All grain GF sweet vanilla stout

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

mcbethenstein

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2011
Messages
717
Reaction score
55
Location
Waukesha
Since I'm home and bored, I can't stop thinking about the sweet stout I brewed for the SO. I checked my gravity last night and it's ready to be bottled. But I want to drink some. So I pose this challenge to everyone out here. Can you help me come up with an all grain sweet vanilla stout recipe that is GF? I'm gonna try malting buckwheat over the next few days. I could take a small amount of that malt and with your guidance roast to a chocolate and/or black malt. I haven't yet found out the difference in how to roast to chocolate vs. Black. I read on other threads D2 syrup can help with the color. I have a whole ton of lactose and can get high quality vanilla beans or extract. I just am not sure of what grains to use, and how they might play into the final flavor. Would I need to add oats for head retention? Since making my last GF beer I found that bobs red mill also has rolled GF oats... I think it would be easier to mash with those instead of steel cut. I'm hoping we can come up with something that will rival any barley beer!
 
Buckwheat gives off more of a nutty flavor. Roast slowly or I have heard you kill most of the enzymes if dark roasting and you do it quickly. I would start at 250, then increase 25-50 degress each 20 mins to get to your desired color.
Dark Candi Syrup works well to darken the color as does a little bit of coffee grains. I am wondering how dark corn syrup would do as well. If doing all grain I think you will need about 10 lbs of grains although I am not positive.
 
The all grain regular sweet stout was 9 lbs.
8 of Maris otter and .5 each of chocolate malt and Debittered black. Since I know that GF grains have less effeciency I would plan for 10-11 lbs. Should I go all buckwheat? Or will millet or quinoa help out?
 
I did an extract brew that was supposed to be an Oatmeal Stout. In reality, it came out as an Oatmeal Brown or something...

I can't really give any advice for the all-grain side, but if I were doing my extract again, I'd shoot for 1 lb of roast buckwheat, and since it is basically 'debittered' (dehusked) I'd shoot for the line between chocolate and black. The batch I did, I think I should have roasted a bit longer and a bit hotter. I would probably roast 1 lb of it, and then when I think it is good, take 1/2 lb out and call it chocolate, leave the other half in and bump the temp up.

I also think that, given the issues with converting most GF grains in the first place, any grain you roast is going to have 0 enzymatic power and you can't really depend on your other grains to convert a significant portion. In other words, I would personally treat those grains as being for color and flavor only.

I think what you'll need to do for this to work is to have a base malt that you can depend on to produce your fermentables, and to supplement that with roast buckwheat AND candi syrup to provide the caramelized sugars, color, flavors, etc.
 
Do you know what type of flavors each GF grain results in? I know sorghum is citrusy and astringent, what do the others taste like?
 
I thought quinoa was bitter, and I didn't care for either the taste or the smell of it after roasting.

The buckwheat...its smell and taste progressed from a sort of baked-goods up to a nutty flavor, and when I pushed it to what I figured was chocolate roast, it was a rich, nutty, "toast" flavor. I never got it to that burnt/smoky flavor (I was trying to avoid that, actually).

For me, my millet went from a bready, baked goods flavor/smell to a bitter, smoky, burnt taste very quickly. I can't say for sure if I did something wrong, or what, but both the quinoa and the millet I roasted I haven't used yet because they tasted burnt/bitter.
 
Really? After I got the quinoa to sprout, I kilned it for a very long time. It came out smelling awesome and nice and sweet. It was white quinoa so not sure if you used something else? However I did get them to sprout first and maybe that is the trick. So my next step is to steep the roasted malted quinoa in water and get a feel for the taste.

So from all of that, I would suggest trying to get your buckwheat and quinoa to sprout, then kiln, then roast, then steep away!! Getting them to sprout was really easy. Just rinsed the grains, but them in warm water in a container, and let soak for about 4 hours. Then air it out for a few hours, rinse again, and soak again. Again my millet didnt sprout but buckwheat and quinoa did. I kilned it for what must have been 8 hours on 170 degrees which is the lowest my oven goes. Then after kilning it I roasted it starting at 250 and bumping it up every 20 mins or so to my desired color which is a light brown.

It is really amazing that when I first started to kiln, it made the house smell like plants. But after a while it became a nice sweet smelling grain which leads me to believe I will get some fermentable sugars out of it. I am going to use it as a specialty grain first and see what that brings. Then if a success I will try and all grain batch.
 
My quinoa apparently wasn't sprouted, which may be the difference. I've got some more to try, hopefully that will work better.

But, honestly, I've had such good luck with buckwheat, that right now I'm just running with that.
 
Nice! I am excited about using buckwheat adn quinoa for the first time as a fermentable sugar. I have used buckwheat before but just roasting and steeping the grain without getting it to sprout. Now just need a bigger setup for malting!!!
 
Any one try these? Sprouted quinoa. It's not cheap. This bag is $6.99 for only 12 oz. My local health food store has some in the bulk bins. 1#/$6.69 ouch! Would it basically be malted, or does it need to be sprouted further. If malting is a major PITA I might consider this, but only if I'm in a time crunch.

image-4130664163.jpg
 
Any one try these? Sprouted quinoa. It's not cheap. This bag is $6.99 for only 12 oz. My local health food store has some in the bulk bins. 1#/$6.69 ouch! Would it basically be malted, or does it need to be sprouted further. If malting is a major PITA I might consider this, but only if I'm in a time crunch.

I actually bought a package of the exact same thing, but I haven't done anything with it yet. To be honest, I thought it looked about the same as my quinoa after a couple hours soaking (which I was told wasn't sprouted yet).

But, it may well be worth a shot...
 
How about this? Right now I'm attempting to malt 8.5 lbs of buckwheat and about 2 lbs of millet. I skipped the quinoa... Couldn't find it cheap enough. If all works out well I want to roast 1- 1.5 lbs to a chocolate/black malt. So given that here is my recipe draft:

Vanilla Milk Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (Working title)

7.5 lbs buckwheat malt
1.5 lbs millet malt
1 lb chocolate buckwheat malt
0.5 lb black millet malt
1 lbs. GF rolled oats
1 tsp amylase enzymes to mash
1 oz. US Kent Goldings hop pellets
1 lb lactose
1/4 tsp supermoss
1 tsp DAP
1 pkt. Nottingham yeast
Cocoa powder
2-3 vanilla beans halved
gelatin if needed to help clear

Multi-step mash (pouring off enzyme water early & adding back later) process was described on another page.
Not sure if I need a 60 or 90 min boil.
Cocoa powder and vanilla beans in secondary.

What do you think? Am I missing anything? Anything seem off? I'm thinking of trying to find amylase enzyme powder to increase my mash efficiency.
 
I did something similar to this with buckwheat, millet and bobs red mill GF oats. I used more millet and 1 pound of oats. Final product seemed oily from the oats. I would not use oats as more than 10 percent of the grain bill. Even then maybe toasting to dry them out?
 
Buckwheats said:
I did something similar to this with buckwheat, millet and bobs red mill GF oats. I used more millet and 1 pound of oats. Final product seemed oily from the oats. I would not use oats as more than 10 percent of the grain bill. Even then maybe toasting to dry them out?

Were the oats whole, rolled, quick cooking, or steel cut? I got the GF quick cooking (oatmeal like) oats. They look really dry. I could Imagine the steel cut or whole oats might be oily.

How did you like it? What was your impression of the taste?
 
I used Bob's Red Mill rolled oats for my oatmeal stout. I think steel cut or whole would need to be cooked before mashing.
 
I love having 2 LHBS available. What one lacks the other has! I got 1.5 oz of amylase enzyme for $1.95. Love brew and grow. Love northern brewer. Buckwheat is looking great. And it appears even my millet is looking like it wants to sprout! I'll post pics as soon as I upload them. Im revising my recipe too. Will use 1 tsp amylase enzymes as part of the multi-step mash, Cutting oats down to 1 lb (from 2lbs) Switching to EKG hops (from willamette) and adding DAP at end of the boil.
You don't think it's too much do you? I read on one thread on here somewhere that with barley you can do the minimum and get a pretty good beer but with GF you need to pull out all the stops before you get something great.
 
When do I kiln the buckwheat? after about 30 hours this is what I have. the roots are about 1/2 to equal length to the groat. I started the millet last night, and am just starting to see rootlets bumping their way out, but not in huge quanitity yet.

malting buckwheat.jpg


millet sprouting.jpg
 
Oops, I forgot about the d2 syrup. If it looks too light going into the boil or the gravity is not high enough I'll add it.
 
Your buckwheat looks great! I would dry it now.
I also used bob reds mill rolled oats for my stout. The oat flavor did come through, I just had the oily problem.
 
Buckwheats said:
Your buckwheat looks great! I would dry it now.
I also used bob reds mill rolled oats for my stout. The oat flavor did come through, I just had the oily problem.

Thanks, I ended up going to 48 hours before drying. I took photos along the way. Batch 3 is "kilning" in the oven right now. Took 6 hours for the first batch at 170. And only 3.5 hours for batch 2 to dry completely. What a difference a day makes. (I started kilning batch 1 after only 6-7 hours of drying time on the towels with a fan, batch 2 had 24 hours drying time)
I got about 30% of my millet to sprout before I called it quits and laid that out to dry. I am erring on the side of super cautious when it comes to mold. I figure the well malted buckwheat and added enzymes will make up for my under converted millet.
When I finish my malting and roasting I'll post a photo story. I think I'll title the thread "Adventures in Malting - A photo diary"
 
So, I've resigned myself to buying malted GF grains rather than sprouting myself. I figured out how to sprout millet successfully, but given the work I have to put in to keep buggies out and the numbers of failures due to buggies I couldn't keep out I've decided to order it in 50lb. bags from CMC.
That being said, I get crystal malt from them. I wonder how it would taste toasted up to 250 L? I would think the sugars would further caramelize and be tasty.
I'd say a 200C oven for two hours.
Or you could cheat and order chocolate malt from them. 😉
 
Back
Top