First gluten-free beer underway!

elvestinkle · 01-13-2012, 11:38 PM

I Just finished whirlpooling my first sorghum LME wort. Will be pitching yeast, but while I have some down time I'll throw up what I did here for y'all to look at.

I used the Gluten Free McGee recipe as a base, but since I brew on my stove in a 3-gallon kettle, I had to tweak it some. Here's my recipe, exported to HTML by the excellent BrewTarget:

attachment:stovetopsorghumamber.html of HomeBrewing/Recipes - Calefaction Wiki

I tried to keep the numbers at least close to the original recipe, and I maintained the same bittering/finishing hop ratio. But I only had brown rice syrup instead of the rice they called for, so to boost fermentability a tad I chucked in some molasses. (I've had pretty good success with it my my regular barley malt extract recipes too.)

Excited!

A week out: SG 1.025 @64F. Telling myself to RDWHAHB!

jasperg55 · 01-24-2012, 06:09 PM

Thanks for this. I just ordered up a Gluten free McGee kit from the folks at the homebrew shop right up the road from me in Portland, Or. For this, my first homebrewing attempt, I will probably try to stick to their directions. Hope yours is great!

elvestinkle · 01-24-2012, 07:25 PM

w00t! I'm loving the smells that are coming out of the airlock. Saaz is yummy. I didn't taste my earlier gravity sample (I use fermtech's The Thief), but I'll be sure to update when I bottle this thing in a couple more weeks.

The_Fuzz · 01-25-2012, 03:46 PM

Let us know how it goes! I've got a batch brewing, probably going to bottle tonight. I couldn't get the gravity to go down below 1.018 though. Not sure why.

elvestinkle · 02-04-2012, 12:48 AM

Took a gravity reading tonight (1.012)--on target. The krausen (such as it had) subsided last week, but left a paper-thin layer of yeast on top. Looked pretty good, though. Nice, pale yellow, and I reserved some to taste after returning most of the sample...I love my Thief

Tastes GREAT! Definitely the sorghum "tang" that everyone talks about, but it's not overwhelming. I imagine carbonation will increase that impression. The smell of the Saaz hops mingles well with the malt aroma. It had a surprising amount of body for only using a half-pound of rice syrup. I'm going to let it condition another week, and add maltodextrin at bottling to guarantee some body.

Overall impression (leavened by remembering that this is not fully carbonated/bottle-conditioned): it reminds me of hard lemonade. NTTAWWT

The_Fuzz · 02-04-2012, 12:57 AM

That was kinda the impression I got tasting it. Kinda lemon/fruit. I bottled at 1.018 because it wasn't going to move anymore. Should be ready for a first bottle next weekend.

elvestinkle · 02-11-2012, 03:08 PM

And we're bottled. I made it a little extra bubbly (2.4 vols CO2). Next time I'm definitely going to try home malting--sorghum is just too lemony. Obviously the real test will be in a few weeks. The rice syrup did its job, though, so I didn't feel the need for maltodextrin.

I racked an IPA onto the yeast cake. Did a hop burst from 20 minutes, and I'll be dry-hopping with whole leaf Citra, so I'm hoping that the tiny bit of beer left over in the fermenter will help complement the hops. (I'm not set up to wash my yeast yet.)

jasperg55 · 02-22-2012, 02:19 PM

Thanks for all the updates.

The_Fuzz · 02-22-2012, 06:35 PM

I just started another batch of the Gluten Free McGee, since I had ordered enough to make 2 batches. This time I added 2lbs of malted Quinoa (my first attempt at malting!) and added a bit more rice and honey to try to get the initial SG up. Initial SG is 1.051 so hopefully it will come out a bit better. Oh, and used Liberty hops this time, since that's what I had on hand.