Millet and Buckwheat

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Miniman1380

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Hi All

Im new here so im sorry if i am repeating a old or ongoing thread.
I am fairly new to grain brewing, i have been making GF worts using sorgum extracts and i went to buy some millet and buckwheat to experiment in malting, since purcahsing and doing some research i realise you can not use hulled grains. I have now a quantity of Millet and Buckwheat to use. Can anyone suggest a recipe using and extract and maybe roating some grains for flavor rather than sugars to ferment off.

I usually use
1.5kg sorgum extract
250gr corn syrup
Hops (Cascade, saaz, )
Brewrite
Yeast nutrient
Nottingham yeast.
.

Thanks in advance

Andy
 
Sorry i forgot to mention im in Australia, you can not but malted millet or chesnut chops here.
 
You could lightly roast 2 lbs each of the millet and buckwheat.
Do a partial mash with the roasted grain and a thermally stable amylase (termamyl works well). Then sparge this mini mash onto your brew pot to suplement a sorghum based wort.
You will not need to add maltodextrine to your wort, as the mini mash produces a lot of dextrines.

mini mash:
2 lbs toasted millet
2 lbs toasted buckwheat
1.5 tabelspoon Termamyl (thermaly stable a amylase)
2 gal water

In a big pot on the stove, Mash at 175 F for 2 hours (give it a stir and check the temperature at 1 hour, heat back to 175 if needed).
Sparge by poring the mash into your brew pot that is lined with a BIAB bag, so you can easilly drain and remove the grains.

I have made a few partial mash batches this way, with good results.
 
Thanks for you help , when i roast the grains do they really need to sit for a week if there lightly roasted and unmalted?.
 
I have limited experience (i.e. 1 batch that is still in the secondary) but here is what I learned from doing my batch (details in the citrus ale thread on the GF page).

First- you want to mash the grains for a long time... 2 hours+ with enzymes (i used the maximum enzyme per the instructions) I am not sure how using unmalted grains changes this process but I assume some other more educated person here can help.

Second rinse the grains well. I actually could have batch sparged 1 or 2 more times if I had the room in my brew pot (next time I will actually prepare a jug or 2 to keep some extra to use in a GF braggot probably).

Third (well really i guess this should be first if going in order of steps), there seemed to be a lot of debate when it comes to how fine you should mill the grains, I mixed my millet, buckwheat, and rice all together and milled just fine enough to fully crack all the millet. This seemed to allow everything to extract without causing anything to get stuck and allowed the grain bag to actually work.

Now that being said I had the following some what interesting results:
-Much higher gravity than expected (i.e. i got an extra 10 points than the grain was 'supposed' to give)
-Lots of sediment (in the boil pot and in the primary, and i expect a noticeable amount in the secondary)

Dont forget to use irish moss or whirl flock, I have heard that GF grains can take a very long time to clear up if you neglect to use this.

... needless to say I am getting very excited about GF grain brewing (getting ready to order about 55 pounds of GF malts for an epic month of brewing to get my stocks built up)
 
Hi thanks for your reply, i had an attempt on Saturday evening i oven roasted 2.7kgs of millet and 1 kg of buckwheat. I dobt have a grain mill so i blended them as even as possible lol. I then got a strike temp of 62oc for 2 hrs the sparged at 78oc. I measured to sp 1032 then boiled as in photos. When i added to fermenter i had to top up to 20L i only had a sp of 1035 so it looks like its going to be a weak beer. Im half tempeted to open and add some honey.

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Look around for a corona style grain mill. Not sure the availability in Australia but I would suspect you should be able to fine one. I got a cheap chinese produced one on Amazon for 20 something USD and it works well.

Also from what i have read, it really seems that these grains need more heat for mashing, 73C/163.4F

The mash steps I had a lot of luck with on the first go around:
-Water to 125F, add grain and rest 30 mins
-Add boiling water and heat to 163F, transfer to mash cooler and hold 2+ hours (i think i actually ended up at 2:40)
-3 X batch sparge at ~175F, stir very well after adding and hold 15 mins before draining.

I also used double the enzyme you did but for 10# of malted grains.

That grain mix looks promising, I think I may base an ale off of those ratios.
 
Thanks for your help, i mamaged to find a cheap suppier of un malted millet, just have to find a supplier of buckwheat at a good price. Im trying to find a mill as using a blender definitely not ideal. I will check out those mills.

Does anyone have any data for millet or buckwheat so i can use it in beersmith? Malted or unmalted

I might even attempt a small bacth of malted millet and buckwheat .i think im crazy.

I took a sample 24hrs ago and it was down to 1010 it smelt good and tasted quite good.
I cant wait to cold crash it and carbonate it.
 
Very interesting, It would be helpful to know the water to grist ratio with the various steps, or at least how much water was added each step.
 
Thanks for your help, i mamaged to find a cheap suppier of un malted millet, just have to find a supplier of buckwheat at a good price. Im trying to find a mill as using a blender definitely not ideal. I will check out those mills.

Does anyone have any data for millet or buckwheat so i can use it in beersmith? Malted or unmalted

I might even attempt a small bacth of malted millet and buckwheat .i think im crazy.

I took a sample 24hrs ago and it was down to 1010 it smelt good and tasted quite good.
I cant wait to cold crash it and carbonate it.

I am not sure how much malting changes the starch content that gets turned into sugar but I know the kilning reduces the available starches (at least I think that is what happens). Male millet malt is 32 ppg and the darker roasts go down from there to about 25ppg according to glutenfreehomebrewing.

That being said, my ~limited~ experience seems to question the theoretical PPG unless I had beginners luck and got insane efficiency.

I have had very fast fermentation on my 2 batches so far, sorghum extract only was a couple of days and my 'partial mash' (i use quotes since it was 10lbs for 5 gal with less than 3 lbs extract) was 24 hours and it pretty much bottomed out. I have been using Danstar windsor yeast.
 
Very interesting, It would be helpful to know the water to grist ratio with the various steps, or at least how much water was added each step.

In my recipe i used 10L in mash and 4L in sparge does this help?
 
In my recipe i used 10L in mash and 4L in sparge does this help?


Yes it helps, thanks. So, looks like you had 3.7kg grain and mashed with 10L so I can calculate. Did you drain off before sparge (batch sparge)? How much volume did you collect? After mash/sparge what was boil volume?
 
Yes it helps, thanks. So, looks like you had 3.7kg grain and mashed with 10L so I can calculate. Did you drain off before sparge (batch sparge)? How much volume did you collect? After mash/sparge what was boil volume?

Sorry i didnt take those measurements all i remember was ended up with about 10l roughly and i didnt drain them that well.
 
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