Wierd Idea..?

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BorealBrewer said:
Hi guys!
6. Brew this beer, scaled for 1-gal, using lentil malt in place of soy grits. Soy grits can't taste that much better or worse than homemade amateur lentil malt, right?
Click to expand...

Just caught this in the reread..

Soy grits?

I think we have our answer there.. if you can use soy grits in a beer (What are they and what beer?) then Lentils should be a no brainer. As Soy is a legume too and similar to Lentils in most ways.
 
The recipe is for "Al Capone's Prohibition Beer". Disclaimer - I have not brewed this beer before - but the inclusion of soy made me think I'd found my recipe.

The link I put in the post seems not to work, so here's the grain bill, and the full address I'm working from:

(From http://www.brewery.org/cm3/recs/13_30.html)
6 lbs. six-row lager malt
2 lbs rice (ground)
1/2 lbs soy grits ( from health food store )
1 1/2 oz Hersbrucker 6% alpha-acid
1/2 oz - Hallertauer 5% alpha-acid
1/8 oz Hersbrucker 6% alpha-acid
1/2 oz of Hallertauer
Red Star lager Yeast

Soy grits, as explained to me the animal feed supplier "ground up soybeans." I put a fair amount of trust in this guy - he's never given any farmer I know bad advice, and he loves beer. They're included in animal feed, esp. during finishing, I'm told. Wikipedia, for what it's worth, says the soy beans are toasted before grinding - the proposed malting protocol I plan to follow should accomplish this.

The recipe clearly mentions a cereal mash for the rice, but no special instructions for the soy grits, just throw them in with the malt...so that's what I'm going to do.

I'm not sure about the Red Star Lager yeast - but that is a question for a different thread. I'm a little torn between seeking out something authentic, or just making this as clean a cream ale as possible, with something like Nottingham.

My lentil sprouts are now between 1-3mm. I crunched a few before lunch - so far, they taste good. Legume-y, still, but less so than a straight up dry lentil. The texture was decent, too - more like al dente pasta than the strong, dry crunch I was expecting. I'm not sure if I'd eat a bowl of them, but a few before a sandwich, not bad!
 
CDGoin said:
That's what I was thinking..

Use them as a replacement for the oatmeal in a oatmeal stout..

Boreal was looking going the other side of the equation..

Thanks for all the tips guys..

On a different subject.. but also a weird idea.. but one I could do easily.. What do you think of this use of the 2L growler from deep woods and some ingenuity ?

minikegpump.jpg
Click to expand...

Since no one apparently gave a guano. I figured I would mention that it worked really nice, once I had the tube and gaskets :)
 
Hey CD!

It is a pretty cool little rig...I got so caught up in the lentil thing, there are a few other bits from this thread I've neglected. Like the mini-keg-growler set-up. I would love to make something like that for camping!

In your OP, you mentioned your uncle grows winter wheat. Have you brewed with it yet? The grain that got me going on malting was MB hard red winter wheat - supposedly better for pasta, but it makes a nice weizen mixed 3:1 with 2-row malt.

The lentils seem to be coming along nicely. ~80% of them have a shoot 2+mm long. They actually seem to be going faster than when I do barley or wheat - I guess I just bought aggressive lentils!
 
Thanks :)

Havent tried his wheat, but it sounds like the same thing you used. He is in northern North Dakota.. a little town that no one up till recently had really heard of, but that has been booming as of late Williston, ND :)

Not surprising that the lentils are sprouting faster than grain. The lentils have more protein, fat and other reserves.. and I would guess that's what would give them more energy.

The Mini-Keg is dispenses about 8 - 8 oz cups :) I was trying it out a lot last night.. The recollection of that last post is a bit hazy.
 
CDGoin said:
On a different subject.. but also a weird idea.. but one I could do easily.. What do you think of this use of the 2L growler from deep woods and some ingenuity ?
Click to expand...

Love it! The cool factor is through the roof on that thing. Great job!
 
I think the picture makes it look like a weird perspective shot.. But the pump/faucet assembly really is almost as big as the mini-mini-keg :)
 
Williston, awesome! That's abut 100 miles, as the crow flies, from where my Dad's family's Saskatchewan homestead is. I pass through on my way to Yellowstone every couple years! Is the boom oil, potash, or ??? SE Saskatchewan is crazy over potash and oil...

I think tonight is the night the lentils get dried/kilned. The shoots are about half as long as the the seeds. The lentils have lost any unpleasant "legume" taste, and now taste a lot more like they've been cooked...interesting.

If I have roasting results tonight, I'll post back. Jets game is on in an hour...so I'll have a couple hours at home tonight to roast!
 
So, last night during the Jets game, I:

- Placed the lentils on glass pan, 3mm thick, placed in 155F oven for 2hrs.
- transferred onto a cookie sheet, one lentil thick, and roasted at 170F for 1.5hrs.

Lentils have lost sprouts, shrunk from 100 to 80 grams, and are crunchy. Very light flavour, hinting towards nuts, maybe - def. no leguminous flavour. Texture and perceived level of flavour is similar to flaked brewing corn. Colour is slightly deeper orange than initial, still very much orange - I wonder if this will carry over into the wort!

I'm taking more complete notes, and once the whole experiment has been brewed, I'm going to write the whole process down in one coherent report.

More to come, soon.
 
Can't wait..

Brewing a Russian Imperial Stout tonight.. I hope to make it my final extract brew.. :)

I have decided I like stouts too much that I have to try them as my first All-grain.. and the Lentils are looking to be part of that ingredient.
 
Stout is a good first AG brew! Biermuncher's Ode to Arthur Guinness type stout was my second AG brew.

Jets game tomorrow at 7pm - so, from 7-10pm, so I have some "me time"...I'm a bit buzzed right now (me and the GF just got home from the Tragically Hip...WOW...they rock...but that's another thread...), but I think I will try start the Lentil beer tomorrow evening with the game on.

I'll be on tomorrow, live with "exit poll" refractometer results, and initial impressions of the lentil malt!

Til then, "let's just see what tomorrow brings"...!!!! Good night!
 
Update: Technical difficulties!!!

I've had to stop the countdown to brewing the lentil beer - there seems to be a neighbourhood-wide problem with water pressure right now. Probably a water main burst with the temp warming up a bit today.

I know I promised play-by-play tonight, but it's looking more like tomorrow evening, or Tuesday, depending on how fast the water issue gets fixed.
 
A call to 311 confirmed my suspicions, a water main burst a few blocks from here. Normal water pressure should be returned within a day or two.

Not being able to brew - I did a scholarly article search for lentil malt. Didn't find a whole lot, but did turn up a plant physiology article on diastatic enzymes in sprouting lentils.

The authors found the lentils had a fair bit of alpha-amylase, but very little beta-amylase, used very little stored energy to do their starch-sugar conversion, and that subjecting a lentil-sprout solution to temps of 70C for 15 mins shut down all diastatic activity.

So, the lentils should have some power to convert themselves in the mash. And the barley will take care of the rest of those starches.

Yeah, Science!!!
 
I would get bottled water and brew with it at this point.. (At least for a week or more as the broken pipe could put a lot of nasties in the water AND chemicals and metals from the repair.
 
You should post the same basic question in the gluten-free forum. Those guys know about working with all kinds of different non-standard plant products. I bet at least one person there has malted and/or mashed lentils.
 
I searched Lentils all over the forum.. and nothing came up...

They just might never have thought about it.. :)
 
I've been poking far and wide for info on lentil malt, lentil beer, etc. Not only does HBT's gluten free site not have a lentil section...the internet is pretty quiet on the subject.

It seems to pop up now and again as an idea, and the response is becoming predictable- discussions of epic beer farts, protein-shake consistency, comparisons to Indian food, etc...but no one seems to back this up with testing.

If this lentil-malt-adjuncted brew goes well, I'll malt some more lentils, and up the percentage. If that goes well...who knows? Maybe it would be time to try something gluten-free, like sorghum/lentil.

Brew day is on for tomorrow morning, kicking off at about 10 CDT. (Evening shift tomorrow, hoping to come home to a nice bubbling 1-gal fermenter!)

The water is fixed, but I took CD's advice about perhaps laying off the tap water for a bit. Haven't noticed any appreciable change in H2O quality since the break...but I want this to be about malted lentils, not municipal plumbing issues.

All systems are go for brew, with backups in place!
 
Cool.. with exception of the guy that did it and then threw brown sugar into his batch to get it to ferment.. seems both I and Boreal didn't find a single person that had done it accurately.

Definately no Brewers that had done it.

I even bought the Radical Brewing book.. that someone said they had remembered something in it.. and nothing.

The funny thing, as someone has pointed out, neither lentils or brewing are "NEW".. so if it had been done and was fruitful.. it would have already been done, documented, and be possibly a local drink in areas that Lentils are plentiful and grains are not.

I am genuinely curious now as Boreal has the AG experience.. and we should know shortly. The funny thing is if it does work.. there are many different styles of Lentils.. would could mean different styles of Beer :)
 
So, for anyone thought I was all talk (or typing, as the case may be!)

Brew X1-13 (eXperimental beer #1 of 2013) (will give it a proper name if and when it deserves one) is 30 minutes into its mash.

So far, so good. Aroma is 6-row, with a slight earthy note I'm ascribing to the lentils. Refrac reading: 1.029. Not bad for 1/3 of the way through the planned mash.
 
T+60 minutes - all systems nominal!

SG is up to 1.042. Hopville suggested 1.040 as gravity this batch would hit...but Hopville is really not set up for lentils!

Temp has been between 149F and 153F, pretty much of target.

I will let this go until the gravity hits 1.050 (I want this to be a session beer...not lentil malt liquor!), or for 30 minutes more, as per the recipe.

UPDATE: 87 minutes - SG has hit 1.045. I'm letting it go to 95 minutes. Sparge water is ready!
 
Sweet.. ! So what do the calcs say it would be minus the Barley..?

Is there way to tell how much the lentils are providing to the OG ?

If you get up to the 50 range, that tells me it could work well in a stout..

Can't wait to see what it does for head retention, taste, feel, etc.. Mind sending me a bottle if successful ?
 
Sparging complete - Brew in a Bag makes that step easy!

Pre-sparge, the wort had hit 1.047. Respectable!

Chewing on some spent grain, either the lentils absorbed sugars, or converted. The spent grains tasted a LOT better than spent grains with barley, corn, and rice...FWIW.

CD, I have a ton of ideas and question regarding your last post, like where this experiment goes from here. I'm going to PM you later, if that's cool...right now, I have a boil to watch!
 
Oh he will.. I am sure once he gets a FG and its in the fermenter he will let us know..
 
Ok - sorry - didn't mean to be exclusionary in any way!

The boil is over, the wort is chilling - and wow, is the cold break awesome! I was worried about protein haze in this beer...not that I'm brewing it to have a nice, conventionally clear beer, but still, 6-row and lentils...lots of protein.

So far, the lentils seem to be doing everything irish moss might, and more.

Gravity as the yeast goes in - 1.042. I didn't mean to be over-posting this brew...I just knew there were others who were interested!

So, if I mashed a known quantity of malt, and then that same known quantity of malt plus some lentils - and everything else is kept equal - any difference in SG between the two should be coming from the lentils, allowing us to calculate their pts-per-gallon contribution to SG, right?
 
It would only make sense logically.. but we are talking about cooking..

But the difference would undeniably be because of the lentils, one way or the other.

What I mean by that is:

The difference may not be attributed TO THE Lentils products themselves
(What they add to the pool if you will)

But would definitely be BECAUSE OF them..
(The chemical reactions and associated byproducts produced by the lentils and the barley)
 
CD - Life doesn't begin until 40...1.040!

After figuring out gravity contribution (because of the lentils, with help from barley enzymes), the next test would be their power to self-convert (the gravity contribution attributable to lentils relying on their own enzymes).

That's why I'm malting 255g, and only plan on using 100g in my initial test. I'll have some material left over to play with to figure out conversion power!

In case anyone's interested, I pitched Nottingham. I like it as a fairly neutral yeast, and I've always had good, fast ferments with it. I want to be able to taste what, if any impact the lentil malt has on the final product; and if the ferment hangs, or starts slow, or doesn't start...it's safe to assume its the lentil malt, not the yeast.
 
LOL...

Man I am so glad you jumped on this thread.. otherwise I would still be wondering.. and waiting for my current brews to finish up so I could try.
 
I got my wish, I came home to foam and bubbles in the fermenter!

At this point, time to focus on lentil malt, round two - batch one is in the capable hands of the yeast!
 
AWESOME !!!

VERY Curious if you could do an ALL Lentil and possibly a Gluten-Free mash (Lentil, Oatmeal, and whatever they use thats Gluten free).

We may have a seriously invented something NEW to the brewing world, and to all those Gluten Free junkies out there. Question is, is there such thing as a gluten free stout, if not maybe its time to try.. with lentils :)
 
Got home today to a nice white 2" foam on top of the fermenter. Not as crazy as I've had on some batches, but a lot more than on some others. After taking a refrac reading, and running it through a calculator to adjust for the presence of alcohol and what not, the SG is down to 1.033.

The GF aspect intrigues me - but I think I'm a ways from there yet. Once I know if lentils actually have the diastatic power to convert themselves, that avenue looks a little more interesting. If lentils convert themselves, 100% lentil is possible. Would it still be a beer? Would it be drinkable? Hard to say. Would it be cool? Yes!!!!

I can't help but feel this project is still in it's initial stages...but yeah, it's hard to to get excited about the possibilities!

At this point, though, I feel I've got a model-rocket scale brew going on, and a lentil-based stout might be a Saturn V kinda project.

Not that I'm not up for the challenge. My Dad's a chemist, and his mentor worked on the Manhattan Project and the Avro Arrow. He used to tell stories about those days, and he made lab work sound cool and cavalier...I never found that in school, but this project's got me feeling it!
 
My Uncle in law - SR-71 :)

All I can say is WOW... !

PM me so we can email each other ... talked to a microbrew in the area.. We maybe on to something... Thats all I can say.. :)
 
Whew! That was a fast ferment...the hydrometer reading is now 1.009. I'm sticking this in the cold room to clear up a bit. Because it's only a gallon, I haven't taken a hydro sample, just sanitize the heck out of the hydrometer and measure in the fermenter.

I only mention this because I haven't had a hydrometer sample to taste-test. (C'mon, we all do it!) The little bit of beer that stuck to the hydro after testing tonight tasted like light beer. No veggie taste.

But, I have a head cold, and could be WAY off!

I can also let the world know: a few millilitres of lentil beer have not cause epic beer farts.
 

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