Gluten Free - No Malt Experiment

[Thirsty Boy]

OK - I'm kind of brewing....

I want to make a gluten free beer - but I want to skip the whole malting sorghum/millet exercise. I have some chance of doing this, because I can get my hands on bacterial enzymes that break down starches etc. All food grade and stuff.

So - I am having a go at a 6L batch. Here is a recipe for what I am hoping will be something like a light hybrid beer.. maybe cream ale.

70% Millet Flour
20% Sorghum flour
10% Candi sugar (light / amber)

Here's the plan -

*Dough in to cold tap water and make a slurry at 2:1 LG
*Heat to 40C and add - Beta Gucanase plus a small amount of Amyloglucosidase and Pullulanase (beta glucan and starch degrading enzymes)
*Stand for a while to let the Betaglucanase liquify things a little
*Heat up slowly and with stirring - eventually getting to a boil
*Boil for a fair while decoction style to develop some nice melanoidins. To take the place of those that aren't there from the malt. The enzymes will have created some sugars on the ramp up - and hopefully the heat+protein+sugars will give me a nice browning reaction
*Dilute to 3:1 with tap water - dropping the temp to around 80C - which is the optimum temp for the AMG and the Pullulanase
*Add more enzymes to replace those denatured by the decoction
*Mash at 80C for 45-60 minutes with stirring for the first 2/3rds
*Add "sparge" water to give appropriate pre-boil volumes - probably at 80-90
*Filter through some 100 micron filter cloth I have on hand and a bloody big funnel
*Boil and hop as if it were normal beer..... adding the candi sugar to the boil (gotta make it first)

I have no idea what will happen.... any comments would be appreciated

TB

 

[Scruffy]

Intriguing.... Coeliacs mate?

bugger, language barrier again... are you brewing for a coeliac - what's your remit?

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Generally interested - and a cousin who is a coeliac but loves beer. Not a big drinker, but her plight has made me interested in the whole process.

Millet man and others have done the whole gluten free thing so well using more standard techniques - that I thought I would explore another avenue that is open to me because of my access to the enzymes.

The decoction part went OK - but I am not sure I developed too much in the way of flavour - mash has been cooled and the sachrification is underway. Its happenning, But I am not sure how fast or how much enzyme to use. As result I am probably going overboard.

Just made candy sugar - It took 5 minutes and is a piece of piss, will never even consider buying it now.

I think next time ... I will make flat hard biscuits out of the flours - then bake them to different levels of browness, grind them up and mash them directly.

The baking process serving to develop the melanoidins and gelatinise the starch. Basically just the flour and water (and maybe a touch of sugar) in flat thin biscuits. I reckon by using a sort of paint patch style colour guide to measure how brown they go, you might well be able to emulate some of the properties of brewing with different coloured kilned malts....

work in progress

TB

 

[Scruffy]

I will make flat hard biscuits out of the flours

Bugger, my trump card - this is how we brewed for a mate in Blighty... it's beer Jim, but not as we know it...

Yeast i think was Saf T-58 - we used rice and corn syrups to adjust though...

 

[Scruffy]

I remember now we tried to germinate Buckwheat - i think it took a couple of days - the idea was to then bake the result (and hence colour) and crush... it went mouldy - several times...

top marks for the enzymes!! hats off!

please let me know...

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I remember now we tried to germinate Buckwheat - i think it took a couple of days - the idea was to then bake the result (and hence colour) and crush... it went mouldy - several times...

top marks for the enzymes!! hats off!

please let me know...

Mash went well - I gave it plenty of time and a goodly chunk of enzymes... I have diluted to its weakest point, which will be its pre-boil gravity... and I got 8.6plato - against an expected pre-boil gravity of 8.9 (if I don't include the candy sugar)

Now I am not sure about my volume yet.. but I think once I have lautered I will be within a litre of my expected pre-boil volume.

Not too bad considering that I was basing my expetations on a 75% efficiency and the potential of the flours as 1.045ppg - I think I have gotten a respectable conversion of starches

Lautering on the other hand is not going so well - 100micron filter cloth... no. Clogged to complete liquid proofness within 30 seconds... I am currently going with a tea towel and its at about 50ml per minute... might take a while.

I am considering a "rough" filter through some BIAB fabric, then another go through the tea towel. We'll see --- Oh for a proper mash filter.

Could be a long night !!

TB

 

[Scruffy]

I'm still here!! - you could be right about a diastaticly fraught night... and worrying over zealous enzyme seasoning

May 35 Lintner be with you... though I can see the headlines tomorrow...

Thirsty in breakthrough self pasting wallpaper paste enzyme shocker...

good luck

 

[Thirsty Boy]

not quite that bad - after a few more or less futile attempts to get myself a wort approaching un-soupy, I gave up. It got a filter through biab cloth - which still required some coaching and squeezing... and then the milky looking wort went into the kettle.

It boiling away even as I type. Eventually I ended up with 64% efficiency (assuming my extract potentials were correct... which they weren't of course) and added another 100g of candy sugar.

This gave me 20% candy sugar and 80% grains by weight - I am willing to live with that. I didn't have enough colour anyway, so the extra sugar gave me a chance to tweak that up a little.

It (apart from being cloudy) looks like wort, it smells like wort and it tastes like wort - with a little difference - but still mostly like wort.

My plan is to no-chill in the kettle overnight - and carefully siphon off the clear stuff tomorrow. It was always my intention to make 6L of wort for a 4L ferment, so I am expecting to leave behind a lot. I kind of knew that trying to do this with all flour was going to be trouble and allowed for it.

All I am looking for is proof of concept with the exogenous enzymes - next brew will be with actual grains (and maybe some biscuit) plus rice hulls etc... see if I cant get me a process going that doesn't take hours and hours extra.3

So far -- not really any more trouble than I thought, and it's kinda working...........

TB

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Boiled and no-chilling

Its pale yellow - about appropriate for your pilsner/light lager territory. Which is sort of where I was aiming.

12.7 plato - which is a little higher than target - guess I boiled off more than expected - really don't know my volumes in this stovetop setting - I wont bother adjusting and will simply ferment what I have.

Tasted the wort - and it tastes like wort. Not exactly the same as a normal one... but more similar than different.

I will tap off 4L of clear wort and toss some US56 at it tomorrow. Its definitely going to be beer... it might even be not bad beer??

TB

 

[Joel]

Interesting read there Thirsty.

Perhaps instead of flour next time you could use crushed millet and sorghum. This will give you the grain husk filter just like a normal mash, but still give the enzymes acess to the starchy inner goodness of the grain - again, just like a normal mash. Or maybe add a whole mess of rice hull to the flour?

I'm very interested to hear of the final result.

Is there a way for the ordinary bloke to get his hands on these enzymes?

 

[Fents]

let me be the first to say what the hell were you brewing at 4-5am for! your a madman thirsty.

should call it the rave brew...

 

[discoloop]

Much less adventurous, but you can buy gluten-free extract - it's sorghum based I believe. Never tried it but you can get it from: http://www.gfhomebrewing.com.au/

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Interesting read there Thirsty.

Perhaps instead of flour next time you could use crushed millet and sorghum. This will give you the grain husk filter just like a normal mash, but still give the enzymes acess to the starchy inner goodness of the grain - again, just like a normal mash. Or maybe add a whole mess of rice hull to the flour?

I'm very interested to hear of the final result.

Is there a way for the ordinary bloke to get his hands on these enzymes?

Yeah I know - but the shop had fours and no grains. Doesn't matter, I was looking for proof of concept not ease of brewing. The conversion seems to have happened, and if the beer is reasonable tasting - I will know I can transform the process to one based on grains and make my life a lot easier.

Yes - I think that homebrew shops sometimes sell similar enzymes. The company that makes the ones I am using is Novozymes - I have no idea whether they sell in less that 5L bottles though....

Fents - I am a shift worker. Time of day means nothing to me.

Disco - I know about the sorghum syrup.. but have tasted a beer made out of it, and other predominantly sorghum beers - not a big fan. They have a tart edge to them that I am trying to avoid. At the moment I am looking to play with a predominantly millet grist. Perhaps with some sorghum/rice/corn and an amount of sugar/caramel.

About to try and drain the NC'd wort into a fermenter. See how it goes then.

TB

 

[Millet Man]

Yeah I know - but the shop had fours and no grains. Doesn't matter, I was looking for proof of concept not ease of brewing. The conversion seems to have happened, and if the beer is reasonable tasting - I will know I can transform the process to one based on grains and make my life a lot easier.

Yes - I think that homebrew shops sometimes sell similar enzymes. The company that makes the ones I am using is Novozymes - I have no idea whether they sell in less that 5L bottles though....

Fents - I am a shift worker. Time of day means nothing to me.

Disco - I know about the sorghum syrup.. but have tasted a beer made out of it, and other predominantly sorghum beers - not a big fan. They have a tart edge to them that I am trying to avoid. At the moment I am looking to play with a predominantly millet grist. Perhaps with some sorghum/rice/corn and an amount of sugar/caramel.

About to try and drain the NC'd wort into a fermenter. See how it goes then.

TB

Sounds good TB

Early on I successfully made many GF beers from raw grains and enzymes from the HBS.

Flour is a pita as it is hard to get to lauter but if you use millet grain the hull will help and add 200g rice hulls per kg of grain it will lauter really well. You'l find the grain a pet store.

From HBS you can get an enzyme called improzyme that has protease, glucanase and amylase activity. A step mash 55-70-85C 30min at each step will work good, you could then boil the converted mash to develop flavour if desired. An amyloglucosidase could then be used in the kettle to get attenuation, holding at 60C for an hour or so before starting the boil.

Maize also works well as you don't need to add rice hulls.

Have Fun!

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Thanks Andrew,

I might grab some improzyme and have a play - the main reason I wanted to muck about with these enzymes is that they are the not heat liable versions... optimum temperature at about 80C - so no need to separate the enzyme liquid from the mash before a decoction... should be able to just mash at 80 and get both gelatinization and conversion.

The enzymes I am using are a Beta Glucanase, a Pullulanase and an Amyloglucosidase ... missing proteases, so thats where I think the improzyme might help... but then again, the unmalted grains wont have a lot of soluble protein anyway, so who knows.

I bought about 3kgs of flour - I have some millet - some sorhum and some maize flour - so I will persist with them till they are gone, but probably in conjunction with some actual grain and I will certainly be adding in a whack of rice hulls.

The current brew basically did not settle down at all - even an overnight NC only gave me 2.0L of clear wort on top - so I put it all in a filter funnel and used patience.... 6 hrs later I got as much as I thought I was going to get. About 3.5L and there is still a bit of murk in it. Oh well. It'll be a miracle if it doesn't end up infected with all the mucking about. Live and learn. I knew I should have gone and got my bag of rice hulls......

What do you think of the idea of baking little biscuits out of the flours (with a touch of sugar) and browning them up to get melanoidins?? Different levels of brownness for different flavours. Then you could use them with raw base grain as a substitute for specialty malts?

So it might be something like

Marzen

80% millet
15% Munich baked millet biscuit
5% Medium Candy sugar

Or

Brown Ale

60% Millet
20% Amber baked biscuit
10% Choc Baked bicuit
5% Black baked biscuit
5% Dark Candy sugar

stuff like that - some way to get back the maltiness and the control over recipes you have with commercial specialty grain ?????

Thanks for your input

TB

 

[MHB]

The amount of trub is surprising; I have been working with the Breiss Sorghum Syrup the hot break was expected but the volume and reluctance of the cold break settle is also a major pain in the arse.

I have taken boiling for bitterness, cooling the wort, bag filtering, centrifuging then re-boiling to sterilise and make hop taste additions, before packaging (basically no-chill), just to get what I regard as a commercial level of clarity. Mind you as I am using syrup diluted 2.8 kg (80% solids) in 8 litres of water I am working with very high density wort up around 28P^o which makes getting the trub out even harder.

Have to love the centrifuge, truly amazing how much crud 44,000 gravities will pull out of suspension.

TB you come up with some thought provoking ideas, I will be following this thread with interest; it's good to see some alternatives being explored. I wish to thank Millet Man, during the development of my product he has been very generous with information based on years of hard won experience cheers.



MHB

 

[Wisey]

Very Interesting.

Any drinkable results yet?

 

[Thirsty Boy]

The amount of trub is surprising; I have been working with the Breiss Sorghum Syrup the hot break was expected but the volume and reluctance of the cold break settle is also a major pain in the arse.

I have taken boiling for bitterness, cooling the wort, bag filtering, centrifuging then re-boiling to sterilise and make hop taste additions, before packaging (basically no-chill), just to get what I regard as a commercial level of clarity. Mind you as I am using syrup diluted 2.8 kg (80% solids) in 8 litres of water I am working with very high density wort up around 28P^o which makes getting the trub out even harder.

Have to love the centrifuge, truly amazing how much crud 44,000 gravities will pull out of suspension.

TB you come up with some thought provoking ideas, I will be following this thread with interest; it's good to see some alternatives being explored. I wish to thank Millet Man, during the development of my product he has been very generous with information based on years of hard won experience cheers.



MHB

Unfortunately the nearest thing to a centrifuge I have is a salad spinner....

I think next time there will be rice hulls aplenty and I probably wont go the all flour route - BUT - maybe I will just to work out a reasonable technique in case I want to do it in the future.

Maybe ... mash, bring entire mash/sparge volume to boil breifly - dump it all in a filter bag and hang it up over the kettle - walk away and do something else for a number of hours - come back and boil as per normal.

Most of my issue was flour rather than break... but maybe that was becuase I didn't notice an issue with the break because of all the flour???

Anyway .. the beer s fermenting nicely and there is only about 1cm of break/flour in the fermentor. Less than I thought

More news when its done fermenting. Thanks for the input.

TB

 

[Millet Man]

Thanks Andrew,

I might grab some improzyme and have a play - the main reason I wanted to muck about with these enzymes is that they are the not heat liable versions... optimum temperature at about 80C - so no need to separate the enzyme liquid from the mash before a decoction... should be able to just mash at 80 and get both gelatinization and conversion.

The enzymes I am using are a Beta Glucanase, a Pullulanase and an Amyloglucosidase ... missing proteases, so thats where I think the improzyme might help... but then again, the unmalted grains wont have a lot of soluble protein anyway, so who knows.

I bought about 3kgs of flour - I have some millet - some sorhum and some maize flour - so I will persist with them till they are gone, but probably in conjunction with some actual grain and I will certainly be adding in a whack of rice hulls.

The current brew basically did not settle down at all - even an overnight NC only gave me 2.0L of clear wort on top - so I put it all in a filter funnel and used patience.... 6 hrs later I got as much as I thought I was going to get. About 3.5L and there is still a bit of murk in it. Oh well. It'll be a miracle if it doesn't end up infected with all the mucking about. Live and learn. I knew I should have gone and got my bag of rice hulls......

What do you think of the idea of baking little biscuits out of the flours (with a touch of sugar) and browning them up to get melanoidins?? Different levels of brownness for different flavours. Then you could use them with raw base grain as a substitute for specialty malts?

So it might be something like

Marzen

80% millet
15% Munich baked millet biscuit
5% Medium Candy sugar

Or

Brown Ale

60% Millet
20% Amber baked biscuit
10% Choc Baked bicuit
5% Black baked biscuit
5% Dark Candy sugar

stuff like that - some way to get back the maltiness and the control over recipes you have with commercial specialty grain ?????

Thanks for your input

TB

No worries TB,

The improzyme (commercial name is promalt 295 I think) has protease activity at 55C and alpha amylase at optimum 85C so it can gelatinise and convert in one rest. The protein rest will give a reasonable head on the beer and best results were found using buckwheat but no more than 20% of the grist or the flavour becomes too pronounced.

I like the biscuit idea but I've never tried it myself as I've always done my own homemade specialty malts, might be a worthwhile comparison to do - crystal millet malt vs millet biscuits - put it on my list.

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[muckanic]

When working with flours, there's really no alternative but to make yourself up a better filter than fabric. A simple method is to drop some pebbles into the neck of a large inverted funnel, then add layers of either diatomaceous earth, polyester fibre, sand, or acquarium gravel (going from coarse to fine). Recirculate until filtrate runs clear and filter material stops dropping through. A slightly fancier approach is to coarse filter first, then follow it up with successively finer filters. You can always just let gravity do its job and rack off the sediment, but you tend to lose a lot.