Gluten Free Imperial IPA

Trying to come up with a recipe for a GF Imperial IPA, A friend has contracted me to create some GF beers for her, she has requested an Imperial IPA, but haven't seen any GF recipes for this style. If any of you have tried Ska Brewings Decadent Imperial IPA that is what I am shooting for, but GF.

I was thinking of just adding more of everything to this recipe
7 lbs Liquid Light Extract
0.23 lbs Molasses
0.25 lbs Dark Brown Sugar
1.0 lbs Honey
0.8 oz Yakima Magnum (14.50%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
0.50 oz Centennial (10.00%) - added during boil, boiled 15 min
0.50 oz Centennial (10.00%) - added during boil, boiled 1 min
8.00 fl oz White Labs WLP008 East Coast Ale

Thanks in advance

Isn't there gluten in malt extract?

I got this recipe from http://web.pdx.edu/~burtona/Gluten%20Free%20Beer.html I agree that malt usually has gluten, perhaps his light extract does not.

One would think he is talking sorghum extract, but the link is verboten.

I don't think this is GF either: White Labs WLP008 East Coast Ale

Add 2 lbs of extract and 1/2 lb of honey. Kick the bittering hops to an ounce.

david_42 said:

One would think he is talking sorghum extract, but the link is verboten.

I don't think this is GF either: White Labs WLP008 East Coast Ale

Add 2 lbs of extract and 1/2 lb of honey. Kick the bittering hops to an ounce.

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All light barley liquid extract has barley in it, there are no exceptions. Sorghum is your key.

White labs has 2ppm gluten in the final product. That is very little, but can still set off the most sensitive celiacs. I don't think it is worth it for East coast ale though, just use S-05.

For what it's worth, I would take that recipe, lose the molasses, add 3 lbs of a combo of sugar or honey, and make all of those hop additions an ounce, and add a dry hop of an ounce of centennial. Oh, and change light LME to sorghum syrup.

So If i were to subculture a WLP008 onto a plate, then culture back into GF media, I could remove all the gluten, or just dilute into GF media down below say 2ppb. I am asking if WLP008 produces gluten, or if it is the media that contains gluten. Thanks

tbeard said:

So If i were to subculture a WLP008 onto a plate, then culture back into GF media, I could remove all the gluten, or just dilute into GF media down below say 2ppb. I am asking if WLP008 produces gluten, or if it is the media that contains gluten. Thanks

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It is grown on barley to begin with. I am not sure how you could remove the initial media, but yeast itself only produces CO2 and ethanol.

EDIT: I think you might be right though that culturing the media on GF mediums would dilute the amount of gluten even lower. Good thought.

Is subculturing not well known? I am a microbiologist and this is a very common method for me, maybe I will write a how-to on removing gluten from media.

On a further note, I checked the gluten free certification organization website, to be certified gluten free " to meet the minimum GFCO standard of less than 10 ppm gluten in a finished product." So it seems that WLP008 should meet GF standards, but I suspect that some people are more intolerant than the 10ppm standard

tbeard said:

Is subculturing not well known? I am a microbiologist and this is a very common method for me, maybe I will write a how-to on removing gluten from media.

On a further note, I checked the gluten free certification organization website, to be certified gluten free " to meet the minimum GFCO standard of less than 10 ppm gluten in a finished product." So it seems that WLP008 should meet GF standards, but I suspect that some people are more intolerant than the 10ppm standard

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No, it is not well known. I culture yeast, which is fairly advanced in the homebrew world...and I have no idea what you are talking about.

You are correct on all points in your second paragraph.

dkershner said:

No, it is not well known. I culture yeast, which is fairly advanced in the homebrew world...and I have no idea what you are talking about.

You are correct on all points in your second paragraph.

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I'm guessing he's referring to something like, say, putting some yeast from the package onto a gluten free medium, like Agar, and washing off all the liquid medium, and letting the yeast develop a colony on the Agar, and then (I would assume) making a starter from that colony. It would possible to have a tiny amount of gluten that would have been left on your agar plate, and then some of that could transfer to your starter, but at this point it would be so low, I doubt it would be detectable (probably not even into the ppb range, so thousands of times below the 20 ppm standard).

Of course, doing this without getting bacterial contamination requires a significant level of sterilization.

I'd like to note, that I don't have a degree in microbiology, but that was my original major in college. And my wife did get a degree in biology.

Of course, I think all that work would be a little overboard, if you wanted to, you could make a big starter from the white labs yeast, and grow it on a GF media. If you wanted, you could pitch only a small amount of the liquid yeast into your starter, so you'll be reducing the gluten content quite a bit there, and then you could try harvesting active yeast from the liquid (not the yeast cake) during the fermentation of your starter. If you use 10% of the vial to make your starter, and then use 10% of the starter as the actual yeast to pitch, you should have reduced the gluten concentration from 12 ppm to .12, and it will then get diluted even further into however many gallons of wort...

+ 1 on just using dry yeast like -05 (especially for an IPA). You just need a neutral yeast to let the hops shine!

dorklord said:

I'm guessing he's referring to something like, say, putting some yeast from the package onto a gluten free medium, like Agar, and washing off all the liquid medium, and letting the yeast develop a colony on the Agar, and then (I would assume) making a starter from that colony. It would possible to have a tiny amount of gluten that would have been left on your agar plate, and then some of that could transfer to your starter, but at this point it would be so low, I doubt it would be detectable (probably not even into the ppb range, so thousands of times below the 20 ppm standard).

Of course, doing this without getting bacterial contamination requires a significant level of sterilization.

I'd like to note, that I don't have a degree in microbiology, but that was my original major in college. And my wife did get a degree in biology.

Of course, I think all that work would be a little overboard, if you wanted to, you could make a big starter from the white labs yeast, and grow it on a GF media. If you wanted, you could pitch only a small amount of the liquid yeast into your starter, so you'll be reducing the gluten content quite a bit there, and then you could try harvesting active yeast from the liquid (not the yeast cake) during the fermentation of your starter. If you use 10% of the vial to make your starter, and then use 10% of the starter as the actual yeast to pitch, you should have reduced the gluten concentration from 12 ppm to .12, and it will then get diluted even further into however many gallons of wort...

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I have to agree with other people here that simply using Fermentis US05 is a better option than all this work for any IPA/2IPA as I use the US05 from time to time anyway. However, when working with a unique yeast strain, you present a very viable option for those that do not "Yeast Ranch."

Now, I do not have a bio degree (economics actually), but I am still able to ranch my own yeast including maintaining my own slants in test tubes that last for at least a year. It includes a lot of time and labor to do this, but I find it worth it as I have access to about 8 yeast strains at all times, including year round access to the limited varieties I have purchased (and it reduces the cost of purchasing a special yeast from $10 per batch for single use to as low as $2 per batch for my most used strains so far).

If you don't want to go through the hassle of plating and slanting, I would say either make a batch of beer with your yeast, obtaining the 2ppm concentration of gluten and then use that yeast cake like you would any other cake (if it has as much change in the first generation, imagine how low it will be in the second generation starting at 2ppm), or take the yeast cake and make a starter off of it. I would do this by sanitizing a tablespoon and pitching a small amount into a 1L starter (1-2 teaspoons should be enough and there are 3 teaspoons in a Tablespoon). Alternatively, pitch 1/19th of the vial into a 1L starter to get 2ppm gluten concentration in your starter, then pitch a similar volume of the starter into another 1L starter for the same effects.

quick math
12ppm starting to 2ppm - 1st generation
2ppm starting to 0.33ppm - 2nd generation
0.33ppm starting to 0.055ppm - 3rd generation
0.055ppm starting to 0.009ppm - 4th generation

If you can make a few slants of 4th generation yeast, each batch would be no more than 0.0015ppm, but less when culturing off of slants into gluten free media.