Gluten Free Pale Ale?

Getting ready to make the Gluten Free Pale Ale from Homebrewing.org. It uses Sorghum syrup and 3 1/2oz of Cascade hops (1oz bittering full boil, 1/2oz flavoring add at 40 min, 1oz aroma end of boil 45 min, and 1oz dry hop in secondary. I will use Danstar Nottingham Ale dry yeast and priming sugar to carbonate. The recipe calls for honey in the priming step, but I'm more used to using sugar. I could add honey when I put it in the fermenter, but will still use sugar for priming. I will also use clarityferm to make the beer clearer. What does everyone think of this recipe? 1st time I have tried Gluten free. I'm making it for my brother-in-law who is gluten intolerant. He now drinks Redbridge and has tried other Gluten free commercial beers, but comes back to Redbridge. Would try a buckwheat recipe, but don't want to do the toasting required. Will wait until I can buy it already done.
Thanks,
Steve

If it only uses sorghum syrup, you might consider replacing 20% of the syrup with cane sugar and ONE ounce of molasses.The cane sugar will dry out the ferment (sorghum is notorious for high unfermentables) and the molasses will add some flavor notes that you would normally get from caramel malt. I wouldn't bother with using honey, it ferments out and leaves very little flavor.

Not sure what you mean by non fermentables. I'm using a 6 lb bottle of Sorghum syrup from Northern Brewer. What would I do to add the white cane sugar and how much and when? Will this make the beer taste better? Also when would I add the molasses?

My wife is gluten free and I just order a recipe for her from high gravity brew. I will use 6 lbs of brown rice syrup, steep 1 lb of toasted buckwheat and use 1oz willamette at 60 and 1oz Mt Hood at 15-10 mins. Also using Irish Moss for clarifier. Desiree at High Gravity has celiacs and loves beer and sounds like she enjoys the brown rice syrup for fermentables instead of sorghum. She was interviewed by James on Basic Brewing Radio about gluten free beer. Look it up.

If you read a lot of the posts on in this section you will find that recipes with more than 50% sorghum of the fermentable sugars will end up with a lemony twang flavor that is more like hard cider, I've got a batch here in bottles for my daughter and the recipe is very similar to the one you have and that is the way it turned out, do some research before brewing that up so you can make some adjustments and improve your odds of getting something out of it that actually tastes like beer.

Tex60 said:

If you read a lot of the posts on in this section you will find that recipes with more than 50% sorghum of the fermentable sugars will end up with a lemony twang flavor that is more like hard cider, I've got a batch here in bottles for my daughter and the recipe is very similar to the one you have and that is the way it turned out, do some research before brewing that up so you can make some adjustments and improve your odds of getting something out of it that actually tastes like beer.

Click to expand...

How much cane sugar (lbs) would I add along with the molasses? Could I use Sucanat sugar? I think I will try your idea after reading a few posts. Would like to brew in the next few days. I have the fermenter empty. Just bottled a Honey Wheat for myself (not gluten free).

I made this recipe for my brother-in-law. He thought is was to hoppy, but I liked it. I used Sorghum syrup, I added 1lb of Sucanat sugar full boil, and 3 1/2oz of Cascade hops (1oz bittering full boil, 1/2oz flavoring add at 40 min, 1oz aroma end of boil 45 min, and 1oz dry hop in secondary. I used Danstar Nottingham Ale dry yeast and priming sugar to carbonate. I used clarityferm to make the beer clearer. He now drinks Redbridge and this was definatly more hoppy tasting. If I were to make this again where would I cut back on the hopps? Should I use a different hop?