New to GF brewing, please help!!!

[imp81318]

Hi all, as the title suggests, I am brand new to GF. My wife has a gluten intolerance, and we have not been able to definitively determine whether or not she reacts to beers I've made with Clarity Ferm so I'd like to make up a 1-2 gallon batch of some kind of summer ale for her. Not being gluten free myself, and having never tasted any of her GF beers, I am at a loss for where to even start with formulating a recipe or anything. One of my recent brews was a blonde ale with citrus notes that she really likes, so I am thinking some kind of lighter summer ale style.

Her biggest complain with her GF beers is that they don't taste like beer. We think we have it narrowed to the flavors from the sorghum, but can't say definitively. Up to this point, I have done exclusively extract brews with specialty grains steeped for added flavor/character/color, but I have not ventured into all grain brewing yet. I am open to trying out a BIAB for this batch since it will be small enough, but I do not have the equipment necessary to get into a conventional all grain brew (mash tun, etc).

So, with all of that said, where do I even start? I've been reading as much as I can in this forum but I still feel completely lost. Do I need my own grain mill, or can I buy milled GF grains? Are there liquid (or dry) GF extracts available other than sorghum? Where do I even shop for GF grains?

I know I'm asking a lot here, but thanks in advance to anyone that takes on the monumental challenge of trying to help me out!

 

[RVAgaffer]

I am very new to brewing as a whole. I was diagnosed with celiac at 18 so I didn't get a lot of beer to compare to before going GF.

I have only made one kit beer and one 'Partial Mash' (i use quotes because the only 'partial' part about it was that i added less than 3 lbs of syrup/extract compared to 10 lbs of grain).

Here are some tips I have already discovered from my research and my first runs:

1- Fancy mash tuns, hot liquor tanks, etc are not idea for GF brewing. The ideal base grains (i.e. lots of millet) are too small to do fly sparring with out stuck mashes. Some people use a lot of rice (with hulls), rice hulls, buckwheat, etc to give larger particles to create a grain bed but even then they have issues. I used a coleman 5 gallon cooler off the shelf with no modifications and just used a grain bag in it with great results (about 25-30 bucks for the 2 from amazon, granted i don't have a spigot so i dispense gently into a mug and then gently pour to prevent splashing, not ideal but its a cheap way to get into using grain)

2- Mashing times and temps need to be adjusted and you NEED to use extra enzymes. I got diatase enzyme from EC Kraus and used it at the maximum according to the directions. Added enzyme to initial mash water, mashed in at 125*F, brought back to temp and did a protein rest for 30 mins. Added boiling water and heat to bring to 160*f (163 was final after i transferred into the cooler, 163.4* is what one of the Millet producers say is the correct temperature). Rest time should be 2 hours (i went to 2:40 and noticed improved starch test compared to 2 hours but you will probably never get a clean 'pass' if you use the test). I batch sparged with about 1 gallons each time for 3 times (for 10# grain), I went to about 175*f but could have gone lower with my set up as it didn't cool off as much as I expected. I let each sparge sit for about 15 mins (stirred it well for the first couple of mins).

3- Pale Millet malt sees to be a good base grain as well as buckwheat malt. Both of these and others can be had from glutenfreehomebrewing.org (they are out of stock on buckwheat but they told me they are about a week out from a resupply). Sorghum syrup seems to be best used as an addition to boost points and kept below 50%. Unless you are using grains you are limited to sorghum, brown rice syrup (but I have not found it in stock anywhere in the last couple of months), brown rice solids, and candi syrup.

4-Mill, you can get a cheap corona style grain mill on amazon for 20-30 bucks tops, again its not 'perfect' but it works fine. Now you want to mill the grain more than you would with barley, mix my grains together and mill everything fine enough to crack all the millet but not fine enough to make flour, this seemed to work pretty well so far. I have not found a place that sells milled GF grains (there aren't a lot of GF grain suppliers to start with) and if they sell gluten containing grains I would not trust that the milled grain would be clean.

I don't really have a lot of experience but I have been doing a lot of research and thinking about this over the last couple of months. I have a post that details a summer citrus ale I brewed 2 weeks ago with my own recipe. Not sure how it will be but it at least seemed drinkable when I took a sample at racking time.

I hope this at least gave you some direction... even if it may be the mostly blind leading the blind

 

[max42]

Nice post RVA

 

[RVAgaffer]

Nice post RVA

Haha thanks... The older I get the longer posts I make on forums... An I am a rather young adult so it may get really bad when I am an "old" guy.

 

[brwmistr]

Sorghum has it flavor and its only masked with other flavors like pear or other fruit so to get away from that you will have to experiment with malting and roasting your own millet to improve the beer taste to something like beer that your used to.
I have made a GF beer that tastes (as my wife will tell you) better than Guinness Draught and I have been working the millet malt and roast schedule to my taste to get it that way. You have to experiment with millet malts rice malts and other malts like buckwheat to get the flavor. A 100% sorghum beer with have a metal taste and thats only because of the sorghum.
There its a quick answer to this...unfortunately.