Zonder Gluten Belgian Wit

Hey Gang,

I thought I'd share a few blog posts about my all-grain GF Belgian Wit made with malted millet and a bit of chestnuts. Some of the info is meant for a general GF audience, rather than experienced home brewers, but you can gloss over the basic stuff you already know.

Cheers, Pete

Malting Millet
http://noglutennoproblem.blogspot.com/2010/04/malt-of-matter.html

Brew Day and Bottling
http://noglutennoproblem.blogspot.com/2010/04/gluten-free-beer-brewing-1.html

Tasting the Beer
http://noglutennoproblem.blogspot.com/2010/04/friday-foto-zonder-gluten-belgian-wit.html

Nice job man. Way to malt your own grains and give this a shot. I really just wanted to look at the pictures and I only briefly read some of it BUT, why do you think the ABV was so low? Were you shooting for that? ...I'll probably go back and actually read this on my lunch break.

As far as I can tell, there were two main reasons for the low ABV: 1) I underestimated how many pounds of grain to use for my 5 gallon batch, and 2) a really low extract/brewhouse efficiency. Since I don't (yet) own a grain mill, I crushed the grain in a ziplock bag with a rolling pin and meat mallet, and that process left a lot of whole millet that wasn't fully exposed to the enzymes and such. As it was, my starting gravity was around 1.035, and I would have liked it to have been up more around 1.05.

There's a thread somewhere in the Gluten Free forum with some ideas about a decoction. I'd read somewhere about grinding up the malt to a flour and using it that way. It will be a while before I can malt grains again but maybe some one else will give a shot. Anyways- congrats again, keep on brewin!

Edit. Here's the thread

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f164/gluten-free-decoction-mashing-145160/

nice write up Pete

Hey Casanova, Thanks for the tip about decoction mashing. I'll definitely have to read up on that. And next time, I'm definitely planning to crush the grain closer to being a flour.

Hey Midfielder, Thanks for the kind words!

Looking forward to starting my next brew...

Hey pete, nice work.

I've done a few brews with GF beers, both malted and unmalted. I stick mine in the blender until it's almost flour and then mash it. It does take a while to sparge but converts well.

I would be interested in hearing how you separated the shoots and roots from the grain?

Colm

Hey CeliacSurvivor,

Thanks for the blender tip. I'll have to give that a try until I have a grain mill. I had tried using a food processor, but that didn't do the trick. The blender sounds like it will work.

I initially tried separating the roots and shoots by putting the grain in a pillow case and tumbling it in the dryer. That didn't work so well for me, so I ended up "sifting" the grain in tray made from wire screen mesh. The agitation from shaking the tray sorted out the roots and shoots, which fell through the screen.

Cheers, Pete

peterbronski said:

I initially tried separating the roots and shoots by putting the grain in a pillow case and tumbling it in the dryer. That didn't work so well for me, so I ended up "sifting" the grain in tray made from wire screen mesh. The agitation from shaking the tray sorted out the roots and shoots, which fell through the screen.

Click to expand...

That's the way to go. I used the same screen to kiln/roast the wet sorghum after it was done malting, most of the roots and shoots broke off or shriveled up then but the pillow case dryer/sifting with screen combo took care of the rest. Once I get back into malting I need to try to make a smaller screen or reinforce it, mine kept bending in the middle.

The dryer trick worked when I malted quinoa and buckwheat, but I also had to to the mesh screen for amaranth.

I tried the dryer with my buckwheat, but it created a huge amount of dust that settled into a fine layer all over the room.

I'll have to get some fine mesh and give that a go.