Brewing with lentils

[Wes1]

I am currently experimenting with lentils. I got about 9 PPG from mashing them on my first try. Anyone else using lentils? If so what PPG are you seeing, and/or how much are you using per batch?

I have seen several breweries starting to use lentils. Some to add mouthfeel and head retention to GF beers. It seems like maybe GF beers would benefit from more protein, since gluten is a protein and is absent. Yesterday I bought some sprouted lentils from Whole Foods, lightly roasted them in the oven (300 F for about hour), ground them with mill set to 0.025”, then did a mash in a temperature controlled crockpot (155 to 163 F) added 2 type of enzymes and held at that temp for about 4 hours. I did not measure initial sugar, but it seemed to level off to 1.025 after a few minutes and eventually hit 1.035. By the time I rinsed to get 1 gal of “wort” I had 1 gal at 1.014 from 1.56 lbs of dry sprouted lentils. So if my calculations are right, 8.97 PPG. It showed weak starch presence from iodine test, but I let it rest, separate and held back the starch “trub.” Hopefully I will have time to use it in a sorghum LME batch to brew this week, meanwhile I am storing it in fridge. Since I had some starch, I assume the real ppg numbers are higher.

 

[xflibble]

As a metric user, PPG does my head in...I have extracted 50% of the dry weight as sugar if you want some encouragement. Still experimenting though and need to come back and reproduce the result.

 

[JMath]

I recently visited Groundbreaker brewing in Portland, OR. They told me the base for all of their beers is made of lentils and chestnuts. Their beer is very good, although not exactly the "classic" beer taste you get from millet and rice.

 

[Wes1]

I have my first millet, rice, buckwheat beer in secondary...it fermented, went off recipe, but tastes fine, is cloudy...waiting to see what happens. It was a lot of work.

I have mostly been using sorghum extract, rice solids, Candi syrup, maltodextrine, and honey in various combinations. After a long brewday doing all grain; I missed my target, problems along the way...I am looking to stick to those “extract” ingredients, and seek to improve the head and body.
Someone recently pointed me to this recipie on Facebook from groundbreaker. So I am looking forward to brewing something based on this recipie to compare to previous results.

https://www.groundbreakerbrewing.co...-brewing-releases-gluten-free-homebrew-recipe

 

[brewGF]

I would love to hear the results of any lentil homebrew.

 

[divrack]

"I am currently experimenting with lentils"

sounds like the intro to some kind of harrowing confessional diary like a million tiny fragments or requirem for a dream.
lentils are a classic gateway bean.

you could call your story "finger on the pulse"

 

[xflibble]

I would love to hear the results of any lentil homebrew.

Attached image is a red lentil and rice syrup beer. The lentils give a quite peppery taste which isn't great with the weizen yeast. I think it would go pretty well with POR hops in a Coopers/Aussie lager style...

 

[brewGF]

Oh wow, you did it. Peppery sounds great to me. Peppery as in how a belgian style yeast is described?

 

[xflibble]

I'm not sure if I have ever experienced the Belgian peppery flavour, but as soon as I posted that I thought "Oh wow, now that I think about it, I should totally put that in my next wit". So I think the answer is probably 'yes'

 

[brewGF]

Has anyone brewed the recipe from groundbreaker that is linked above?

 

[brewGF]

I brewed the ground breaker recipe, i liked it and agree the lentils provide a bit of a peppery taste and improved boys. Good head retention probably more from the kasha. Will use lentils again for sure.

 

[TahoePowderHound]

I brewed the ground breaker recipe, i liked it and agree the lentils provide a bit of a peppery taste and improved boys. Good head retention probably more from the kasha. Will use lentils again for sure.

Did you use just regular old white table sugar for the recipe?

 

[brewGF]

No, I skipped the sugar and did not substitute anything else. I did my own hop schedule and used S-04 yeast. The recipe says S-05 yeast, I assume he meant US-05, but I think that yeast lets too much twang shine through so I don't use it anymore.