What do you do with your spent grains?

[Bilsch]

I mix em with 30-50% dirt, which keeps it from stinking and then onto the compost pile. It degrades quite fast compared to other organic material handled this way.

 

[DarrellQ]

Our hens LOVE them. Eggs taste better too! (at least we think they do!)

 

[theothermillion]

I've started making dog treats. They are a huge hit with my dog and the other dogs in the neighborhood.

 

[OreCreekBrewery]

I've been trying to find a good way to dispose of spent grains. I'm thinking I'm just going to buy some heavy duty bags that'll hold the weight, bag them and throw them in the garbage can. They don't seem to compost very well...? (By compost, I mean spread out at the base of a pine tree lol).

Anyone have any creative ways of disposing of spent grains? I'm not looking to bake with them or anything crazy like that.

I have a friend who gladly takes them and uses them in his vegetable garden. I think he rototiller them into the ground and uses them as plant food.

 

[vindee]

It's a treat for the chickens. They look forward to brew day

 

[porterguy]

Some is used for dog treats, I already have a bunch dried and use it in granola. The bulk of it goes to the self-labeled "chicken-lady" in the house behind ours. She gives me 8-10 eggs for each batch of grain I give her. I've actually talked to her about informally trading my spent grain for her "chicken-processed" (read chicken poop) grain for my 40' x 40' community garden plot.

 

[couchsending]

Buddy just bought some pigs. They will be well fed pigs!

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

I dump mine in the woods. I was hoping the deer would eat it but they must have better food choices near me.

 

[Beermeister32]

I give my spent grains to a friend at work. She makes these dog bisquits for her family's pets. Uses peanut butter in the mix, dogs love them!

 

[Saffersa]

variety of things
if I'm feeling lazy, I'll dig a big hole in the side garden on the other side of my backyard fence drop it in there and cover it up with dirt.
or maybe I'll dump some into my worm composter. I've got a really stinky one (just a big pot full of dirt, coffee grounds and fruit scraps) and a proper stacking worm house.
or I'll ziplock a couple bags and throw them in the freezer
or I'll dry 3 big cookie pans worth...because that is all my oven will fit and it takes for flippin ever...
or maybe make some bread with the wet grain straight away...
think I've used either dried grains or ground dried grains so far in..sourdough bread, sandwich bread, a couple different cookie recipes and banana bread.

I've been thinking about asking a neighbor down the street if they would be interested in taking some off of my hands as they have some fancy chickens hanging out in their yard. Too much talking and explaining why I'm standing at their door in covid times....this can wait.

There is a micro brewery not that far from me that donates their grains to a local farmer and I have asked them if I could bring my own by to donate as well in the past. But..I was only a casual fan of their beer...and they seem to have gotten worse in quality the past few months. "Here are some grains that I wanted to donate to the farmer you guys know....no....I don't want any of your beer, sorry." Convo that I'm not really wanting to have.

I reckon you could write weekly columns - had some good chuckles at this

 

[Saffersa]

Compost heaps till now- I have 2 x big 1 meter square open-top bins that all the garden, kitchen-greens waste goes into. And straight after brewing, cos the stench is unbearable if left covered somewhere. No smell from the compost heaps, at least not that the neighbours have commented on.

 

[Senormac]

chickens and compost for my hop beds

 

[Ragman]

This. Chickens love it.

 

[Surly]

It was easy when a friend had 1000 ducks to feed. She moved on from ducks. So. I had to as well. I dump it in my pollinator field. Critters with big feet stop by and eat it.

 

[mashpaddled]

It goes in the compost for the most part. If the lid doesn't fully seal then squirrels or mice eat it.

 

[jdudek]

The girls, having an Irish red.... Cheers ladies!

 

[day_trippr]

I've oft mentioned my spent grains usually go to the neighbor's chickens (and now, ducks) but that I have been composting batches that used rice hulls out of concern they might harm said fowl.

This thread might be the ideal place to ask: is my concern unfounded?

Those birds are so used to scurrying/waddling over, it's sad when I vector to the compost pile and leave them all hanging along their fence line...

Cheers!

 

[DBhomebrew]

I've oft mentioned my spent grains usually go to the neighbor's chickens (and now, ducks) but that I have been composting batches that used rice hulls out of concern they might harm said fowl.

This thread might be the ideal place to ask: is my concern unfounded?

The concern about birds and rice is the expansion of raw rice kernels post-ingestation. A quick Google search brings up a ton of hits regarding hulls as feed supplement. Maybe run it by your neighbor for their ok?

 

[jcav]

I must have smart chickens. I use rice hulls all the time when I brew and when I give my hens the spent grains they always eat the grains and leave the rice hulls uneaten on the ground. They probably ingest some of them and then decide they don't like them and disregard the rest of them.......

John

 

[shetc]

SWMBO is making some doggy biscuits with witbier spent grain.

 

[Gusso]

When I lived in Key West I fed the fishes the spent grain in the canal. they loved it

Similarly, I dump them in the pond next to my house.

 

[Gresco]

Toss them on top of my flower bed. Looks nice.

 

[Novacor]

I live in an apartment complex so I just walk outside and dump the contents of my brew bag right into the dumpster.

 

[shetc]

When I lived in Key West I fed the fishes the spent grain in the canal. they loved it

Weren't you worried about the chickens?

 

[day_trippr]

The concern about birds and rice is the expansion of raw rice kernels post-ingestation. A quick Google search brings up a ton of hits regarding hulls as feed supplement. Maybe run it by your neighbor for their ok?

Of course we have had this chicken feeding thing going for a couple of years now since he first got his original flock (foxes and coyote got that first dozen), but I would be surprised if "rice hulls" would even be in my neighbor's lexicon

Rather than put him in the middle I just opted for the compost pile, but I think I'll give him an explainer and maybe we'll do a test drive with a few pounds...

Cheers!

 

[jdudek]

my chickens also seem to leave rice hulls and anything that looks like a husk on the ground and eat around it

 

[day_trippr]

Good to know. Thanks!

 

[RufusBrewer]

As a city boy, the trash service gives me 3 bins: trash/landfill, recycle & yard waste/compost. They pick up the yard waste once a week. After the truck takes it away, I have no idea what happens to it.

After seeing and smelling what happens to grains after a day or two in the bin, good riddance.

 

[SBaker]

A craft brewery, near me, gives theirs to a horse farmer who feeds them to the horses.
I put mine the the trash, since I live in the city.

 

[pc_trott]

I either put mine in the compost pile, or put them in my wormbox. The worms seem to like them after they've matured a bit. (Yeah, my other hobby is gardening.)

 

[LuukGx]

Mine go to a local pig farmer, those mofo's will eat anything

 

[RufusBrewer]

And do you eat the mofo's that will eat anything? If so, that makes you a scavenger by proxy.

Awwww Yeah.

 

[LuukGx]

Yeah we actually buy the guy's pigs for our restaurant!

 

[jdudek]

Mine go to a local pig farmer, those mofo's will eat anything

the movie Snatch comes to mind...

You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig ****, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig."

 

[LuukGx]

Love that movie man! Brick Top!

 

[BrewMan13]

I throw em in the woods behind my house for the woodland critters. Based on the amount left, I'd say about 2/3 of it gets eaten. Wife just randomly brought up this week making dog treats, but we have a tiny dog, so a batch would make like a lifetime supply lol.

 

[day_trippr]

Apparently this winter has been tough enough on the local deer herd that they decided rice hulls are not that big an impediment to enjoying ~25 pounds of spent barley malt. Which is good because with two feet of snow my neighbor's chickens and ducks won't leave their shelter, so it was either the deer or the compost pile. The back end of the property is totally overrun by deer tracks from multiple quadrants heading straight to where I dumped the mash - which was gone in two days.

Another batch coming tomorrow. Feels like a mission now

Cheers!

 

[Brewbuzzard]

Apparently this winter has been tough enough on the local deer herd that they decided rice hulls are not that big an impediment to enjoying ~25 pounds of spent barley malt. Which is good because with two feet of snow my neighbor's chickens and ducks won't leave their shelter, so it was either the deer or the compost pile. The back end of the property is totally overrun by deer tracks from multiple quadrants heading straight to where I dumped the mash - which was gone in two days.

Another batch coming tomorrow. Feels like a mission now

Cheers!

Bambi's Delight

 

[day_trippr]

You'd think so. But before the hard weather set in they turned their noses up at any batches that I used rice hulls. Having nearly ingested random hulls on occasion I can't say I blame them

It may be that as I've been letting the spent mash sit in the near-freezing garage for a couple of days before putting it out for them the hulls may have degraded and softened a bit. If they plunder the next batch (same 1/2 pound of hulls) then we may have a thing going

Cheers!

 

[matt_m]

Mine got bagged and trashed yesterday. No way I was trudging through the 2-3' drift at the back of the yard to compost.