GF American Stout

Ok. So I just brewed a gluten free american stout that was the culmination of a lot of malting work. Here is my recipe:
2 lbs dark roasted malted buckwheat
1 lb malted buckwheat, unroasted
1 lb roasted (to black) white rice
1 lb dark belgian candi sugar
1 lb chestnuts
.9 oz willamette @60 min (4.7%AA)
.25 oz wllamette @ 10 min (4.7%AA)
2 Tbsp. cocoa powder @ 15 min
2 tsp vanilla extract @ 15 min
4 oz cold brewed coffee (in primary after several days)
S-05 Yeast

I brewed this last night. I put the grains in several smaller grain bags since that was all I had. I raised about 4 to 4.5 gallons of water to 160 degrees, added the grain bags, and 1.5 tsp of amylase. I then kept the temp at 160 for an hour. After, I wrapped the brew pot in towels and let the mash sit for almost 24 hours. To keep the bags from burning, I used a pot with a steaming rack so that the bags were not sitting on the bottom. The temp never dropped below 120. I then brewed as regular, adding hops etc. For the cocoa powder and vanilla, I mixed them with 4 oz of hot water and added at 15 mins. I've yet to add the coffee. The original gravity was 1.040. I didn't get as good of conversion from the grains. This was likely because of my unrefined mashing procedure. I don't have the room or the money to have an all-grain set up. The wort was a little hoppier than I like but once the alcohol comes around it will be delicious. At first, I tasted a sweet. burnt, chocolaty flavor and then immediately afterwards I was hit with a hop punch. Here's a pic of it in the primary: http://i1180.photobucket.com/albums/x404/mloster/Photoon2011-08-23at2312.jpg

Let me know what you think. I'll keep you guys updated

Nice, I'm digging that colour. Hope this comes together for you.

I just bottled this today with about 2.3 oz of priming sugar and 20 oz of cold brewed coffee. I got about 24 bottles. The color wasn't black as I had hoped, but more of a dark brown, which is still darker than any other gf beer i've made. The fg was 1.011 so it's 3.8% abv. I was hoping for better conversion from the grains and a resulting higher abv but to no avail. I'll check back in a week or two with tasting and

alright, so this beer finally came out. sorry for the frosty mug. it's a dark brown color and not the black i was looking for. anyway, the beer turned out quite nice when it was carbonated. it has a bit more body than other all-grain beers i've done. if i added some maltodextrin, it would have come out much better. for a stout and for my tastes, it is a bit heavy on the hops. but it tastes like beer, oh so good beer for the first time in a while. i'll report back with some better tasting notes in a week or two

Nice work. I'm getting ready to start another GF stout. Thanks for some ideas.

just another update. the beer is f-ing delicious. it's the most grain-y tasting gluten free beer i've ever had. i've got many positive reviews from my normal beer drinking friends

Awesome! My wife is allergic to wheat, where did you find those ingredients? Did you have to prep anything yourself? i.e. roasting your own grains?

Yes. I had to prep pretty far in advance. I had the chestnuts left over from another beer I made, but I originally bought them here http://www.chestnuttrails.com/products/beer-chestnut-chips-5lb I used the medium roasted chips. I bought the buckwheat at the whole foods bulk bin. I malted it by putting about 4 pounds in a muslin bag and soaking it in water for 8 hours, rinsing well and then soaking another 8 hours or so. I repeated this until the buckwheat had sprouted (i.e. it grew little tails about 1/4 in to 1/2 in long). I then kilned (dehydrated, it's the same thing) on a two baking sheets in the my oven at about 130 deg, the lowest temperature, overnight and until they felt dry to the touch. I stirred them occasionally. I then removed the rootlets, little tails, by taking a handful of the buckwheat at a time and shaking it around in a mesh strainer (this takes a while). After that, I slowly roasted the buckwheat on two baking pans again. I slowly raised the temp of the oven from 200 up to eventually 350 over the course of 90 minutes or so, until the desired color (black in this case) was reached. Keep in mind I didn't roast all of the buckwheat. I then let the buckwheat sit in a brown paper bag for a week or two, so that it could mellow out. It tastes similar to corn nuts and kind of like a burntish cereal, in a good way. As for the rice, I wasn't sure if the beer was going to be dark enough so I blacked rice in the oven on baking sheets until it was, well, burnt. As for the belgian candi sugar and hops, I got those from norther brewer, my favorite since it's a flat $8 shipping fee, you just order a lot to make it worth it. There's no LHBS store nearby. I then mashed as I described earlier, not very refined for my apt. And instead of the originally posted recipe, I added ~28 oz of cold brewed coffee to just shy of 2.5 gallons of beer. All in all, it was not that much work, just it was spread out over a lot of time. Well worth it though.

wow! many thanks.

I heard thatif you roast the grains quickly to black, the harder it is to get them to convert?

I could have roasted them longer and slower so that could have been the issue with poor conversion for me. And yes, supposedly, a blast of higher temperatures kills any enzymes in the grains.