> 
> ...



Thanks very much Andrew. I had some of that before, but not all of it.

Cheers

TB


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## nabs478 (1/5/09)

So my gut feeling is that my first GF beer is going to be a failure...but I have not given up hope yet.

From my original 10kg of millet, I had 8kg left after malting and using the ARSE. And I had about 600g of roots and shoots. I dare say that about half of that was grains though, and there was probably too much of the roots and shoots left in the malt. My ARSE was not efficient enough, and I plan to build a better one.

During the mash I got a similar smell to that I smelt during germination. I kind of warm 'planting growing' smell. My malt mill didnt do a very good job of grinding the malt into flour, but I had gone ahead with all the malt cracked and a bit of flour around....didnt really care if I didnt get much efficiency as it was just a test. Because it wasnt ground up all that much, the roots and shooys left in the malt were mostly whole and floated to the top, and I spooned most of them out. The mash smelt perfect and sweet once I transferred it to tha latuer tun for conversion.

Everything went fine after that and I got 18L @ G=1046 into the fermenter. I had used a big aluminium pot as a kettle as my usual kettle is too big for such a small batch, so I didnt have a pick up coil, so the 18L included hot break and hops.

I pitched a pack of S-04 dry into the wort once it got down to 26C and then cooled it to about 20C over the following 4 hours. It fermented to 1018 in 3 days. The next day it was still reading 1018 so I boiled some yeast nutrient and threw it in and swirled it up and chucked on an electric blanket to raise the temp from 19C to 24C. I have waited two more days and it is now 1017.

I have had a few stuck ferments before for various reasons, but unless I have added a lot of dextrose, candy sugar or pitched unhealthy yeast, it has always got going again after the above mentioned routine. I am expecting a FG around 1006-1009.

Has anybody else had a stuck ferment with home malted millet? Perhaps I had a very unfermentable sugar profile this time for some reason? I plan to just leave it there for another week and monitor it. 

It also has a kind of harsh bitter flavour, that probbaly came from the roots and shoots. It reminds me of the kind of flavour I that I got for a few brews before I started cleaning my kettle with caustic soda - kind of a metal or chemical contamination taste. The flavour isnt very strong and I have had a bad run of properly identifying off flavours during fermentation, and I think this could potentially be caused to some degree by active yeast (although it doesnt seem very active) or all the hot break in the bottom of the ferment so I plan to bottle it still and check it out once it is carbed and cold. 

I would be interested in anyones comments.


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## rich_lamb (1/5/09)

Andrew could probably give better info, but it sounds like you don't have complete conversion ie. still have starch in there. It's a prety involved process getting these grains to convert.

Also, with my first GF batch the attenuation was really low - like 50% - but it was still fully fermented and pretty tasty. So the low attenuation may be symptomatic of insufficient breakdown of starches/sugars, while any harshness may be from direct starch carryover. Either way - it's pointing to the mash, or enzyme activity to be more specific.


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## nabs478 (1/5/09)

I never considered the conversion issue. I did allow an extra 45 mins of conversion time on top of the 90mins, but I only retrieved about 2.7L of mash liquor, when Andrew recommended 3L (also I used 4kg of grains to his 3kg!), so perhaps it just needed longer.

That does fit the bill. I think I might give it a few more days, then cool it, filter it, carb it and serve it up to the coeliac and see what she says!


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## Millet Man (12/5/09)

Pip. said:


> I never considered the conversion issue. I did allow an extra 45 mins of conversion time on top of the 90mins, but I only retrieved about 2.7L of mash liquor, when Andrew recommended 3L (also I used 4kg of grains to his 3kg!), so perhaps it just needed longer.
> 
> That does fit the bill. I think I might give it a few more days, then cool it, filter it, carb it and serve it up to the coeliac and see what she says!


Hi Pip,

Sounds like you got about 60% attenuation which is not unusual if the enzyme levels weren't quite there, SO4 is not the greatest attenuating yeast so it's probably done. US05 gives me around 75% attenation with sorghum malt mashed around 60-62C.

The harsh/bitter is probably the rootlets but just see how the beer cleans up it may be fine.

Cheers, Andrew.


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## rich_lamb (18/5/09)

Hey I've been trawling around for GF recipes and most of the "usual" sites seem to have removed all of the nice homebrewing info.

Does anybody have a proven recipe for a sorghum-based wit?

cheers,
B&T


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## Millet Man (19/5/09)

Bitter & Twisted said:


> Hey I've been trawling around for GF recipes and most of the "usual" sites seem to have removed all of the nice homebrewing info.
> 
> Does anybody have a proven recipe for a sorghum-based wit?
> 
> ...


Hi B&T,

Here's recipe I had posted on oz craftbeer a few years back - it was a ripper!

Swap your sorghum malt for the fermentables and away you go, I've never done a wit with sorghum before but it should work fine.

Cheers, Andrew.

Recipe Swap : id 55 
Use the "Contact" button to send an email message to the Brewer to request further information or to give feedback. 
Category: 14. GLUTEN FREE 
Style: Belgian Wit 
Recipe Name: Buckwit 
Brewer's Name: Andrew Lavery 
Brewing Method: Partial Mash 
Starting Gravity: 1.048 
Ending Gravity: 1.012 
Alcohol (w/w%): 5.2% 
Bitterness (IBU): 18 
Colour (SRM): 2-3 ish 
Specification Comments: A reasonably good copy of the style, and damn easy to drink a lot of, my house beer 
Size of Batch: 23 
Batch Size Unit: Liters 
Extract Efficiency: 70% 
Fermentables:
1.5kg Buckwheat pilsener malt
1.5kg Millet pilsener malt
1.5kg Pure Harvest Rice Syrup
0.5kg CSR Golden Syrup (other brands have salt added) 
Hop Additions:
30g Goldings 4.5%AA 60 min
10g Goldings 4.5%AA 15 min 
Wort Preparation:
Mash grains with 12lt of water
Hold at 60C for 15 min
Syphon off 3lt of enzyme liquid and let it cool to around 40C
Add 3lt of boiling water to mash and raise temp to 85C for 30 min
Add enzyme liquid, 3lt of chilled water and 0.6kg of rice hulls
Hold at 63C for 90 min, heat to 70C for 30 min
Start sparge at 75C and transfer to lauter tun
Collect about 18lt and cut runnings at 1.010 
Boiling and Cooling:
Add rice syrup and golden syrup
Add water to a pre-boil volume of about 28lt
Boil for about 90 min
0.5 tablet of irish moss at 15 min for end
Cool to about 20-25C after boil 
Other Additions:
50g Dried pink grapefruit peel 15 min
30g Coriander seeds (crushed) 15 min
2g Cardomom pods (10 pods) 15 min
10g Freshly grated ginger root, boiled with priming sugar (strained out) 
Yeast Information:
Fermentis Safale K-97 
Fermentation Details:
Sprinkle yeast and aerate for 90 min
Primary ferment for 7-8 days at 20C
Secondary ferment for 2 days at 20C 
Other Brewing Information: All water pre-boiled to get rid of chlorination
Prime with 210g of dextrose (maize based)
Target 6.5 g/lt of CO2 
Competition Results:
Scored 124/150 at Beerfest 2005 which I am extremely happy with considering the beer was past it's prime by then


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## rich_lamb (21/5/09)

Thanks Andrew.
I'm impressed that scored 124 - well done!


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## mpcondo (6/7/09)

I am very curious about this recipe, I was wanting to try something very similar. I am wondering what exactly is millet pilser malt?

is that just malted millet or is there any additional precessing needed?


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## Millet Man (6/7/09)

mpcondo said:


> I am very curious about this recipe, I was wanting to try something very similar. I am wondering what exactly is millet pilser malt?
> 
> is that just malted millet or is there any additional precessing needed?


Just malted millet but very lightly kilned so pale in colour.

Cheers, Andrew.


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## mpcondo (7/7/09)

Millet Man said:


> Just malted millet but very lightly kilned so pale in colour.
> 
> Cheers, Andrew.




Thanks, alot for the info. I've been reading through some of your posts on the subject of GF brewing, you've given a ton of fantastic information. I'm definitely going to brew this as soon as i can gather the ingredients.

I can't find great info like this on gluten free brewing here in the states.

Cheers,

mike


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## mpcondo (14/7/09)

I have been trying to malt some millet according to the instructions posted by millet man, and at the end of the cycle i noticed that the smell of the grain changed dramatically. it went from the pleasant grain smell to kind of a sour smell, and I'm wondering if this was normal through the malting process or did my grain develop a bacterial infection?

any info would be helpful, thanks.


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## mpcondo (15/7/09)

I have been rinsing the millet a bit more to try to make sure there is no bacteria building up on the grain and the sour smell has reduced a bit but not a whole lot.

I'm also concerned that it has been just over three days and I haven't noticed even the beginning of a sprout anywhere. is this normal?


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## Millet Man (17/7/09)

mpcondo said:


> I have been rinsing the millet a bit more to try to make sure there is no bacteria building up on the grain and the sour smell has reduced a bit but not a whole lot.
> 
> I'm also concerned that it has been just over three days and I haven't noticed even the beginning of a sprout anywhere. is this normal?


Doesn't sound right, it should be finished sprouting after 3 days. What temperature have you been germinating at?

Cheers, Andrew.


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## mpcondo (18/7/09)

I have been maintaining a temperature of approx 25C give or take a couple degrees. 

I've continued with the soak and air rest cycle and it's been about 7 days now. I'm thinking that there was something wrong with the millet that I got. I noticed that in one of your posts you recommended getting millet from a pet shop and I am wondering if the millet that I got from the grocery store may not be able to germinate for some reason.


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## Thirsty Boy (18/7/09)

some of the stuff I have seen in the supermarket looks "pearled" to me. Doesn't seem to have a husk of any description. Andrew - do you have a photo of some raw millet grain? So we can compare. I reckon the supermarkett stuff might be de-husked and therefore knackered for malting purposes - but I haven't seen millet that is good - so to speak, so I haven't got anything to compare it with.

*Edit:* just found some images online.

This looks like what I have seen in the supermarkets and is "hulled" millet







This is what white millet apparently looks like with its husk intact -- 






Different! Maybe thats the problem mpcondo??


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## mpcondo (18/7/09)

thirsty,

your right, i just pulled out the packed from my millet from the supermarket and on a closer inspection i noticed that it has been hulled. I'm gonna be making a trip to the pet shop to get some millet this afternoon, its probably a fraction of the price too.

thanks guys for the help,

Mike


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## coeliacsurvivor (3/10/09)

Hi,

I am finding it extremely difficult to get my hands on rice hulls in Auckland. Is there anything else I coudl use instead?

If this is just to help in the lautering could I use plain rice or perhaps millet that has not been malted?

Cheers

Colm


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## lcasanova (4/11/09)

Great advice here, couldn't have looked at a better time, here's a question- when using malted sorghum, or buckwheat, or any other gluten free grain that I've malted, is it going to be best to grind this to a flour for a decoction mash or would simply crushing them work? Rice hulls are a must though, I understand that!


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## Millet Man (8/11/09)

lcasanova said:


> Great advice here, couldn't have looked at a better time, here's a question- when using malted sorghum, or buckwheat, or any other gluten free grain that I've malted, is it going to be best to grind this to a flour for a decoction mash or would simply crushing them work? Rice hulls are a must though, I understand that!


Grinding or crushing will both work, I use a Porkert which is more of a grinding action and get it as fine as I can - there is no husk to protect so no benefit in crushing coarse. Big difference in efficiency though - approximately 95% from grinding to flour and 70% for coarse crushing.

Cheers, Andrew.


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## lcasanova (9/11/09)

Millet Man said:


> Grinding or crushing will both work, I use a Porkert which is more of a grinding action and get it as fine as I can - there is no husk to protect so no benefit in crushing coarse. Big difference in efficiency though - approximately 95% from grinding to flour and 70% for coarse crushing.
> 
> Cheers, Andrew.




Makes sense. I've malted 2 lbs of sorghum and even though it's a small amount, I might try a decoction with this in a small batch and see what happens. Maybe I can get my hands on a corona mill.


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## matthendry (13/11/09)

coeliacsurvivor said:


> Hi,
> 
> I am finding it extremely difficult to get my hands on rice hulls in Auckland. Is there anything else I coudl use instead?
> 
> ...



Try a Farm Supply they sell rice hulls for bedding .


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