brewing with corn, or wayback is having some problems

now before you cut my head off i know the idea of brewing with corn is to must of us the worst possible thing any of us can think of
but hear me out
i am working on a recipe for tesguino, a native america corn beer similar to chica
i started using 4 pounds of flaked maize and honey and it came out as a weird thick honey brew that wasn't much good
then i switched to blue corn grits and agave nectar, worked out much better though i spiced it with entirely too much cloves and it seemed liek that was all another wold say about it, but i learned i needed to boil the corn into a porridge before i mashed it

for my third batch i used blue corn meal instead of grits, and followed the same process, but this batch didn't start to ferment as quickly, foolishly i took my gravity with my brix refractomiter and didn't double check with my hydrometer and didn't convert my brix back into sg before i pitched, and after a week of almost zero activity i took a 2nd readign and foudn out the 3 brix is terribly low,

i'm sorry that was a wall of text
my question is are they're any tricks with brewing with corn meal, the grits were way easier to use but are more expensive, i know i have to boil the corn into a porridge to gelitanize the starches, and then add alpha amylase enzyme to the mash to convert to sugar, but i can't have whole batches like this go to wash like that its really frustrating.
can anyone shed some light on my problem?

Well you could always get flaked maize/corn from your lhbs. You can just mash it right away. I've used it up to %20 just to lighten the body of some beers. It's worked well in that context but if nothing else it would likely be easier to work with than corn meal/grits.

i've considered that, but i am really gunning for that rich blue corn taste, and as far as i can tell there aren't many places to get flaked blue maize

if you're not adding any barley you may have to add amylase enzyme to help convert the starches. you could always use beano. i'm not positive on the diastatic power of corn though so don't quote me

i do ad amylase enzyme to the mash, thats not the issue

bwomp313 said:

if you're not adding any barley you may have to add amylase enzyme to help convert the starches. you could always use beano. i'm not positive on the diastatic power of corn though so don't quote me

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Ha I quoted you.
Unmalted corn has zero diastatic power.
I use raw #2 corn for a few of the beers I brew and do a cereal mash with the corn, then add it to the mash. I have never used the blue corn though.

onthekeg said:

Ha I quoted you.
Unmalted corn has zero diastatic power.

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Not fair!!!


Just curious, does the blue corn add any color?

it adds pounds of color, the mash comes out royal purple
definitely a head turner

Palmer says to do a cereal mash, you should add a pound of 2-row or 6-row to your corn, and mash it at 160 for 30 minutes before you boil it. I'm not sure why you boil it after you've mashed it, but from what I've read above it looks like you're boiling it first, then adding amylase.

Did you try this again and get it to work? I'm putting blue corn in a CAP tomorrow. I can use anything you learned.

You ever come out with a commercial version of your beer? Correct me if I'm wrong but I could get some blue corn grits and form it into balls and roll the balls around in my mouth to get the fermentables for this beer? I'm in the same city as you and would love to try this sometime. Down for a bottle trade hmu.