What do I do with my grains?

Hey all-grain brewers. What do you do with your grains after you're done. Just toss them? Or do you do something special with them?

Compost, give to the chickens, dog treats, flour for breads/doughs or pig farmers. Search functions pulls up LOTS of ideas!

I throw them on my compost pile. I see birds and the occasional squirrel in them, but mostly flies. Really breaks down nicely though - good composing material.

Do yourself,your family,& dogs a favor. Dry them out spread on cookie sheets in a 200F oven for several hours,turning once an hour to dry them quicker & more evenly. When dried,store them in 1G zip lock freezer bags on the pantry shelf. Label them for what beer they were used to make. I label them,for example,IPA,Wheat,etc. different grain mixtures for the different malt profiles give slightly different flavors & colors to the regular wheat flour they're mixed with.
The IPA grains,for example,give a light rye flavor & color. The Wheat grains are lighter,giving a light banana bread kind of flavor. Porter or stout grains are a lot like pumpernickle to me. that's the beauty of spent grain baking. And using your stand mixer with dough hook(s) couldn't be easier & quicker for breadstuffs. Here's brooklyn brewery's Spent Grain Chef page; http://brooklynbrewshop.com/themash/category/spentgrainchef/
One member told me that his wife loves the spent grain Falafel. I doubled the recipe for the spent grain pretzel rolls,& with 1C more water,makes these for burgers;
http://[URL=http://s563.photobucket.com/user/unionrdr/media/PICT0001_zpsbd329434.jpg.html] [/URL]
There are recipes on here for dog biscuits in one of the cooking forums below.
Peanut butter & bacon drippin is a combo the dogs really love. Or bacon maple. But the spent grain chef page continues to grow as they add more recipes. It's great fun & easy to do. Just let the resulting dough rise a couple times during the process. Just as you would between a starter & the actual fermenting beer.
New research indicates that beer pre-dates bread by some 3,000 years!! So why not bring them together for a very memorable meal?! And like The Frugel Gourmet,give a lil history with it,& it'll make it more memorable & meaningful to your guests.

I compost them in with my yard waste. I find that animals do not touch them at all. I do not have a dog and do not bake so they will eventually make it into the planting beds and lawn.

Once ground into flour,they can also be used in biscuits,pancakes,cupcakes,etc that use baking powder for leavening. Real easy to do. I'm thinking of spent grain hushpuppies as well. The Spent Grain chef gives many recipes that don't involve yeast. but after all the care we give brewer's yeasts & grains for our beer,baking with them seems like a natural extension of brewing to me.

rt4philly said:

Hey all-grain brewers. What do you do with your grains after you're done. Just toss them? Or do you do something special with them?

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I dump them on the ground in the chicken run. They love that stuff. They eat most of it in the first day or so then continue to scratch at it for the next week.
I have 8 birds, so they make pretty quick work of it.

They say the spent grains make the chickens nice & plump. Is that true from your perspective? There's a spent grain chicken on that page too. but I'd grind them into flour & mixed with wheat flour & seasonings for the tradditional method myself. gotta try that one. The spent grains would give a flavor to the coating that won't get buried by the regular flour I think.

I use round, enclosed compost bins and add spent grains to the compost. With the vegetable trimmings that I add daily, the grains make good compost

unionrdr said:

They say the spent grains make the chickens nice & plump. Is that true from your perspective? There's a spent grain chicken on that page too. but I'd grind them into flour & mixed with wheat flor & seasonings for the tradditional method myself. gotta try that one. The spent grains would give a flavor to the coating that won't get buried by the regular flour I think.

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Don't know. I've never had chickens that didn't eat spent grain. They are plump though. We feed them lots of fruits and veggies and yogurt and they have their crumble feed as well.

I dump them in a big pile, nothing eats it, including my dog and my dog eats poo. I do think some of the grains from two years ago have composted. I brew 18 gallons at a time so each brew day the pile grows 2-3, 5 gal buckets more.

Do you think they give more eggs as a result as well? I'm curious.

unionrdr said:

Do you think they give more eggs as a result as well? I'm curious.

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Well, it's hot as hell lately, which stresses the birds, and I still get 5-7 eggs a day. Not too shabby. These are new layers right now. They are only 6-1/2 months old.
I'm no chicken expert, by any means, but I think we're doing pretty good out here in the desert.

Does sound pretty good for some young chickens. Seems to me you have like5 or 6 layers? I wish I could have some chickens around here. but I could just see them dang coyotes comin in. Then I have to perform a lil automagic on dey asses.

unionrdr said:

Does sound pretty good for some young chickens. Seems to me you have like5 or 6 layers? I wish I could have some chickens around here. but I could just see them dang coyotes comin in. Then I have to perform a lil automagic on dey asses.

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Lots of coyotes here too. I built the coop and run like Ft Knox. I only let them roam the yard when I'm out there.



Sorry for the thread hijack OP.

Healthy lookin brood. But,getting back to things,There are as many ways to bake with spent grains as there are recipes to bake period. Just grind them into flour & replace some of the regular flour with the spent grain flour.
For example,if you're using 1C of corn meal & 1.5-2C of regular flour in hushpuppies or corn bread,replace the 1/2 cup with spent grain flour & proceed as normal. Or using 4C flour for biscuits,replace 1C with spent grain flour. Easy peasy. I love the flavors,colors,& textures the spent grain gives.

Maris Otter and some English 10-20L with a dash of English chocolate.

I see you've got a couple of guinie hens there. They look the healtiest to me.

They look pretty, but chickens freak me out. You know one will attack at any minute.

So I'm actually going to try and answer the question.

Hit up Craigslist homie. I put up an ad in my area and had 6 people hit me up in two days about taking it off my hands. I said for trade too. I haven't bought eggs in months. Tell them to bring buckets and meet them somewhere with your mash tun. (Bring a large spoon to help you dump it.) The people trading me love it. Most of them complain about how many eggs they have. Well I'll sure help out consuming farm fresh eggs. They feed the grain it to chickens, pigs, goats, ponies, and other animals I'm sure. Awesome deal with local farmers. Will soon be getting goat meat too.

It also helps if you bring them a beer or two to try out.

mikescooling said:

I dump them in a big pile, nothing eats it

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I generally dump my spent grains in a pile out back too. And like you, I notice that whenever I go back there, the pile is always undisturbed. No insects rummaging around, no animals have touched it and nothing grows in it. I've always attributed this to the fact that in the mash tun, I've essentially extracted all the starches / sugars, and therefore any nutrition, out of the grains. Animals just don't see any point in consuming it I guess. Yes, certainly cattle and hogs will eat it, but they'll pretty much eat anything dumped in their trough. I've heard chickens seem to like it but that it should be considered a snack for them and not a primary food source.
Am I wrong? Besides maybe adding texture and bulk, is there anything to be gained by consuming spent grains?

As I posted earlier,dry the grains out in a 200F oven for several hours,turning once an hour to dry them evenly. Cool & store in zip lock freezer bags. I use a Mr Coffee burr grinder on espresso setting to get a medium fine flour. They add fiber,texture,color & flavor to baked goods. Some recipes use them unground. Here's the Brooklyn Brewery's Spent Grain Chef page;http://brooklynbrewshop.com/themash/category/spentgrainchef/

Into the plastic compost bin. The city picks it up every Tuesday.

While I like the idea of cooking with grains it seems like a lot of work AND I'll have a ton of grain I'll probably never use. I don't bake that often. Composting seems more my speed. Anything special I need to do when composting?

With the right equipment it's not hard at all. Most of yur time is spent waiting for dough to rise.

There's one thing I don't get regarding baking with spent grains: The "good part" (the starchy payload) is already gone, right? So aren't you basically just baking with dry, crunchy, nutritionally void husks? Do they actually taste good? Isn't the texture off-putting? Is there any good reason to do this other than to feel like you're actually using the spent husks (baking bad-tasting, horribly-textured cookies) rather than dumping the grains into the garbage or compost?

If spent-grain-cookies actually tasted good, why aren't there any in the cookie aisle in the grocery store?

^ this lol!
I've tasted them after a 60 min. mash and, to me, they are very nearly flavorless. I wish i could come up with something constructive to do with them but at this point, it's all just waste material.

Some of you guys really belong in that thread about starting troll threads on purpose. A certain person here is really startin to get on my damn nerves for being seemingly negative at just the right time. Cut it out,it's not funny.
Starches are not "good for you". They are filler,& little more than that. And not even all the sugar is rinsed out of them or the dough wouldn't stick to an oiled sheet in the oven. & yes,they add flavor to other flour when you mix it in.
Haven't you trouble mongering wise asses read anything I've posted on this,or you wanna troll some for sport???!
And they are not "empty husks. What the hell is your problem? And don't polish your halo. You lmow what you're doing.

I feed mine to the horses. They (the horses) have learned when they smell wort boiling, it will be feeding time soon. An 18-19lb. grain bill from a 10 gallon batch of stout makes for some might fine eating according to them.
A plus is, if you are brewing in the winter, you can forgo one feeding, since they are eating up this stuff instead of grain, alfalfa, or whatever you are feeding.

unionrdr said:

Some of you guys really belong in that thread about starting troll threads on purpose. A certain person here is really startin to get on my damn nerves for being seemingly negative at just the right time. Cut it out,it's not funny.
Starches are not "good for you". They are filler,& little more than that. And not even all the sugar is rinsed out of them or the dough wouldn't stick to an oiled sheet in the oven. & yes,they add flavor to other flour when you mix it in.
Haven't you trouble mongering wise asses read anything I've posted on this,or you wanna troll some for sport???!
And they are not "empty husks. What the hell is your problem? And don't polish your halo. You lmow what you're doing.

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Calm down, union, I'm not trying to get under your skin, I was just asking a question. I've never had "spent grain" cookies. I know in regular cookies, one of the main ingredients is flour, which is the starcy middle of the wheat kernel, and the rest of the wheat husk is discarded. However, with these "spent grain" recipes, it seems like we're doing the opposite. That is, there's no more of the starch left (or at least, very little, as you pointed out), and we're using the dry, crunchy shell of the kernel which as far as I know, doesn't have any redeeming nutritional value.

You don't have to jump down my throat - I was just asking if I was missing something. The best suggestions I've seen so far have been to bake dog biscuits with them, or use them in pizza dough and bury them under other, better tasting ingredients.

Well,the way the posts are written,it reads like a "troll post". After reading that thread in the other forum,that was my gut reaction.
Anyway,Yes,flour is generally made with the starchy part we convert to sugars. but what's weird to me is the fact that it's still there in the middle. I see it grinding the dried grains into flour in my Mr Coffee burr grinder. Idk if you've seen them at Walmart,but they're intended to do some 18 different grinds on coffee beans. once I read they were "burr" grinders (think mini adjustable grain mill),It made me go hmmm. And the espresso setting (finest one) does a medium fine grind that works rather well.
It's just a paradox to me why we get so many sugars out of them,but much of the center remains? And yes,the husks are still there,but ground up like what you see in whole grain bread. I first saw this with my spent grain pretzel buns;
http://[URL=http://s563.photobucket.com/user/unionrdr/media/PICT0001_zpsbd329434.jpg.html] [/URL]
You can just see them in this pic. The IPA grains I ground & used gave it a beautifull light rye color,kind of a light creamy brown. The flavor was similar to that kind of rye as well. But lighter,since it was 1C spen grain flour to 5C wheat flour. Easy to bite through & chew,even as pretzel bread. You can use the flour in cupcakes,biscuits,focatia,pizza dough,even falafel! Here's a link to brooklyn brewries spent grain chef page,which is updated too; http://brooklynbrewshop.com/themash/category/spentgrainchef/
A look at these recipes should give you an idea of how they work out when properly "reused". Pics of each too. Whatever it is that's left,seems to be of some substance,since they work so well to flavor & color baked goods. They give some substance in order to do this,as can be seen in the recipe pics. Flavors & colors are dependant,of course,on the combination of grains used for the wort then dried. I label the bags for what beer was made from them. IPA,wheat,pale ale,etc. The stout grains can be used to make a pumpernickel. I hope this sheds some light on the subject. They're darn good used for baking.

I do smallish all grain batches and usually use about 3kg (~6lb) of grain. I dry about half the spent grain in the oven and use it in bread making. The secret is not to use too much, after plenty of experiments I have found a 6 to 1 ratio of plain flour to dried grain works very well and tastes fantastic. Not just OK for spent grain but truly great bread, I make it 3-4 times a week.

I have also tried making flapjack which also works very well, again don't overdo it with the grain. I made the falafel mentioned earlier except baked instead of deep fried, another tasty use. Even after drying and making things I always have more grain than I can use, I don't think its practical to use every last bit.

Now that my son has chickens, I let them have them.

But I have made dog treats, bread, and composted them.

LibertyBrewer said:

I feed mine to the horses.

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I had heard that spent grains were not good for horses. Cows and chickens are ok but I was told horses don't digest them very well and can get bound up in their digestive track.

plainbrad said:

I had heard that spent grains were not good for horses. Cows and chickens are ok but I was told horses don't digest them very well and can get bound up in their digestive track.

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source please.. considering giving to my future sister-in-law's horse.

My pigs love the spent grains.

BeerGrylls said:

source please.. considering giving to my future sister-in-law's horse.

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I love your hbt name lol that is all.



I used to scoop mine into ziploc bags and toss in the freezer, then I read it takes hours to dry them so I tossed them.
But I think next time I will try and dry some to use for baking. I've recently got into pairing beer and cheeses, I think pairing beer with baked goods will be another step.
I love caramelizing amber ales into a glaze for coffee cakes and such, maybe a spent grain coffee cake will be my first attempt

I think they'd work well for coffee cakes,since not all the sugery wort gets rinsed out. My buns stuck to the oiled sheet during baking. So there's def some sweet sticky goodness in there. Makes me wanna dig out that raised amish coffee cake recipe & try it this way. The story goes that they make it to take to another persons house when visiting. Or wakes & such. Their funeral (raisin) pie might be good with spent grain crust.