Brewing Software - GF style

I just figured I'd mention that I have tried just about every android brewing app and have found Brewing Assistant my favorite so far. The beauty of it for us GF folks is it has GF extracts like Briess sorghum and BRS. Plus it's free!

It also links with the website brewology101.com where your recipes are saved or you can enter them there from a full browser.

What's everyone else using for brew calculators?

hopville.com! They recently did a major software overhaul and they're still working out some kinks, but I really like it. You can set grains to be steeped OR mashed, which is important when calculating gravity, and it also calculates your sparge water and boil volume for you. The only thing I wish is that it had a BIAB setting. But otherwise it's great!

I was a fan of hopville until they did their overhaul. Now when I visit my account it makes me angry. However, if they fix the kinks it is a great site for GF. It has sorghum, brs, gluten free grains, etc.

Agreed, I liked Hopville better before the change. Still, it's what I use and the GF ingredients are pretty good. Hopville has enough tweaking to be useful without so much that it's annoying. I have no idea what data they use for GF grains/malt. I should do some testing some time and see if my results reflect the attributes they have for the ingredients.

The variable to mess with in Hopville for doing gluten-free all-grain or partial-mash is the efficiency. Most of the PPG data comes from people who mash the grains with barley, so it gives a theoretical maximum extraction under ideal enzymatic conditions. When I tried brewing with rice and amylase enzyme, I took gravity readings at the end and was able to calculate my efficiency by the difference between what Hopville said I would get and what I actually got. Turned out to be about ~40% efficiency, but I blame a combination of very coarse crush (lots of whole grains made in, using a food processor to crush grains is not very effective) and the fact that I didn't know I was supposed to stir frequently to ensure proper enzyme activity. I also suspect I didn't sufficienty gelatinize the grains prior to mashing in with the enzymes, and also (since I was doing BIAB) I may not have added enough water. I suspect I can get the efficiency up to at least 60% with better technique...and perhaps this promalt stuff I got from beljica will help, too. I want to do a side-by-side trial of promalt vs. EC Kraus diatase on rice to see if there's a difference in efficiency.

Igliashon, without malted grain your efficiency is really going to be low. As my unemployment stretches on my malting project may need to be revived...

Why would my efficiency be lower with unmalted grains, if I'm using enzymes? Are malted grains starchier?

muench1... I'm calling you out on this one. With a proper enzyme cocktail you can get a high efficiency out a brick. I myself have made over a hundred gallons of wort using unmalted grains and enzymes. Even bud light uses a high percentage of unmalted adjuncts and I assure you their efficiency is through the roof. It takes technique, proper equipment, and PROPER enzymes... Check out my honey blonde ale thread and you'll see an example of a solid unmalted grain beer. Another example would be beers made in africa where they use sorghum and add enzymes to Boost the zyme power. There are several companies that make enzymes Kerry, SEB and, CBS are three just off the top of my head that specialize in making these zymes.

Igliashon! Have you tried the cocktail yet? If you need me to write some tips down or just call and talk that would be fine. There are a few things that are different when brewing with unmalted grains. Mainly involving the cereal mash and grind. Grain weight is also calculated differently because about 5 percent (I think) of barley is husk.

I'm gonna try them early next week, I'm planning a partial mash with 3 lbs of bananas and 2 lbs of millet (figured that'd be a pretty safe beginning). My plan is to roast the bananas in the oven, then puree, grind the millet (untoasted) with my Corona mill, then toss the millet and bananas (mixed with rice hulls, in my BIAB bag) into 2.5 gallons of boiling water, and cook for 30 minutes. Then top up to 4 gallons with some room temperature water, let cool to 120°, add the enzymes, and do the step-mash as indicated. I have some extra amylase formula that I might add during saccharification if it seems necessary. After a nice long saccharification rest at ~153°F, during which I'll be stirring frequently and applying heat as necessary to keep the temp up, I'll pull the bag and squeeze (typical BIAB method). At this point I'll pull a sample and cool it to check my efficiency, then add enough sorghum extract to hit my desired OG, and proceed to the boil. Does this sound like it'll work?

What exactly does this enzyme cocktail consist of?

I'm not sure about the bananas but my partial mash would look like this for 5 gallons of pale ale
.25 pounds oats
1.5 pound sorghum raw
.25 pounds millet raw
.25 roasted millet
small handful of rice hulls rinced


Crush and cereal mash grains till gelatinized in a gallon of water
Cool to 125
Add zymes and rinced rice hulls into brew bag
Use boiling water to raise the temps

It is beta glucanase protease and amylase

Thanks man.

BTW, is it worth getting a book on all grain brewing or just read How to Brew online?

Beljica, how did you settle on that blend? I'm curious if you did a lot of trials on single grains first, or if you went straight for a blend based on your intuition and tweaked from there? I'm curious to try some more limited recipes first to give me an idea of what I'm really playing with, but the banana/millet combo idea I got from some traditional African beer recipes. I think I'm just gonna give it a shot, and if it doesn't work, at least I know! After this one, I want to try doing an all-exotic rice blend (red, purple, and sweet sticky) just to see how that goes, and then a quinoa-based recipe, and then maybe corn & wild rice (kinda have a "first thanksgiving" theme in mind for that one). Then I'll start getting more ambitious with the blends, I guess. I'm aiming to get at least half my OG from the grains, is that feasible?