Spent Grain? Make Your Best Friend Cookies!

inspector13 said:

We don't have any problems with crapping on the floor either but, the farts are toxic as hell. After one of the beer grain snacks my Boxer can clear the family room.

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Same here, my boxer mix has one of these and the horror goes to a new level.

I just made these for the first time and the dogs are doing anything they can for them. I didn't dry them as much as the original post says to, but I think we will get through them fast enough that it won't matter much.

My dogs love them but they have a hard time pooping if the eat them every day. They seem to have to be limited, as least to our dogs.

I got a kick out of seeing this the other day
https://www.dogfish.com/store/whatnot/cool-junk/dogfish-dog-bark.htm

Maybe Sam is lurking on HBT

My dog loves em, She gets one every night before bed, and I havn't ever noticed any stinky farts, or other GI things out of the ordinary. If she is really good, she gets 2 of them.

Tried this with my last batch of spent grain. It was late so I only made 1 'batch' of them. After the first hour in the oven, they were solid enough to break apart. I broke them apart and finished the drying in the dehydrator. Worked out fantastic. Our dogs love 'em.

I'm planning my next brew for earlier in the morning. I'd like to see how many of these I can crank out.

Made a batch of these today to kill time during my 60min boil and while cooling the wort. Used my leftover steeping grains.

Excellent and simple recipe and my dog absolutely LOVES THEM!

Here he is, saying thanks!

I was going to make these, but my dog Sally who's a pitbull boxer mix has a tendency to fart nasty so we'll see how it works out for her...AnthonyD your dog is adorable

Ooh, Windsor's going to be getting some of these doggie treats one of these days....

Time for some doggie p0rn:

I've got a batch going while I'm doing my boil. They smell pretty good. I might have to try one.

FYI, I made some of these using the recipe at the start of the thread, they came out great, and Windsor loves 'em. They smelled good, so we decided to make some for the humans of the house to eat. Here's our test batch recipe:

two cups spent grain (we had spent pilsner malt on hand)
one cup flour
one cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 big tablespoons of honey
one egg
pinch of salt
butter.

Mix all ingredients except butter in bowl. Move to bake pan; we put down baking sheet paper. Pat down so the mix spreads across the bottom of the pan, about 1/4-1/2" thick. Score with knife in squares; bake @ approx. 350 for 25 minutes. Take out of oven, spread butter across entire mix, then bake again for 5 minutes.

A bit heavy, but tastes *great*! A great little snack!

Would specialty grains be alright for this recipe or would you recommend only using mashing grains?

I just mixed up a double batch; a process made much easier with Kitchenaid Stand Mixer. My Boxers love them, before I dried the heck out of them--I did too. Tasty and mild, not sweet at all.

Going to try some human recipes too soon, I like the idea of making my own energy bars for hiking and what not. It seems I have more spent grains than the dogs can eat!

Jzak09 said:

Humans are not carnivores by nature.

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i agree were omnivores which basicly means we eat everthing kina like a pig or a bear

jiggs_casey said:

Tried this with my last batch of spent grain. It was late so I only made 1 'batch' of them. After the first hour in the oven, they were solid enough to break apart. I broke them apart and finished the drying in the dehydrator. Worked out fantastic. Our dogs love 'em.

I'm planning my next brew for earlier in the morning. I'd like to see how many of these I can crank out.

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I wound up doing several batches of a couple different types before I got tired of being in the kitchen.

2 batches of the original stated recipe and one without eggs. The batch without egg held together a lot better than the two with eggs.

3 batches of the original stated recipe substituting peanut butter with a mix of tomato paste and parmessan cheese.

The first time I made them, I scored them at 1"x1". This time, I made I scored them at 1"x3" roughly. Sadie and Booray could care less which ones we give them... As long as they we give them. They're pretty fanatical over them...

I'm in the middle of my first brew, just wondering if my Chocolate Malt will be bad for my dogs? I know real chocolate is, so it's just a concern of mine.

There is no chocolate in chocolate malt. It is just roasted to a chocolate color.

I just tossed my grains away.....D'Oh!

I guess my dogs can wait until the next brew day

My boxers have nasty farts anyway so might as well give em to them.

My wifes Shih Tzu gets more excited for these then beggin' strips. And she loves beggin' strips.

YooperBrew said:

My dog LOVES them. I make them large and instead of scoring and breaking them, I just do them like drop cookies. I plop a big spoonful down, and press into a rectangle shape. They are his favorite treat and he goes crazy for them.

Of course, he also loves deer poop, so I don't think he's very discriminating.

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lolol still laughing with tears in my eyes!!

Did my first AG this weekend so I have some grain to try this with, I modified the recipe some mostly because if I use all my wife's peanut butter she'll kill me.

4 cups grain, 2 cups flour, 3 eggs, a shot of milk, a shot of cooking oil, can of sardines in oil, can of chunk chicken breast, mixed it all up good and it fit perfectly in a 12 count muffin pan. I have big dogs so a muffin sized treat is a good size.

Gonna bake at 350 for about 45 minutes then drop it to warm (250-ish) for a couple hours and try and get them nice and rock hard and dry so hopefully they'll have to chew them rather than gulp them down in one bite.

I made a batch of this and the doggles GO NUTS for them!

Of course it helps that SWMBO makes a huge deal out of giving them out - baby talk and all. I'm making another batch today. We're almost out!

That's sharing the hobby with the whole house.

Thats cool, I have seen cookies but never dog treats. Thanks.

Gotta say thanks for this post. Made these today and my Cocker LOVES them. It will certainly become a brewday ritual.

These are great! My dog loves them and I made my 3rd batch last night. TRhanks again for posting!

Making my 5th or so batch, grains from a dunkel. I've noticed that with home-crushed grains the things stick together a lot better then the crappy mail-order crushed ones.

I did:

1 cup Organic PB
1 cup flour
4 cups grains
2 eggs
1/4 cup water
1 tsp chicken base

i made a batch tonight and let my dog try one since he was wondering what i was doing. HE WILL NOT STOP FOLLOWING ME AROUND NOW!!! i guess he likes them. thanks for the recipe!

Everyone wins on brewday now! Thanks for sharing.

So is it just spent hops that are toxic to dogs?

otownpyle said:

So is it just spent hops that are toxic to dogs?

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Yeah its just the hops that are bad for them. It causes malignant hyperthermia which is basically overheating although it can be very deadly. Which is why my corgi gets hidden during any point of production involving hops.

Hi folks,

So, I took this up a notch and wrapped a little website, facebook and twitter around the idea. I don't post much on HBT, mostly because there's so much reading to do so I thought I'd thank you all for your tidbits of advice and information that make up threads like this and a fine dog treat.

Check it out and happy brewing!

Dave

I agree with this.. we raw feed our dogs.. because the existing food out there commerically available isn't really great for them.

billtzk said:

I wonder if these spent grain treats are really good for dogs.

I think the dog food industry would tell us it is fine since their products are mostly comprised of cereal grains too. Probably many vets would say the same.

My dogs love Milk Bone treats, so I'm sure they'd love spent-grain cookies too.

But still... Dogs are carnivores by nature, not herbivores or omnivores. I've recently been feeding raw beef and chicken to my dogs. They go nuts over it. And then afterwards they want a Milk Bone... go figure.

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ddc said:

Hi folks,

So, I took this up a notch and wrapped a little website, facebook and twitter around the idea. I don't post much on HBT, mostly because there's so much reading to do so I thought I'd thank you all for your tidbits of advice and information that make up threads like this and a fine dog treat.

Check it out and happy brewing!

Dave

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This is a cool website, and awesome way of leveraging a great idea.
I absolutely love free enterprise!

chrislehr said:

I agree with this.. we raw feed our dogs.. because the existing food out there commerically available isn't really great for them.

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I think the important thing to remember here is these are TREATS. Not meant to replace MEALS.

ddc said:

Hi folks,

So, I took this up a notch and wrapped a little website, facebook and twitter around the idea. I don't post much on HBT, mostly because there's so much reading to do so I thought I'd thank you all for your tidbits of advice and information that make up threads like this and a fine dog treat.

Check it out and happy brewing!

Dave

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Love it. Back in May I started "Pub Grub for Pups". Don't have a great site like you do yet, but have been doing really well at local farmers markets, Humane Society events. Kept the beer theme through out. The treats are even in the shape of Beer Bottles. Check us out if you're in the Portland area.

www.twitter.com/pubgrubforpups
www.facebook.com/pubgrubforpups

Kilted Brewer said:

Love it. Back in May I started "Pub Grub for Pups". Don't have a great site like you do yet, but have been doing really well at local farmers markets, Humane Society events. Kept the beer theme through out. The treats are even in the shape of Beer Bottles. Check us out if you're in the Portland area.

www.twitter.com/pubgrubforpups
www.facebook.com/pubgrupforpups

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Just tried to hit your facebook site, no page found, think it should be "pubgrubforpups" vs. "pubgrupforpups:

SpaceportBP said:

Just tried to hit your facebook site, no page found, think it should be "pubgrubforpups" vs. "pubgrupforpups:

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Thanks for the catch. I fixed the link.

YooperBrew said:

My dog LOVES them. I make them large and instead of scoring and breaking them, I just do them like drop cookies. I plop a big spoonful down, and press into a rectangle shape. They are his favorite treat and he goes crazy for them.

Of course, he also loves deer poop, so I don't think he's very discriminating.

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hahaha that made me lol at my desk here at work

We've had to keep our dog away from grains. Skip the rest of this post if you don't want to hear details of poop, butts and that sort of thing.

He had an impacted anal gland that had to be expressed manually due to infection. Turns out the grains in his diet made his poops too soft. If the poops are too soft, then they don't allow the anal glands to express naturally. Just a heads up that if your dog as problems with his/her anal glands this might not be the right thing to feed him/her. Not disparaging the whole idea. If your dog's constitution is ok for them then go ahead. But if your dog is having issues with glands, keep it in mind.