Brewing with Bread

[rippajak]

Hi all,

Back in the July-August edition of BYO there was an article about a U.K. brewery that uses toast as an adjunct in their beer. I work at a pizza shop where we routinely throw out large volumes of unused bread, specifically breadsticks, and it got me thinking that maybe I could put some of that waste to use. After all, if I can get something for free and turn it into beer, why would I not give it a go? Would I actually be able to extract fermentable sugar from waste bread? Would I create a giant, unlauterable mass of dough in my mash tun? There was only one way to know.

The next weekend I cooked off a bunch of the extra sticks and brought them back to the workshop. After giving them a few days to go good and stale, I cut each of them in half and laid them out on a baking sheet. The sheets went into the oven at the lowest setting for 20 minutes or so, long enough to dry the bread out completely and give it a very light toast. The next step was to break them apart into smaller, mashable pieces. After mangling my hand with a serrated knife, I broke down and had my girlfriend teach me to use the food processor.

I decided to keep the recipe for this experimental batch very basic, as I want to be able to observe the flavor and effect of the breadsticks very clearly. A 2:1 ratio of plain 2-row to prepared breadstick material seemed appropriate. For a 5 gallon batch, I settled on 6 lbs and 3 lbs, along with a few fistfuls of rice hulls.

I don't usually use a protein-rest in my brews, but given the amount of, erm.... weird stuff going into this one, it seemed prudent. I doughed-in at 123.6° F, a little higher than my target of 122°. Since I am limited by my plastic MLT to doing multiple infusion mashes, my initial mash was quite thick.

One of the first things that I noticed was that the breadstick bits wanted to float on top of the rest of the mash. This made me a little concerned about actually extracting anything from them, but gave me hope that the sparge wouldn't stick solid. I grossly missed my temperature on my first attempt at bringing the mash up to the saccharification rest, and had to give it another infusion of boiling water to hit 148.5°. By this time it was looking a bit more like a normal mash.

Beer gods be praised, I didn't have any problems with runoff. Well, other than the fact that I opened the valve on my HLT way too wide and turned my back on it. What should have been a slow, steady fly-sparge turned into a not-quite-batch-sparge in under 10 minutes. Oh well, worse things have happened. The wort ran off very pale. Even the first runnings were golden straw.

During the boil I threw in some Boadicea hops I had lying around in the freezer. Again, hops weren't meant to be the star of the show here.

The moment of truth was in taking the gravity reading. 1.053, a good sign that the bread had contributed something. Assuming 85% efficiency, Beersmith says that the 2-row would have only gotten me to 1.038. Even 100% and I would have only hit 1.044. Now we wait and see if that something is the sort of something that yeast can eat.

 

[specharka]

Awesome write up and experiment here. I would expect it to taste very similar to an American wheat beer. The only issue I might see is if there are any adulterants in the bread (salt, preservatives, etc) that might taint the water chemistry. Ancient beer was made with stale bread, after all.

Looking forward to seeing the results.

 

[VladOfTrub]

I think that trying bread is great. You didn't use anything weird. What's the difference in using bread made from unmalted wheat or using unmalted brewers wheat? If oil, butter or dough stretcher is added to the bread mixture, then issues can occur. Don't worry about not hitting proteinase temperature precisely at 122F, the temperature used is OK. Although, the mash temperature did not hit target temperature the first time, do not worry about target temperature. Target temperatures that brewers work so diligently to achieve are temperatures which are used for testing malt in the malt house, anyway. The first temperature may have been more suitable for Beta or if the temperature was around 128 to 132F, proteinase will reduce beta glucan causing viscosity to reduce.
Next time use iodine and test for starch, just to be sure that enzymes liquefied the starch.
The rest temperature was lower than sacharification temperature. The temperature was on the high end of Beta and Beta is responsible for conversion. Beta converts glucose into maltose and malto-trios. Alpha performs the work during saccharification. However, Alpha was active during the rest at 148F. The final product will be less sweet tasting and I think that it will work because the beer was the color associated with drier, cleaner tasting styles of beer. If the beer is thin after aging, next time, boil a small portion of the base malt and use the boiling mash to reach the next higher temperature. Boiling the mash releases amylo-pectin and the starch is responsible for body. During dextrinization enzymes liquefy the starch and A and B limit dextrin forms. Limit dextrin is responsible for body. The sugar is tasteless and non-fermenting. Dextrinization occurs at 149F.
This what I would do with wort being such a great color. I would have used Lager yeast and during first fermentation, at seven days I would check the gravity. The gravity should be around 1020. When gravity drops to 1020 the beer is transferred into a secondary fermentation vessel. If gravity drops lower than 1020 the wort is sugar imbalanced. Anyway, the beer was too nice looking to have yeast and trub booger up the flavor by being left in the primary vessel for a few weeks.
The reason for using second fermentation is due to the maltose rest. Maltose does not ferment in the same fashion as glucose. During second fermentation, a type of conversion occurs. Yeast absorbs maltose through the cell wall and converts it from within itself into glucose. Yeast expels the glucose which becomes fuel and gravity decreases. The oxygen needed to burn the fuel is bound within the molecular structure of the sugar. When gravity reduces to 1015, keg the beer. Do not prime the beer. Allow the beer to age and as it ages yeast will absorb malto-trios and natural carbonation will occur. The beer should fall bright during aging.
The carbonation developed by Mother Nature will not be soda pop fizz which is inherent with beer that is primed or artificially carbonated. The head will stand and be very thick.
If you are going to play around with various enzymatic temperature ranges, purchase the finest malt. Less expensive, high modified, high protein malt is not as rich in enzymes or in sugar content as the more expensive under modified, low protein malt.
Pay attention to pH and adjust pH according to the pH optimum for the active enzyme.
Again, if the beer is thin, next time work with amylo-pectin, it will give the beer the backbone that is needed during aging/conditioning.
GREAT JOB on producing the beer!!!

 

[bacgabe]

Look up kvass

 

[wilserbrewer]

Bread makes an acceptable adjunct. I have heard of the Aussies using regular wheat flour as an adjunct as well.

I have used pasta, thin overlooked spaghetti in the mash as well, makes nice beer, just a little weird looking at the mash lol....

 

[dryboroughbrewing]

I'll second the kvass recommendation, take a look at oldsock's blog he has a pretty cool kvass/porter hybrid that I thought turned out particularly well. http://www.themadfermentationist.com/p/recipes-for-beer.html

 

[rippajak]

Finally, a follow-up!

After a primary fermentation period of... well... I didn't actually take great notes on this one. I want to say 3 or 4 weeks?

I decided to keg this beer, because bottling is a lot of work. Final gravity came in at 1.011, which is more-or-less the kind of attenuation I would expect from an all-malt brew. On that alone, I consider the experiment a success!

The taste of the hydrometer sample was a little sketchy. There was a distinct breadiness to it, which I had expected, but it also tasted a bit off in a way that I can't quite describe. Once chilled and carbed, however, this off-flavor mostly disappeared. The final product was quite drinkable. If I were to pick out its greatest flaw, it would be a lack of flavor, in a way similar to a BMC beer or a cream ale. Given a very simple grain bill, mild British hop, and clean-fermenting yeast, I suppose that is to be expected. It does have a pronounced haze, much like a hefe, which I attribute to the wheat/bread content. I did forget the Irish moss during the boil, which may have helped with that.

I definitely plan on a follow-up brew. I think on the next round I will shoot for an American Blonde style. I'm thinking of adding in a half pound each of Vienna and Caramel 60L malts, using Centennial and Citra hops, and perhaps switching to a British Ale yeast for a little more character. What do you guys think?

@VladofTrub
Thank you for your encouraging words. You strike me as a very old-school brewer, and one who knows his science, at that. Respect. I would definitely consider lagering this beer, I think you're spot-on that it would lend itself to a lager. Unfortunately, I do not have the set up to do a lager fermentation yet. I'm in the process of building a lagering chest. Once I do, I may very well give that a shot.

As for PH, I do now have a Ph meter. This was actually the last brew that I did without one. Based on my findings since using one, I would guess that the Ph of this mash was a little out of whack, but not badly. On a similarly pale brew I measured an initial Ph of 5.42 before adding a bit of phosphoric acid.

Decoction is another thing I've been meaning to take a stab at. You've definitely encourage me to do it sooner, rather than later.

@dryboroughbrewing
I love his blog. His write-ups are so thorough and interesting.

I had never heard of kvass before, but now I am fascinated. The way he chose to treat the bread is so strange to me. I would think that mushing it up and boiling it would just create a huge mess with very little conversion/extraction. But apparently it works out. It illustrates one of the things I love most about this hobby: there are so many ways to go about things!

 

[Martin steele]

Hi can you give me a rough idea of sugar from 1 kg of bread.

Just wondering if it's worth the effort.

Regards Martin