What would you pay for real GF malt?
 

I've been wondering for some time now, if you could buy good GF malted grain for partial- or all-grain brewing, what would you be willing to pay? I'm talking about real malt, comparable to barley malt.

This is hard to say as I have never brewed all grain before. My understanding of conventional, glutenous, all grain brewing is that it's cheaper, but much more to time consuming.

So my calculation would be based on extract brewing. Can I make a 5 gallon batch for under $50? If so, I'm in. If not, I would really have to weigh the cost to quality provided.

Since GF malt must be produced in smaller quantities, I'd pay a 10-15% markup from the normal grain bill from a barley based beer. This is just economy of scale, so I don't see why it should cost substantially more. The hard cost of the grain isn't that much more, and the malting process is the same.

It also depends on the grain. Barley is cheap compared to amaranth. Millet and buckwheat would be somewhere in the middle.

I am far more interested in a greater availability of gluten free LME and DME than I am in using malted grains.

That's sooo much harder and so much further out. Making base malt is relatively easy, and having a spare set of equipment for it is relatively cheap. Malt extract is so much more intensive. I suppose once the actual malt is out there and available, some company will start making extract when they think they have enough demand. If I could get the full range of extracts like we have of gluten grains, I would definitely be buying a lot of it.

I don't see malted amaranth being commercially feasible. I might be off base here, but those are some tiny seeds to be fussing about with.

I can only imagine it being commercially viable as an extract from a manufacturer set up to deal with it. Then again, the barley brewers must look at millet and quinoa and think we're insane.

Have you ever read the article by Charlie Papazian where he uses clari-ferm to drop the gluten from beer ? The article states as long as you dont use wheat it will drop the gluten to acceptable levels.

Pat

I am not a celiac but have not been able to drink real beer for years. I can however drink gf beer with no problems.

I brewed a pumpkin ale last fall using clarity ferm and it turned out great.

I tried one and got a reaction so I wrote off the clarity ferm as not working.....friends and family have drank most of the beer.

Well I mistook one of the cf pumpkin beers for a gf beer on sat and drank one of the few that are left after nearly a year of aging. The beer was amazing and did not bother me at all.

I am going to try another one this week....makes me wonder if more of the gluten is removed with more age when using clarity ferm.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Or tried aging beer made with. Clarity ferm