Grain roasting

BadGrr · 02-02-2010, 02:48 PM

Hey, I have been lurking for a little while to get a handle the best way to make a dark gluten free beer. This will be my second batch and I am curious on the roasting of the grains. I intend to roast some buckwheat along with some oats to add color and roasted flavors. The fermentables will be in the sorghum syrup (and possibly some rice syrup, too) so I am not attempting to malt - will I get better flavor with roasting the grains wet or dry?

And as an aside, I had some luck modifying the flavors on my first GF batch with a technique from Mosher's Radical Brewing book - I soaked some spices, chamomile and orange peel in vodka for 2 weeks and added at kegging to "lift" the sorghum flavors up to a more spicy belgian saisson style.

Cheers!

**Lcasanova** · 02-02-2010, 03:15 PM

Roast the grains as dark as you can stand. I don't think roasting them wet will make a difference since you haven't malted them. In addition, you can use molasses as an additional fermentable sugar. I've also had success using dark candi sugar or D2 syrup to darken it a bit too. I still haven't been able to make a dark dark beer yet.

There should be a post in this forum about grain roasting if you want some guidelines.

giligson · 02-02-2010, 03:55 PM

http://oz.craftbrewer.org/Library/Methods/Sanders/roasting.shtml

cheers