Hello Gluten Free Brewing World

[Silly Yak]

I just found this forum and am highly motivated to start brewing my own gluten free beer. I was diagnosed as Celiac at the start of 2016(I'm 42) and no longer am able to drink regular beer. I live in Seattle and frequently enjoy Ghostfish Brewing(very frequently) and Ground Breaker which are available in my local grocery store. I have a friend who has brewed glutinous beers and is willing to let me use his set up to brew a test run gluten free brew. Had a few questions:

Is cross contamination an issue?

Should I just not be a cheap ass and buy my own rig?

I'm an IPA lover. Any recipe suggestions?

I'm looking forward to the first time I get to sip from my own concoction.

Thanks,

Silly Yak

 

[skleice]

Hey there,

We have a lot in common. Last year, I was diagnosed with Celiac's after my 40th birthday. Had to say goodbye to all of those beers I loved so much and turned to home brewing. As to your questions...

1). Cross contamination is certainly an issue.

2). You should get your own gear due to CC.

3). This is a good place to start for a first brew. It's not going to taste nearly as good as the real thing because it's all extract, but it will get you started with the process.

http://ghostfishbrewing.com/ghostfishblog/gfhomebrewing-grapefruit-ipa/

This is a decent partial mash brew with unmalted grains.

https://www.glutenfreehomebrewing.org/recipes/showrecipe.php?recipeid=21

There are a lot of recipes on Glutenfreehomebrewing.org

Good Luck!

 

[Silly Yak]

Thanks skleice. Let the adventure begin!

 

[JMath]

Hi Silly Yak. For a gluten-intolerant like myself, I wouldn't say cross contamination is a big issue, depending on your friend's cleaning methods and equipment. However, celiac is a more serious thing, so you should approach it carefully.

If you want to steer on the side of caution, you should get your own equipment. On the other hand, upon your diagnosis, did you throw away every dish and utensil you owned and buy everything new? My guess would be no, you just cleaned it. So by that logic, using your friend's equipment is the same as using your previously-glutened kitchen equipment, as long as it is cleaned well.

The one thing you'd definitely want to stay away from is using your friend's mill, if you/they do all grain brews.

+1 to the Ghostfish IPA, it is the perfect place to start. I wouldn't bother with the gypsum in it, unless you know your water needs it.

 

[jguthner]

I would also highly recommend brewing that Ghostfish grapefruit IPA, and I would even go so far as to say that it's not just a great GF beer, it's a pretty solid beer overall. I'm not celiac but my wife is, so I drink GF and non-GF beers side by side...this one really holds up against its "normal" counterparts. I brewed it last summer, and several members of my local homebrew club said that if I hadn't told them it was GF they would not have known, and thought it was fantastic.

I tweaked the recipe a little. I made my own candi syrup (easier than I thought), and also added peelings from 3 grapefruit during secondary fermentation. It was easy drinking, and absolutely loaded with citrus flavor. It's now a must-brew recipe every spring...this year I'll be trying to convert to it all grain and see the results.

 

[Silly Yak]

Thanks JMath. I'm definitely celiac and over the course of the past 2 years we've replaced all wooden and non-stick items in the kitchen. I have two little kids so we're not a completely GF household but it's pretty close. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to get my own gear if I will be strictly brewing GF. Cheers

 

[Silly Yak]

Thanks jguthner. In your estimation would you consider the Ghostfish Grapefruit IPA an "easy" level recipe for a noob like myself? I didn't want to get in over my head but I do love that beer.

 

[brews2gf]

Welcome fellow Celiac! The answers to these questions depend on a few things:

1) how sensitive are you to gluten-reduced beer? If you can handle Glutiny or similar, then you should consider Clarity Ferm (CF) and using regular ingredients. Just make sure you pitch enough for your grain mix (i.e. if lots of wheat) use the white Labs site calculator. I definitely react to gluten and am a confirmed Celiac (last real bun I ate w/ a burger caused temporary partial blindness and migraine in addition to the usual GI circus), but I’ve had many CF (also known as Brewer’s Clarex) beers and not had a reaction.

2) if you are getting your buddy’s gear clean enough, you shouldn’t have a cross contamination problem, especially if using PBW to soak. If you have CC, you have infection problems too.

3) you can still be a cheap ass and buy your own. check craigslist because there’s always someone looking to dump their gear (non-celiac ppl have less reason to brew their own IMO, and therefore more likely to quit). Also, at first you might consider buying gear to do small batches to help experiment more upfront to iterate more sustainably. I have 160 beers in my basement from 5 gallon batches and just want to brew more variety but I’m running out of room.

4) no help for IPA’s, I’m fairly new myself.

 

[skleice]

Thanks jguthner. In your estimation would you consider the Ghostfish Grapefruit IPA an "easy" level recipe for a noob like myself? I didn't want to get in over my head but I do love that beer.

It's very easy. If you can follow a basic cooking recipe you'll be fine. It is a simplified version of what you're used to drinking. I'm envious that you can get Ghostfish locally. I ordered some to try it, but the shipping was brutal. Peak Buster was great!

You could probably get away with brewing a batch on your buddy's gear as long as you really clean and sanitize well. You won't be milling any grains, so it should be fine imo.

 

[brewGF]

For those of you that have brewed the ghost fish grapefruit IPA I have a question. Other than the impact on hops isomerization, is there any reason to add half of the Sorghum syrup at the end instead of beginning?

 

[Silly Yak]

For those of you that have brewed the ghost fish grapefruit IPA I have a question. Other than the impact on hops isomerization, is there any reason to add half of the Sorghum syrup at the end instead of beginning?

I definitely do not know the answer to this question but it leads to many questions as to the basics of brewing chemistry and food science. There are many steps that appear to have been carefully coordinated that I'm not quite sure as to the reason they're done. Perhaps I need to invest in some home brewing literature or read some more of the forums. Anyways cheers and happy brewing!

 

[Silly Yak]

Well I bit the bullet and purchased the Premium Homebrew Starter Kit from MoreBeer along with the ingredients for the Ghostfish Grapefruit IPA from GlutenFreeHomeBrewing.org. I was able to borrow my buddies burner and I'm going to step into the great wilderness tomorrow. Wish me luck on the adventure. I don't have a secondary fermentor so I'm not sure about the dry hopping part of the recipe and I might have to wing that part. Hopefully it turns out great.

Anyone else brewing this weekend?

 

[skleice]

Well I bit the bullet and purchased the Premium Homebrew Starter Kit from MoreBeer along with the ingredients for the Ghostfish Grapefruit IPA from GlutenFreeHomeBrewing.org. I was able to borrow my buddies burner and I'm going to step into the great wilderness tomorrow. Wish me luck on the adventure. I don't have a secondary fermentor so I'm not sure about the dry hopping part of the recipe and I might have to wing that part. Hopefully it turns out great.

Anyone else brewing this weekend?

Many people believe a secondary is totally unnecessary, so don't sweat it. Good Luck!

I'm pretty sure Santa is going to leave me a grain mill under the tree ;-) so I'll be brewing my first all grain batch on Tuesday. I'm gonna do a half batch of the Porter from GFHB and hope to do an IPA later in the week.

 

[Silly Yak]

Alright first brew day is a wrap. Definitely an eye opening experience when it comes to coordinating all of the steps involved with brewing, sanitizing, organizing etc. I went ahead and did the Ghostfish Grapefruit IPA recipe that is linked in another post above. OG came out at 1.065 if I measured that correctly . Now I just need to find a hiding spot for the carboy so that my kids don't mess with it. I did manage to make a huge mess so that was pretty fun. Wort cooled down very quickly with the immersion chiller and the weather hovering in the mid 30's.

Onward and upward. Let the yeast do its magic.

 

[jguthner]

Thanks jguthner. In your estimation would you consider the Ghostfish Grapefruit IPA an "easy" level recipe for a noob like myself? I didn't want to get in over my head but I do love that beer.

It was one of my first extract recipes, and a little planning went a long way, but yes I would consider it an easy brew day. As I see you've learned since this post, there's a bit of coordination to get everything prepped and ready so that the brew day goes smoothly. I "dry-ran" the entire brew day on paper (probably overkill) complete with instructions to myself so that I wouldn't forget to do the little stuff that rarely appears in brewing instructions. I have too many penguins and not a very big iceberg, so if I can do it, believe me you can too. Once you get a couple extract brews under your belt, switching to grain if you so choose is a relatively easy transition.

Glad to hear you brewed the Grapefruit IPA, let us know how it turned out!

 

[Silly Yak]

Alright I HAD to crack one of these tonight. I have to say that the hoppy flavor really mellowed from my hydrometer readings. Perhaps it was the replacement of buckwheat honey for clover honey. My beer had much less of a hoppy bitterness. Next IPA I will up the bittering hops. Either way I’m proud to say I brewed my first GF beer. Cheers!!!

 

[KeinGluten]

Alright I HAD to crack one of these tonight. I have to say that the hoppy flavor really mellowed from my hydrometer readings. Perhaps it was the replacement of buckwheat honey for clover honey. My beer had much less of a hoppy bitterness. Next IPA I will up the bittering hops. Either way I’m proud to say I brewed my first GF beer. Cheers!!!

Awesome! Always great to see people get around gluten and make good beer anyway.

As far as the hoppy flavor goes, hop flavor/aroma decays with time and oxygen exposure, so that's likely why it seemed less hoppy than it did when you sampled it. I don't know if you sampled it many times or not, but the less times you open the fermenter, the less oxygen can get to your beer and mess up your hops. Anyway, congrats on your first brew!