GF Braggot without sorghum

First off, I am very new to brewing and have never made anything except a few meads. Mead seems kinda fun, but I miss my stouts so I thought this would be a good way to introduce myself to beer brewing.

So far, most gluten free brew recipes I have read use sorghum. Sorghum is the only grain I have found that turns my guts liquid within an hour. My stomach HATES it.

I'm wondering if you guys have any suggestions on how I would proceed with this braggot. Is it possible to simply mix grains with honey and ferment it?

Any advice is welcome, thank you

I have not made a braggot before, but I have made a few GF beers. You might want to try a little buckwheat or millet. The only problem is that you usually have to malt these yourself.

http://ryanbrews.blogspot.com/2009/03/buckwheat-braggot_08.html
You just need to find a substitute for the 1lb of 2-row.

I've been having a blast for the last few months making ales with brown rice syrup and honey, specifically buckwheat honey and wildflower honey. I have an experimental hoppy stout fermenting now that also incorporates some molasses. This is fairly easy "extract" brewing and a nice way to get started making gluten-free ales, at least in my opinion. I read about a lot of folks diving in with grains and, while I might get there, I see a lot of reports of failed experiments whereas I've loved every brew I've made.

Before I got started with brown rice syrup, I made a batch of what I guess would be considered a hydromel/metheglin - just honey (wildflower + clover), water, and (lots of) hops. It ferments out to be a lot drier than a typical beer, but using ale yeast and bottle-carbonating it like beer yields something that I really love. You can add maltodextrin at bottling time to thicken it up, which I did for my first batch, but I have another batch bottled where I left it alone and am eager to see if I like it as much left thin.

Jeff

Jeff--what is your recipe on the hoppy mead? I've enjoyed my dry-hopped cider so much I'm very curious to start experimenting more in that area.

I made something of an ale/braggot with millet, and thought it was awesome.

Hey Jeff, thanks for the input

I would be interested in any recipes you have tried as I am at a loss on how to get started here

Something like that, do you ferment it like a mead or a beer? Mix it all together in a carboy at room temp and leave it for 2 months?

mpcondo, I have a bunch of millet, do you still have your recipe kicking around?

lpsumo said:

mpcondo, I have a bunch of millet, do you still have your recipe kicking around?

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1.25 lbs of millet, malted and dried in oven
1lb honey
.25 oz cascade hops
safbrew T-58 yeast

I malted the millet myself, although using a little enzyme with unmalted millet would work. I used a double decoction mash on the grain followed by a 60 minute boil. Added a pinch of the hops every 15 minutes. After a week in primary I racked to secondary and cold stored it for a week to clear it before bottling and used 1 oz of honey as priming sugar .

My process has been to approach it just like brewing ale from extract. Since you're coming from a mead background, here's my quick rundown of what this means:

• Do a boil of water for somewhere between 30-60 minutes
• Add bittering hops early in the boil - how much/what kind is recipe-specific
• Add flavor/aroma hops later in the boil - again, varies based on recipe
• Add extracts (honey, brown rice syrup) later in the boil - I've been doing the last 15 minutes - varies based on recipe
• Cool wort (I use a stopped sink and fill it with ice packs) down to near room temperature
• Transfer wort to carboy, add nutrient and yeast, stop with airlock
• Sometimes dry-hop, recipe dependent
• After 2-3 weeks (depends on ferementation progress), rack to a bottling bucket, add priming sugar (I use honey despite all advice I've read to the contrary), transfer to bottles
• Bottle-condition N weeks (where N varies from "I can't resist sampling after 4-5 days" to "It's really best when you wait 2-4 weeks")

If any of that sounds really super alien to you, you might want to do some general reading up on getting started with extract brewing. But that's basically the process.

As for specific recipes, I love the hopville.com site's "Beer Calculus" recipe formulator. They've got a good database with all the stuff I work with pretty well represented. The original gravity readings usually are dead-on with what I measure, and final gravities will be off depending on how much of my recipe uses honey, since ale yeasts really seem to go to town on honey and ferment out much drier than expected - you can play with this by customizing the attenuation percentage on the yeast, but it's a guessing game and I don't have hard math behind that part yet.

Here are some of the recipes I've used:
My first all-honey hoppy hydromel/metheglin thing
A new take on that with all noble hops instead of American IPA-style hops - I just bottled this Saturday and haven't tasted it yet
Pilsner-like ale made with rice syrup and honey - this is the best thing I've brewed, period. Golden yumminess, and a good match in color and texture for a pilsner
Blackstrap stout - this is an experiment, just about ready to get bottled. I got excited after reading that folks like George Washington used to brew with molasses. I probably overdid it.
An attempt at a Gluten-free clone of Sierrra Nevada's Celebration Ale - just bottled Saturday, haven't tried it yet.

Most recently I finally decided to try a brew with sorghum, since I wanted to brew a GF clone of a crazy strong IPA called Pliny The Elder and figured it would be a good time to try it. That's just in the fermenter now.

Hope this helps! I'm no brewing genius yet, but I've been having a blast. I still drink normal barley beer when I'm out, but I enjoy the GF brews I make for myself and my gluten-sensitive wife a lot more, partly just 'cause I made them, and partly because they give me all the pleasure of drinking ale without the heavy gut feel I get from the "real" stuff.

Jeff

Also note with my recipes that the volume and boil times vary. I started off brewing all 1-gallon batches and still do for experiments I'm unsure about. But since I've brewed a few batches I loved, I sprung for a larger kettle and fermenter I could use to do 4-gallon batches.

I favor shorter boils for all-honey brews and longer boils for brews involving rice syrup where i'm going for a bitter IPA type result. But again, I'm no expert, I just kind of made up that rule of thumb after doing a lot of research.

Jeff

Thanks mpcondo, I'm going to try that one out for sure. I read this about malting:

"Grains were malted by allowing them to soak in water for 3-4 days until sprouts were about 2x longer than the grain itself. Grains were rinsed 2x daily so as to avoid bacteria growth."

Is that something that everyone does? also they recommended 1.25 hours in oven at 350 F, sounds about right?

Jeff, wow, thanks for all the information. I really appreciate the point form tips, I had no idea how to get started. I figure when you say "do a boil" that means I should boil my malted grains for about an hour?

That beer calculus site is just about the coolest thing ever, pretty confusing for me at the moment but seems like it'll b e a useful tool. I'm looking at your stout recipe and i don't see any grains mentioned. Is this an error or do I really have no idea how brewing works?

lpsumo said:

"Grains were malted by allowing them to soak in water for 3-4 days until sprouts were about 2x longer than the grain itself. Grains were rinsed 2x daily so as to avoid bacteria growth."

Is that something that everyone does? also they recommended 1.25 hours in oven at 350 F, sounds about right?

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I think I read the same thing, but I've found that a 3 day soak is way too long. The millet gets over saturated and doesn't sprout. I wasted a lot of millet trying that, but I have finally perfected the steps:

1. Rinse and soak for 12 hours.
2. Rinse and drain, let rest for 12 hours
3. Rinse and drain, rest for 12 hours

continue the rinse and rest cycle until the sprouts are the length you want. Usually 2 1/2 to 3 days total, but it changes with temperature.

Then I spread on a cookie sheet, and dry in the oven on low, and turn millet over every 30 minutes for 1 1/2 hours. I've found that millet starts taking on a burnt popcorn flavor when cooked at high temps.

GF oats + honey = HONEY BUNCHES OF OATS BRAGGOT?

I malt and roast buckwheat. I have found that soaking them in water twice the volume of the grain for six hours, then draining and putting into a dish leaving about half an inch of liquid in the bottom, then turning every six hours or so works a treat. They sprout in no time at all. I have also found hat to avoid the 'Buckwheat nutty flavour' to roast them as crystal malt and throw them in the water as soon as you start to hear your water. That's just me though.

I tried with millet but wasn't able to achieve anything. I am still eager to get it to sprout though, as I hate being beaten. Haha It must just have been the millet I used that was the problem.

lpsumo said:

Thanks mpcondo, I'm going to try that one out for sure. I read this about malting:

"Grains were malted by allowing them to soak in water for 3-4 days until sprouts were about 2x longer than the grain itself. Grains were rinsed 2x daily so as to avoid bacteria growth."

Is that something that everyone does? also they recommended 1.25 hours in oven at 350 F, sounds about right?

Jeff, wow, thanks for all the information. I really appreciate the point form tips, I had no idea how to get started. I figure when you say "do a boil" that means I should boil my malted grains for about an hour?

That beer calculus site is just about the coolest thing ever, pretty confusing for me at the moment but seems like it'll b e a useful tool. I'm looking at your stout recipe and i don't see any grains mentioned. Is this an error or do I really have no idea how brewing works?

Click to expand...

So to clarify, some folks here are giving you advice on doing all- or partial-grain brewing, but everything I've contributed has been about doing extract brewing.

If you're brewing from grain, there's usually a "mash" or grain-steeping step of some sort that will precede the boil.

If you're just using extracts (meaning LIQUID extracts), you just start with a boil.

But either way, you WILL do a boil of some sort to make most any kind of beer. It's the key to drawing the alpha acids out of hops that provide bitterness, without which beer would be something entirely sweet and not-beer. Of course how long you boil and what kind of hops with what alpha acid content is where all the art comes in (along with thousands of other factors).

Have fun! This is a great forum. I've only posted a bit over a dozen times but I read daily and learn something every time I do.

Jeff

Thanks for all the tips guys, I will work on this in the new year and see what happens...