I grow sweet sorghum organically

Nothing to do with my brewing habit, but thought it might be related...I've got a huge box of seed heads I saved from the last harvest, going to plant about 10 acres this spring. I'll have 10 X that extra, enough to grow 100 acres but I don't have that much room. What can brewers do with sweet sorghum? If you grow the seed and chew on the stalks, it tastes like a cross between honey and sugar cane. The seed heads form on the top and you can pop them to make a "popcorn" like treat or grind them for a sweet meal. The stalks can be pressed to make syrup. When it comes to brewing beer, how can sweet sorghum be used?

Wow, 10 acres? Do you have a mill or do you just grow if to for seed? I've thought about using sorghum syrup in place of candy syrup in a dubbel, but haven't done it. I'd never thought of using ground sorghum meal as an adjunct. I'd think you could use the meal in place of corn. Can you extract the sugar by just boiling the cane in water if you don't have a mill.

I planted last year just for seed, about one acre and it grew like a mad cow. No, I don't have a mill, just selling my extra seed. Locally, people take it and use it for livestock feed. But, I'm thinking, couldn't it be used to brew beer instead?

Sweet sorghum syrup can be used to make the best gluten-free beer you have ever tasted -- in fact, you'd never know it's gluten-free and is one of my favourite home-brews I've ever made. It's brewed as an ale from the syrup, not the grain, and has a sort of fresh "lemony" flavour with loads of aromas of traditional ales. My partner is Czech and also coeliac so can't have anything with gluten in it. When I made the first batch she just loved it -- and Czech beer-drinkers are not easy to please. I get the wetpack kits from these folks. http://www.countrybrewer.com.au/categories/Beer-Brewing/Concentrates/Gluten-Free/

The guys here in Oz get the sweet sorghum syrup from the USA, as we don't produce it locally here yet, though I have been working on a food and fuel project for a few years to change that! http://www.agrifuels.com.au.

I don't know what the formulation the brewer uses to produce the wetpack, but you may be able to get it out of him. Ask for Chris! Good luck. Give it a go. You won't be disappointed. Cheers, Rob in Sydney Australia.

I've also had a sorghum syrup beer and it was tasty.

I wonder if you could mash the sorgham seeds/grains? Maybe try some with some two-row barley? Or maybe try to steep them and taste the tea, see what flavors it imparts?

Pappers_ said:

I've also had a sorghum syrup beer and it was tasty.

I wonder if you could mash the sorgham seeds/grains? Maybe try some with some two-row barley? Or maybe try to steep them and taste the tea, see what flavors it imparts?

Click to expand...

I've not seen any evidence of anyone malting sweet sorghum seeds to make a traditional beer out of it, but it would be great to see someone with some malting experience take this one on.

Roughly 1% of the total population of western society is coeliac so there is a potentially huge market for good gluten free beer -- the biggest problem to date has been that most commercially marketed gluten-free beer costs a fortune and tastes like crap.

It's probably important to use a white, low tannin grain, or at least a blend of white and red grains, otherwise I suspect the flavour would be less than wonderful.

Do you know what cultivar you have? I am looking for some to malt with a diastatic power high enough for self conversion.

shelly_belly said:

Do you know what cultivar you have? I am looking for some to malt with a diastatic power high enough for self conversion.

Click to expand...

I think you may be breaking new ground here.

The variety we've been using is a proprietary variety developed in Thailand for use in Australia that produces large white grains. It's still undergoing crop and analysis tests and not yet commercially available. Queensland University of Technology has done a fairly extensive chemical analysis on the stalk content and the grains but I don't believe there was included in that analysis any enzymatic variables like alpha or beta amylase, etc.

As far as I am aware, no one has tried to malt the grain of this variety of sweet sorghum and written about it so it's pretty much uncharted territory. It's quite different from most any of the USA varieties that we compared it against such as M81E, Keller, Topper, Dale, Italian and a few others, most of which produce small grains with dark, high tannin content. I'm not aware of what flavour impact the amount of tannin will impart but I would think it would be significant.

Also, you may be aware that Anheuser Busch has marketed a relatively successful sorghum grain beer in the USA for a few years called "Redbridge". I've never tried it as we don't have it here in Oz.

http://www.redbridgebeer.com/homePage.aspx
http://www.redbridgebeer.com/about/ingredientsAndBrewing.aspx

I'm guessing that it's made from traditional sorghum grain (red) grain and not sweet sorghum grain.

my colleagues at the Sweet Sorghum Ethanol Association could probably point you to chemistry figures for various USA varieties. http://www.sseassociation.org/

As an interesting sidenote -- we approached one of the major brewers here in Oz about potential offtake agreements to use our sweet sorghum for an Australian gluten-free commercial beer and the thing they put them off most was that they wouldn't be able to market the product as "beer" in Australia because anything called "beer" must be made primarily from malted grain! So, if you can demonstrate the viability of a sweet sorghum grain-based beer, there is commercial potential in it.

Let's keep this thread going. Love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,

Rob

BELOW:
Top: AgriFuels sweet sorghum grain head
Bottom: Traditional grain sorghum head

BobbiLynn said:

Nothing to do with my brewing habit, but thought it might be related...I've got a huge box of seed heads I saved from the last harvest, going to plant about 10 acres this spring. I'll have 10 X that extra, enough to grow 100 acres but I don't have that much room. What can brewers do with sweet sorghum? If you grow the seed and chew on the stalks, it tastes like a cross between honey and sugar cane. The seed heads form on the top and you can pop them to make a "popcorn" like treat or grind them for a sweet meal. The stalks can be pressed to make syrup. When it comes to brewing beer, how can sweet sorghum be used?

Click to expand...

Forget all that above. But, Sorghum cane syrup is a big winner with Biscuits and Butter in these parts. Have you ever made any syrup? Cutting the canes, deleaving, deheading, pushing the canes, boiling down the juice? Not to many men alive today have got those skills.

I have malted sorghum, and used it to make traditional kaffir. Processed the grains just like barley, sprouting and mashing, and sparging and then boiled the wort with some dagga leaf. Then I incubated it at 80F for 20 hours with some lactobacillus culture from the health food store. Then I pitched some ale yeast, let it ferment two days, and it was ready to drink. Sort of a grapefruit flavor, and pretty inebriating.

Ours is the sweet sorghum like in the top picture.

Thank you so much for all this great info. I am printing it out for the family, all the more reason to get it planted this year. If anyone is interested in a seed head to try to grow in your area, I can't legally ship it outside the US, but inside the US, you just pay the shipping and I'll send it, I have extra, well, some extra for a few people. It's very viable seed, over 90% germination rate in the right conditions.

Obviously the easy part is growing it, processing it is the hard part. We chop it down and other farms mix it with stuff to feed their livestock. That's all we're using it for now. I'd love to see it used to make beer!
~BobbiLynn

Your picture looks like the grain that I successfully malted. I would be interested in obtaining some as it is a special order item from the local hippie co-op. I am in BC but I could provide a shipping address in North East Washington. Could I possibly get a kilo of it?

Could I possibly get a kilo of it?

Click to expand...

I just sent you a private message!

Mine is not the same variety, the heads look smaller and still have the black hulls on them, but...

Have you ever made any syrup? Cutting the canes, deleaving, deheading, pushing the canes, boiling down the juice?

Click to expand...

Not yet, but only because we just started growing the sorghum last year when conditions were so bad and it was the only thing that would grow. My husband has been sick, we will do this(make syrup-that was the original plan) and I'm going to get him to join this forum when he gets better. If nothing else, just so he can learn about growing some good ingredients for you all. He's not much of a beer drinker, or drinker at all, but a good farmer that can grow anything given half a chance.

sudbuster said:

Forget all that above. But, Sorghum cane syrup is a big winner with Biscuits and Butter in these parts. Have you ever made any syrup? Cutting the canes, deleaving, deheading, pushing the canes, boiling down the juice? Not to many men alive today have got those skills.

Click to expand...

I know this is an old thread but I did grow a very small patch of sorghum this year. We pressed the cane and cooked the juice. If anyone has more information and making booze with the juice/syrup I would love to hear your process.

sudbuster said:

Forget all that above. But, Sorghum cane syrup is a big winner with Biscuits and Butter in these parts. Have you ever made any syrup? Cutting the canes, deleaving, deheading, pushing the canes, boiling down the juice? Not to many men alive today have got those skills.

Click to expand...

You are correct that is a dying art, a lot of work but very tasty!