All Grain GF

Well Ive done a couple of regular all grain batchs to understand the process getting 80%, 88% efficiency so decided to take a wack at doing a GF batch and please to report I was able to use unmalted grains and get 75% Unfortunately due to life events I had to stop short of the boil so its a tosser but was glad to see the numbers.

Will try this again soon but super stoked. Does anyone have advice on lautering? It was a fricken nightmare.

It depends on the grains. What were they? Also, are you using enzymes like distillers use?

This batch was a combo of various toasted versions of millet ground to flour and ended up with a porridge mixture. Was a PITA to separate. I did use a combo of enzymes to do my conversion

What enzymes did you use?

I made a half batch of GF chestnut using amylase and pectinase. I followed instructions from this forum and it tasted similar to Harvester so I assume I did it pretty much correctly. I didn't like it much though, so I am branching out to other grains. Purchased some malted millet and buckwheat and plan to try partial mash soon. Interested to see how your experiment comes out.

Everyone says that you have to use rice hulls in the mash to get it to run. My LHBS did not have much so I will be ordering on line.

Alpha and Gluco, did the trick

For lautering I used .8lbs of rice hulls but it was so thick and immediately clogged a piece of PVC with slits cut in it. Guess a braided line is in my future. I ended up using my paint strainer bags that I use for my BIAB and tea bagged into hot water to try and rinse it but was a ton of work.

Time to start building out some devices to help me malt the grains. Wish I was independtly wealthy and had tons of free time.

You ground it so fine that it was flour. No wonder it clogged up. Mixing flour with water gets you a paste. Did you never do that as a kid? What you need to do is depending on how you are cracking them, if you grind them, do one or two quick pulses on the grinder. If you are cracking them, crack them as you would other grains but lower the setting. Or, you can just leave them whole. Less surface space, but works better than flour water.

The best is to use grains with husk/hulls intact, and to crush carefully. I've been doing some all-grain with malted millet and buckwheat lately, it works SOOO much better than unmalted huskless grains with enzymes, even the fancy Promalt stuff I was using. But crushing the millet in my Victoria mill is RIDICULOUS. I have to adjust the plates constantly through the grind, because a small adjustment makes the difference between flour and no crush at all and the plates seem to drift a bit during the grind. I lauter using a mesh bag in a colander in the bottom of a bottling bucket. No rice hulls ever, and I have to recirculate the runnings for a bit before they come clear (which I then spoil by squeezing the grain bag at the end, releasing a bunch of cloudy wort). I strongly suggest the finest mesh bag you can get, put it in your lauter tun and clamp it to the sides. Even when using huskless grains, I never seemed to need rice hulls with this method.

I had a huge reply typed up and it failed to post, I hate this older version of vbulletin grrr.

In a nut shell I figured that the flour was my issue, I went by advice I found on the Aussie forums but neglected to follow the lautering process in detail. Malting is the way to go so the nerd in me is mapping out devices to semi automate home malting. Before beer my hobby was fish so looks like thats going to come into play.

Before my next all grain GF batch this needs to be sorted:

1) Malted grains, DIY of course we are on a budget
2) Make new voile bags
3) Finish the keggles
4) Get a grinding solution, flour is unacceptable.

danz, this is a very cool thread. I have many GF family members. As far as unmalted grains go maybe this will help. I've had great success with unmalted white wheat, perhaps you can do the same with GF grains. The unmalted wheat berries were threshed and lacked any husks. They were milled in a rotary blade mill down to 3 ml or so while my other malted grains were roller milled. I used 50% 2 row malted barley to provide enzymes with extended protein rests, so if you are replacing the malted barley with various enzyme replacements perhaps the protein rest will still make your unmalted grains more easily lauterable.

Cheers! ^_^

danz said:

Before my next all grain GF batch this needs to be sorted:

1) Malted grains, DIY of course we are on a budget
4) Get a grinding solution, flour is unacceptable.

Click to expand...

I used to malt in an open dish and rinse them a few times a day. But the missus was sick of all of the glass and ceramic dishes going walk about's. So I got something from the Health food shop called a "sprouter". They are quite cheap and all you have to do is run about a pint of water through it twice a day. It filters through the system correctly and you get malted grain. Also helps to keep flys and other undesirables out.

The grind is going to fun to figure out, from what I can see the finer the grind the better the efficiency BUT what good is it if you can't separate it? I did a 4 step mash so that helped out a bunch but switching to malted grains will help.

For the first portion of the malting process I am thinking of a flooding system, a vessel of some sorts (5g bucket) with a small holes (not too many but enough to empty the vessel in under 5 minutes) in the bottom that will be flooded from a sump. An overflow switch or screened overflow will be installed at the top to ensure proper coverage of water. Once the flooding time has been meet the pump will be killed and water will slowly drain from the bottom allowing the grains to be exposed. When the rest period is over the pump is turned on and continues for another cycle.

This will be a closed loop system keeping critters out and on the return to the sump water will pass though a coarse filter and possibly a layer a carbon. Once rehydration is achieved for the grain its ready to move to unit #2 for sprouting.