All Grain, No Hops

[beerandfoodnerd]

Hey there! I've been trolling the forum but have yet to find anyone talking about an all grain no hop experiment. I'm currently brewing up 4 "gallon" batches of "beer" using only one type of grain per batch. I'm really interested to know exactly what some of the grains that I use would taste like brewed and fermented by themselves.

I'm brewing a Honey Malt, Dark Crystal (120), Biscuit, and a Victory. With each I'm mashing 1 lb in a .75 gallon batch. I'm using the Dry Ale (American) SafAle yeast on each.

I hope to do at least another 4 grains, if these turn out to be at all drinkable. In fact, I almost wonder if homebrewers, in general, would benefit from trying this sort of "beer" to inform them on what sort of tastes that each of the malts might have on an overall brew.

Has anyone else done something like this? I'm not thinking this will make the most drinkable beverages, but, I think that after this, I'll know a heckuva lot more about some standard malts and how I can better use them as I develop recipes.

I heard on one of my beer podcasts today (I forget which one) about a guy who would make "teas" from the grains to find out how they tasted. But, they will taste different after fermentation... so, I'm going "all the way" with this...

Thoughts? Experiences??

 

[inhousebrew]

Those malts don't really have enough diastatic power to convert the starches to sugars or break them down into fermentable sugars.

http://beersmith.com/blog/2010/01/04/diastatic-power-and-mashing-your-beer/

There's better stuff out there on this but this is the first thing that came up when I googled it.

Many people do these types of experiments with basegrains, 2-row, marris otter, vienna, munich, golden promise, pilsner, ect. But specialty malts can't convert themselves. If you want to find out what those have to offer you could pick a base grain and add those to it. 10-20% Biscuit for example would be more than enough with basic 2-row. You would never need more than 20% of any of those grains in a beer at any one given time and that should get you a good taste for what they give you.

 

[beerandfoodnerd]

Thanks! I'm going to "fix" my experiment today. Didn't realize that they had so little convertible sugars.

Updates to come!