Help needed please :)

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ggbinks65

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Hi, I'm new to the forum but been brewing wine and beer (from kits) for 34 years now.

I have recently moved to a country that doesn't have home brewing suppliers. I'm also not too keen on ordering stuff through the post.

I have access to rye flakes, wheat bran, porridge oats, molasses raw unrefined sugar, treacle and bakers yeast. All the aforementioned ingredients are very very cheap.

My question is this; Could I make anything resembling a beer with those ingredients? Please don't laugh :)

Any recipes or suggestions? :confused:

Thanks for any help you can offer :confused:
 
Those ingredients alone won't make beer, IMO. You need malted barley, hops, water and yeast. The bakers yeast is not good for beer. All of those ingredients, except the yeast, and be used as adjuncts.

Good luck on finding better supplies.
 
If you want good beer I would just order stuff online. Anything alcoholic you try to ferment with bakers yeast will be just awful.
 
Thanks for your reply guys much appreciated. I was reading that oats and rye were used in the 'olden days' as a cheaper alternative to malted barley. I was hoping someone may have tried it on here. Anyway thanks for the information :)
 
Thanks for your reply guys much appreciated. I was reading that oats and rye were used in the 'olden days' as a cheaper alternative to malted barley. I was hoping someone may have tried it on here. Anyway thanks for the information :)

To make beer from the rye and/or oats requires some enzymes to convert their starches to sugars. The way to do that is to malt the whole grains. Once flaked, it isn't possible to malt them. If you can get some malted barley, it can be used as the source for the enzymes and then you other grains can be added and the excess enzymes will convert their starches too but you do need the enzymes.

Beers have been made with other ingredients than hops too but we have other names for them and you would need to be careful what you use to substitute as some of the herbs mentioned may have an identical name to some that are poisonous.

Hops are light and most often sealed so they can withstand shipment as can dry yeasts. If your shipment is delayed a week it won't be a disaster like it might be if you ordered liquid yeast.

Use Google to search out info on using the flaked rye or oats and you will discover how to add them to the malted barley to make decent beer.
 
+1 on malting your own. Barley, wheat, rye, oats etc., can all be malted, then kilned or roasted. It's really not that difficult.

Indeed, bakeries and confectioners use malt powder and malt syrups, basically DME and LME.
 
In a similar situation, myself.

+2 on malting your own. Go to a feedstore or other agricultural type place and look for the best quality, unprocessed barley, wheat or oats you can find and malt those.

I'm attaching a how-to for malting wheat and barley to get you started.

Next, depending on you latitude, check out the possibility of growing your own hops.

It would take a few months or perhaps a full year to really get rolling with growing your own hops, but once you were up to speed, you'd probably never need to bother with the post again after ordering some rhizomes or viable seeds.

Good luck.

View attachment Malting.pdf
 
Thanks everyone who took the time to post your helpful comments! I'm in Malaysia, so obtaining DME is next to impossible. I've done a few batches using some malt extract from a kit I have been trying to 'stretch' by using the smallest amount I can 'get away with' :)
I've soaked the oats overnight then rinsed them continuously and added the murky runoff to a brew. Very fiddly and takes ages to clear, but was very interesting when left long enough. In fact the last bottle was excellent (there's probably a psychological reason for that eh?).
The and rolled oats are $1.50 for a kilogram, so really hoping I can use them for more than just adjuncts.
Thanks again all for your very helpful suggestions :)
 
Perhaps you can find diastatic malt powder. This is a bread making ingredient that has the enzymes that convert start into sugar. I had a bread recipe that called for this and used a spoonful of malted wheat finely ground in a spice grinder as a substitute. maybe you can go the other way...
 
If the rye is whole, you may be able to malt it and use in place of malt barley. But the rolled oats can only be used as an adjunct as it can not be malted.
 
Thanks for the tips, I'll look into that diastatic powder idea. Malaysia is semi dry with extraordinarily high taxation on beer, especially imported beer. I'm doing a search for the enzyme powder now. Thanks again :)
 
The enzymes you need to convert starch to fermentable sugars are alpha-amylase and beta-amylase. Those enzymes (and many others) are formed during "malting" of the (whole) kernels of various grains. Malting is a natural process since it converts the starch reserves from the individual kernels into sugars that the sprouting plant needs to grow. To use those grains for brewing, the maltster (you) stops that growing process after a few days, when the enzymes have formed but just in time before losing too much starch to the growing sprout.

That's why flaked or rolled grains cannot be malted, they can't grow a sprout anymore. They're great convertible starch resources as long as you have the enzymes (from another source) to perform that process. Simply soaking them in water will release starches but not convert appreciable amounts to sugars, since there are not enough enzymes present to do that.

You can buy these enzymes in powder form, and they will work fine, but from what I've read it's better to use regular malt instead. As suggested before, buy some whole grain and start malting.

Note: Those enzymes are also in saliva. Read up on how "real sake" is made, for example.
 
Couple things.

Most (not all) banana peels have a generous amount of amylase enzyme, so you could experiment with using banana peels to convert the starch in your oats to sugar.

You want the kind of bananas that get sweet when they ripen and not the type of bananas that stay starchy forever. And you want to start with greener peels, as they are at their peak amylase content.

Whip them in a blender with a bit of water, grind your oats finely but not too fine, mix the banana peels and oats, proceed with a typical mashing procedure, and see what happens.

Also, if you ferment blackstrap molasses, you'll come surprisingly close to something resembling Guinness Stout. Try 1 liter of blackstrap molasses to 4-6 liters of water, ferment that, and see what you think.

It won't be true "beer", of course, but it'll still be a surprisingly nice, robust, stout-like drink.
 

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