Brewing beer without malt AKA Maltless Brewing

[Xier]

This is the continuation of my original thread. That thread had become quite over-encumbered and I feel at this point it makes sense to diverge into a new lineage.

I will start by introducing the ingredient list of the brew.

Grain Bill:
200 Grams of Partially-Roasted Barley
600 Grams of Flaked Wheat
400 Grams of Flaked Oat
600 Grams of Black Rice
600 Grams of Barley (A)
600 Grams of Barley (B)

Hops:
20 Grams of Saaz at Start of Boil

Micro-Organisms:
Isolated Wild Yeast Strain
Commercial Yoghurt Starter
Commercial Rhizopus Oryzae


Barley (A) will be steamed and inoculated with the Rhizopus oryzae. It will be put into an opened container (1) and allowed to *do its thing* at room temperature.

The black rice and barley (B) will be placed in water and allowed to sit in container (2). The semi-roasted barley will likewise be soaked, though in a different container (3).

After two days, the container (2) will be drained of water, have the flaked oats and wheat added to it and flash pasteurized in my pressure cooker. This will be accomplished by pressure cooking water for 30 minutes and then opening the pressure cooker and dumping everything in. I will allow it to cook, covered, for 5 minutes. After that time, it will be removed and drained of water once again. Finally, it will be inoculated with the Rhizopus oryzae. This will be placed back into a sanitized container (2).

The semi-roasted barley will also be drained at this time and directly inoculated with the Rhizopus oryzae, without pasteurization.

After another two days, container (A) will be placed into the oven and caramelized.

Then, in the end, it will all be mashed, boiled and what not.

I will start it all tonight and post photographs throughout the process.

 

[TopherM]

Lots of this is greek to me. Can you explain where your fermentables will be coming from? I didn't realize you could extract fermentable sugars from barley without malting it.

 

[larrynoz]

intriguing...

 

[bk0]

Sounds dangerous. Rhizopus oryzae is a human pathogen.

Do you expect off-flavors, given that you are literally letting the grain rot?

Is this an experiment at making some sort of ancient beer-like beverage (ie, before humans discovered malting gain)?

 

[Bobby_M]

Dangerous or not, it sounds like a disgusting pain in the ass. What exactly are you trying to make? What precedence are you following that suggests using fungus?

 

[hwilshusen]

You have to remember he is in The Peoples Republic. No, not California. China. He's trying to brew with what is readily available.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Sounds dangerous.

How?

Even your wiki link recognizes it as GRAS (Generally recognized as safe) from the USDA. And a deeper look result taht it is commonly used to derive dextrose from starch.

 

[bk0]

It's byproducts are GRAS, not necessarily the organism itself. I wouldn't want to handle pure cultures of it.

Maybe it's ok, they eat stuff like this in China...

 

[fredthecat]

my maltless "beer" recipe


4lb cane sugar
1lb barley (A, B)
.05oz roasted UNMALTED barley
20oz live sourdough bread yeast culture

2grams hallertau hops at 60 mins

boil everything but the yeast
let it cool
add the yeast

I will start it all tonight and post photographs throughout the process.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

It's byproducts are GRAS, not necessarily the organism itself. I wouldn't want to handle pure cultures of it.

Maybe it's ok, they eat stuff like this in China...

I'd sooner eat a thousand year egg than I would balut.

That said, the strangest "food" I've consumed was Kopi Luwak.

 

[gr8shandini]

Very interesting. It may have come up in the other thread, but isn't amylase commercially available and wouldn't it do the trick without messing with fungi and letting things rot?

 

[Xier]

So many responses since yesterday! Let me get started responding to everyone, there seems to be some misunderstandings.

Can you explain where your fermentables will be coming from?

Yes, the fungus Rhizopus oryzae produces copious amounts of isoamylase as well as cellulase, hemicellulases, pectinases, tannase, phytase, lipase, protease, additional amylases and other enzymes. It will basically take on the role that is traditionally filled by germination, and then some. My only fear is that it will make my beer too fermentable and dry.

Sounds dangerous....Do you expect off-flavors...

Actually, it is an opportunistic pathogen and not a real pathogen. That is to say, if your body is lacking in its ability to defend itself, immunodeficient, then this could be a problem. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is also an opportunistic human pathogen and beer enthusiasts seem to be fine with using it.

As for flavours, well, this is the staple Chinese alcohol fermenter, the national equivalent of the Japanese sake fungus. I have had plenty of Chinese mijiu and, let me tell you, those are "off-flavours" that I would not mind at all. Infact, fermentation is just one type of rotting and people around here seem to be pretty happy with its results!

.... What precedence are you following that suggests using fungus?

Tens of thousands of years of alcohol production here in Asia. The fungus that I am using is actually readily available here in China for home mijiu brewers. What I am trying to make is beer my dear friend, sour and robust beer!

Did I mention that Rhizopus oryzae also produces lactic acid? My tests don't seem to indicate enough for my liking though.

....Maybe it's ok, they eat stuff like this in China...

Century eggs are delicious! My favourite moon-cakes all use century eggs as their filling, well I also like the salted duck egg fillings an awfully lot!

I'd sooner eat a thousand year egg than I would balut.

I am with you on that! Though I have never been offered the stuff, I have to say, I think I would turn it down! :cross:

....isn't amylase commercially available and wouldn't it do the trick without messing with fungi and letting things rot?

It could, and there are beers being produced that way, though I like complexity and depth in my endeavours. Using fungi to essential fill the job of malting the beer adds a whole new layer of tastes and aromas that have been selected for by the Chinese since antiquity.

To everyone:

I am sorry that I did not upload the pictures last night, I had not bought a scale yet. I went out and acquired one today and once my son falls asleep will go into my laboorrratory.

 

[fredthecat]

this thread is very odd. my quick opinion: if you're willing to go to all this kind of trouble and seem to have unmalted barley, why dont you just buy fresh barley and malt it yourself?

whatever you make using your setup listed will almost certainly not be recognizable as beer.

besides that, as people mentioned there are sources of malted barley available in china. contact a big brewery and offer to buy some 2row barley or find out how they get it.

also, needs more hops!

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

I have never heard of a lot of this stuff. I hope it turns out well.

 

[Xier]

.... why dont you just buy fresh barley and malt it yourself?.. whatever you make using your setup listed will almost certainly not be recognizable as beer... needs more hops!

My hand was tried at malting and it seems to take a lot of space, a lot of time, and a lot of failure before you get it right. Besides, this isn't really much work at all. I have simply soaked my grains and inoculated them with a fungus.

I disagree, I think that it will most certainly be very beer-like. What reason do you have to make you think otherwise?

The thought of adding more hops had crossed my mind but I do not want to overpower it. Remember, yoghurt cultures will be added. I am trying to make a bit of a plambic style brew.


Now for some photographs!



Here is the base-barley. This is the 600 grams that will be used to make my version of a crystal malt. After the sugars are produced and such, I will bake it all with convection till carmalized.



This is the wheat that was used for the brew as I could not find rolled wheat. This, the black rice and 600 additional grams of barley were set to soak.




Here is the lightly-roasted barley that will be used. It was 200 grams before roasting, I imagine that it is substantially less now.

As of me writing this, the soaking has completed and everything is now inoculated save the lightly-roasted barley, it will be kept as is till the mash.

It all is now incubating. I will buy the hops, pots and what-nots all tomorrow.

 

[brewski08]

Xier...you're a weird guy, but goddamn it this is interesting!

I may even be inclined to order a case of your fungus beer!

Best of luck!

 

[bige9920]

this is wicked cool! i am a avid mushroom hunter and have even cultivated some shiitake, and matsutake mushrooms last year. mushrooms and whats more the mycylium network (like the root system of mushrooms) contain large amounts of sugars. if the government spend half the time looking at this over corn sugar they would realize they can make an equivalant ethanol from this as well. seems to me your on to something and i am looking foward to what the final product looks and tastes like! very interesting...

 

[Xier]

It is time for some updates; we have good, bad and neutral.

The good:
The fungus has converted everything perfectly! It is all so sweet, in-fact it tastes sweeter than my pure maltose syrup that I bought in the store. I am certain that everything malting can do this process can emulate just as well.

The bad:
When I went to Beijing to buy the hops, the store was closed and I came back empty handed.

The neutral:
I have decided to add some coriander and orange peels for spice. Zesting oranges shall be easy enough but finding coriander has been a bit difficult. I suppose that I will have to buy it from a gardening store. Hopefully, that will be acceptable.

Also, as I have been delayed everything has had a longer fermentation than was originally intended. The main tub of grains has been doing fine but I fear that the tub for crystal has been infected. While I caramelize it, it has taken on a strange taste and smell that are hard to explain. It is not unpleasant and I hope it only effects my brew in positive ways.

I will upload some photographs of it all when it finishes baking.

 

[Xier]

A question for some with experience:

Would it be feasible to mash and boil now without the hops and a portion of the water and then make a hop tea with the remaining water and add it to the fermenter?

 

[anengineer]

A question for some with experience:

Would it be feasible to mash and boil now without the hops and a portion of the water and then make a hop tea with the remaining water and add it to the fermenter?

I did almost(I added a bit of malt extract) that as an experiment
with a previous 10-gallon brown ale brew. It turned out fine.

Good luck Xier

 

[Xier]

Here are the photographs! Tell me what you think of the crystal emulators.

Neo-Crystal Light:


Neo-Crystal Dark:


Neo-Malt:


Haha, that last photograph is of the black rice, barley and wheat. They have been fermenting nicely. I took a spoonful out and gave it a taste, very sweet and delicious. They taste like candy.

The light Neo-Crystal has a strange taste that it is hard for me to put a finger on. It is a bit nutty but that is not the word that I would use to describe it.

The dark Neo-Crystal tastes like toffee. The original sweetness of it decreased significantly during baking. It is also fairly tart, I would imagine that is from the lactic acid that was produced by the Rhizopus.

I have decided to do this first brew with a muslin cloth and BIAB methodology. Initially, the boil will include the sweet-wort along with orange zest and hopefully the coriander if I can find it today.

That will then be inoculated with yoghurt bacterium and allowed to ferment for a few days. Afterwards, a hop-tea and the yeast will be added. I figure that this will benefit the brew by allowing the sour bacterium cultures to work without the hops present for some time before being exposed.

Wish me luck, brothers!

 

[Qhrumphf]

This is absolutely fascinating! Good luck and keep us posted!

 

[Prohank]

And then you wonder you can't get anyone to try Your new beer. Right

 

[TheEndlessObsession]

Awesome! Although I can't imagine trying something like this myself, it's great to see someone try something both unique (in the beer world) and traditional at the same time. Good luck! Hope it turns out great!

 

[Xier]

So, I am mashing as I type this message. The brew is very dark but seems to have inherited its colours from the grains and not the black rice. When I first soaked the grains, the drain-off was a dark purple hue. I guess the majority of purple pigment was washed away at that time. I will do it differently next time.

The taste of the wort thus far is very pleasant, but I feel that it is a bit soy-sauce-like. I don't mean that in any over-whelming way, it is just that to me the smell seems similar. I asked my wife and she says that maltose is the main thing that she smells, she didn't pick up on any soy character.

She is on the way to the store to buy the oranges, right now. For this 2.5 gallon batch, how much peel should I add by weight? I want to capture a witbier-esque taste.

 

[Xier]

Mashing and boiling are complete! The soy taste disappeared and was replaced with a rich chocolatey taste, like brownies.

I added 50 grams of tiny orange-like things that they eat here. I have no idea what they are, but they had a nice bitter and zesty orange taste. They are so small that I did not bother to remove them from their skins. Besides, the insides were just as bitter as the outs!

I also added 10 grams of a turmeric and coriander powdered-spice mix.

It is all cooling at the moment. I utilized a 90 minute boil to cut down on any DMS, which may not be of concern when considering how this was produced.

 

[Xier]

Well, I have pitched the bacteria. It was a mixture of Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Streptococcus thermophilus and Bifidobacterium.



I will let this go for a few days and then pitch the yeast and hop tea.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Hmmmm...not educated in the production of yogurt. I didn't realize that a streptococcus strain was used in yogurt. I saw that and did a double take, considering that I immediately associated it with strep throat.

 

[fredthecat]

if youre doing this is a test to see if it works why make it such a kitchen sink recipe? it makes it a lot harder to pin down any faults. im assuming you mean you added cumquats (little orange things)? turmeric and coriander?

 

[Machalel]

wow, this is just... wow!

It's like some sort of mad scientist mash-up between east and west! Crazy town!
Super keen to hear what happens with this one, even though it's unlikely that I'll ever taste or brew anything like it.

 

[CourtHouseBrewing]

Thanks for pointing me to the new thread. It is always great to hear & see how you are doing. I am so inspired by your knowledge and patience that I’m sure you will have a beer to be proud of soon. Be well.

 

[Bamsdealer]

Agreed. This is fascinating. Good luck and I can't wait to hear how this turns out.

 

[Xier]

The bacteria have made their first appearance!

 

[Xier]

While this is fermenting away, I have a bit of a plan as to what to do next. I am thinking to brew three beers using only 100% of a base rolt(TM haha) in each. The first two will of-course be my interpretation of pale wheat and barley malts, respectively. The third will consist purely of black rice. The same hop variety, mash and boil schedule will be used by each. The original, as well as final, specific gravity readings will be taken and compared. If I intend to keep brewing in this way, I imagine it will help to know exactly how each grain works when rolting.

And furthermore:

From this day forward, controlled rotting for the purpose of creating malt-like fermentables shall be known as rolting and the finished malt-like product shall be referred to as rolt, so sayeth me.

 

[Xier]

So, I am back from Beijing and have bought some hop pellets! I am going to need some help though as I am not really sure how to spread these all out. Also, I could not find any wheat so, for this first run, I am going to use foxtail millet as my third grain. Let me break this all down:

6 lbs of barley
6 lbs of black rice
6 lbs of foxtail millet
44 grams of Saaz pellets
44 grams of Nugget pellets
48 grams of Qingdao (similar to cascade) pellets
3 2.5 gallon fermenters
Yeast harvested from a Blue Star wheat beer bottle

The plan is to use a combination of 12 grams of each hop variety and a single grain type for each fermenter. I decided to use a commercial yeast in order to eliminate that as a variable in these tests.

I was wondering if you guys had any ideas as to how to add the hops during the boil.

How does adding .105 oz of Nugget at 90, adding .32oz of Qingdao and .14oz of Saaz at 15 minutes till finish and then finally adding .14oz of Qingdao and .32oz of Saaz with 3 minutes left sound?

Edit: Changed after playing with Brewtarget

 

[dawgmatic]

Sub scribed

^Not sure about the AA% of the Quindao, and I'm not sure how bitter you're looking to make this beer, but this one's going to have low IBU's. I would raise the nugget to 0.25-0.5 oz.

Also, is the current beer fermenting with normal yeast now, or are you just using the bacteria, and how is it progressing?

 

[neosapien]

man, this is one of the coolest, most bizarre things I've ever seen or read. You simply have to post updates. This is mad scientist territory here!

 

[JohnnySardonic]

This is awesome and inspiring! Keep the pics coming. My brew buddies and I are stoked to read about how it turns out.

 

[neosapien]

This is awesome and inspiring! Keep the pics coming. My brew buddies and I are stoked to read about how it turns out.

no joke. i've been talking about this thread all day long. I'm stoked. :rockin:

 

[neosapien]

While this is fermenting away, I have a bit of a plan as to what to do next. I am thinking to brew three beers using only 100% of a base rolt(TM haha) in each. The first two will of-course be my interpretation of pale wheat and barley malts, respectively. The third will consist purely of black rice. The same hop variety, mash and boil schedule will be used by each. The original, as well as final, specific gravity readings will be taken and compared. If I intend to keep brewing in this way, I imagine it will help to know exactly how each grain works when rolting.

And furthermore:

From this day forward, controlled rotting for the purpose of creating malt-like fermentables shall be known as rolting and the finished malt-like product shall be referred to as rolt, so sayeth me.

man, you're weird as well, but so freakin' cool. this is way inspiring.