Gluten Free Beer Ingredient List

[BBBF]

I don't think you'll get any flavor out of tapioca

 

[JackHerrer]

has anyone ever tried using blackstrap molasses? I don't want to do it if it's already failed. Or milk. What about milk? I've heard of fermented dairy products although I've never tried any.

 

[Leeinwa]

has anyone ever tried using blackstrap molasses? I don't want to do it if it's already failed. Or milk. What about milk? I've heard of fermented dairy products although I've never tried any.

Molasses is a by-product of white crystaline sugar production from sugar beets or sugar cane. Brown sugar is brown because it is un-refined and when it is refined you get white crysaline suger and molasses. Blackstrap is really from the 3rd boiling or refineing stage. It's got that bitter sweet taste. I think "beer" has been made from every fermentable known to man, including low alcohol fermented milk.

Out west, we use black strap in big 100 pound "licking blocks" as an high energy source in the winter for range cattle

leeinwa

 

[JackHerrer]

Molasses is a by-product of white crystaline sugar production from sugar beets or sugar cane. Brown sugar is brown because it is un-refined and when it is refined you get white crysaline suger and molasses. Blackstrap is really from the 3rd boiling or refineing stage. It's got that bitter sweet taste. I think "beer" has been made from every fermentable known to man, including low alcohol fermented milk.
leeinwa

I thought gluten came from wheat but if there's yeast with gluten maybe I've got to re-think things.
Hey how about OJ? I luvs me some Orangina, if it came with a kick I think that'd be stellar! :rockin:

 

[Leeinwa]

I thought gluten came from wheat but if there's yeast with gluten maybe I've got to re-think things.
Hey how about OJ? I luvs me some Orangina, if it came with a kick I think that'd be stellar! :rockin:

Glutens come from wheat and other cereal grains. If yeast is grown on barley or wheat media it will contain small amounts of glutens. Companies like Lallaimend's grow their brewing yeasts on potato starch base and they are gluten free. Check with the company where your yeast comes from.

leeinwa

 

[dorklord]

has anyone ever tried using blackstrap molasses? I don't want to do it if it's already failed. Or milk. What about milk? I've heard of fermented dairy products although I've never tried any.

I put a bit of molasses in my gluten-free wit. I don't know if it was enough to make a significant difference in taste, but I could see the difference in made in color.

 

[Lcasanova]

I use blackstrap molasses in my brown ale, I am going to increase it to 12 oz and see what the difference is.

 

[EcuBrew]

Don't forget potatoes, makes a nice beer!

 

[celiacsurvivor]

Don't forget potatoes, makes a nice beer!

Serious???

I know it makes great moonshine.

 

[Leeinwa]

Serious???

I know it makes great moonshine.

I thought you Kiwi's could make a certain amount of distilled spirits for you personal comsumption, so you really don't have to call it "moonshine".

leeinwa

 

[celiacsurvivor]

I thought you Kiwi's could make a certain amount of distilled spirits for you personal comsumption, so you really don't have to call it "moonshine".

leeinwa

I'm actually an Irishman masquerading as a kiwi. But you're right, you can buy a basic still at your LHBS. I've never done it myself but have some friends that do.

We lived in the country in Ireland and a few of our neighbours made poitin (potcheen (Irish moonshine)) I was too young to try it but my dad says it was the most disgusting drink he's ever had.

 

[Leeinwa]

I'm actually an Irishman masquerading as a kiwi. But you're right, you can buy a basic still at your LHBS. I've never done it myself but have some friends that do.

We lived in the country in Ireland and a few of our neighbours made poitin (potcheen (Irish moonshine)) I was too young to try it but my dad says it was the most disgusting drink he's ever had.

The comman perception in the US [ not mine of course] is that an Irishman will drink anything and not complain. My father-in-law was 1/2 Irish, [his dad was all Irishman] transplanted to Minnesota with all the Scandinavians and I never heard him say a bad word about any thing that contained alcohol. LOL There were lots of moonshiners in the woods of Minnesota during proabition and I've heard there are still a few people back there that do it for private consumption which is in the US is illegal.

 

[EcuBrew]

Serious???

I know it makes great moonshine.

Potatoes do make good beer! And they are gluten free...

They would not make great spirit (no pun intended) if the product (beer or whatever it's called in the distilling process) you started from where not of good quality.

With distilling, it's not "Cr*p in, cr*p out", it's actually worse:
"Cr*p in, concentrated cr*p out!"
It's a fallacy to think that good alcohol can be distilled from any kind of junk liquid containing alcohol. Good distillers pay a lot of attention to the beer / wine they produce or obtain from elsewhere.
A lot of "contaminants" do not get eliminated through the distilling process, but to the contrary become more concentrated in the end product. Sulphite is a good example.
I strongly dislike the word moonshine BTW, it has a very bad connotation. It's sad that any alcohol that is not produced by anyone "non-commercial" is immediately labelled or it least thought of as moonshine. I have many times tasted liquor from amateurs that tasted way better than most of the commercial stuff. The same often goes for beer. Wouldn't it be sad if people would generally think of home brewed beer the same way? I guess some people do. These days, if something doesn't come from a "specialist" (you probably know what I mean), it is often automatically looked down upon as something that has to be inferior.

 

[DKershner]

Potatoes do make good beer! And they are gluten free...

They would not make great spirit (no pun intended) if the product (beer or whatever it's called in the distilling process) you started from where not of good quality.

With distilling, it's not "Cr*p in, cr*p out", it's actually worse:
"Cr*p in, concentrated cr*p out!"
It's a fallacy to think that good alcohol can be distilled from any kind of junk liquid containing alcohol. Good distillers pay a lot of attention to the beer / wine they produce or obtain from elsewhere.
A lot of "contaminants" do not get eliminated through the distilling process, but to the contrary become more concentrated in the end product. Sulphite is a good example.
I strongly dislike the word moonshine BTW, it has a very bad connotation. It's sad that any alcohol that is not produced by anyone "non-commercial" is immediately labelled or it least thought of as moonshine. I have many times tasted liquor from amateurs that tasted way better than most of the commercial stuff. The same often goes for beer. Wouldn't it be sad if people would generally think of home brewed beer the same way? I guess some people do. These days, if something doesn't come from a "specialist" (you probably know what I mean), it is often automatically looked down upon as something that has to be inferior.

That is generally how homebrew is thought of too. Only recently has it started to actually be something that is accepted. Distilling could become the same way, but there is more baggage from prohibition from that than there was beer. No one went blind or died from beer making, although that thought crosses people's minds too.

Anyway, get back to the potato beer stuff. Do you have a recipe? How do you mash them? (No pun intended)

 

[BBBF]

Don't forget potatoes, makes a nice beer!

I have sweet potatoes on my list to experiment with. There have to be some helpful enzymes in there.

 

[celiacsurvivor]

My apologies, you are right the moonshine comment comes mainly from my ignorance, and stereotyles.

Although I know a few guys who make their own spirits I've never tried it, but you are 100% right that I'd say alot of them are better than the stuff you buy commercially.

I still get people laughing at me for brewing my own, they think the only reason to make your own alcohol is so you can increase the ABV and get loaded faster and cheaper. When the real reason we brew ourselves is to improve the taste of the beer (and for the fun of it).

So again sorry for any offence I may have caused.

 

[celiacsurvivor]

I have sweet potatoes on my list to experiment with. There have to be some helpful enzymes in there.

Do you add them to the mash? do you boil them first? wouldn't it cause a big sticky mess and a stuck sparge?

 

[EcuBrew]

Celiacsurvivor: I did not take offence,don't worry. I just wanted to clarify things a bit and it would be good to take that word out of our vocabulary. Or it least use the word in the proper context.
It were, from what I understand, mostly the bootleggers who created this whole bad reputation when they were doing all kinds of criminal stuff to beat the money out of people's pockets during Prohibition (another conspiracy). They mixed all kinds of stuff into real ethanol or denatured (!) alcohol, even added methanol. Apparently some government types were involved as well.

As for my home brewing: I don't try to clone a particular beer, what's the sense? But I may want to brew something similar to a Belgian White for example.
I brew because I want to know what's in my beer.
I do it because it's cheaper and because I have better alternatives than spending it on t*xes.
It's a lot of fun, nothing's better than what you do yourself, I don't believe it's only the "specialists" out there who can brew a good beer. (Up until not that long ago mainly woman brewed at home).
After years of doing the opposite (buying into common ideas out there) I don't believe in aging beer, so I drink it as soon as I can.
I don't brew because I want to get drunk, so I make low alcohol beer. It still has body,because it is unfiltered.
I want organic beer so I make malt from organic barley and add other organic grains.
It's fun making and improving my own equipment.

 

[EcuBrew]

DKershner

Anyway, get back to the potato beer stuff. Do you have a recipe? How do you mash them? (No pun intended)[/QUOTE]

Give me a bit of time and remind me in a week or so if you don't see a reply by then: I am getting out of the rat race, moving to another country, so a lot of my stuff is packed already. I should be able to dig up my notes though, good thing to have a good inventory list to find in which box they are

 

[EcuBrew]

Potato beer recipe #1:


Date: 25/01/92

10 kg Pale Malt Dingemans

12 kg potatoes 2/3 unpeeled, 1/3 peeled

Mash water: 30 L

Pressure cooked potatoes and put through food mill
Food mill = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_mill

Started mashing at 62C
14:30: 72C
14:45: 70C
15:00: 68C Iodine test: nearly completely converted
15:30: 65C
Raised temp to 75C

Start Lautering: 16:45

H2O for lautering: 80C

Used very wide lautertun with false bottom and fly-sparging rotating arm. Grain layer 10cm deep.

Lautered until ~19:00 no problems

First Wort: ~60L SG: 1052 boiled for 1:45hrs > SG:1058 60grams hops added 30 min before end of boiling

Second Wort: ~ 30L SG: ???? boiled for 1:30hrs > SG: 1023 20grams hops and 20grams Coreander + half a stick of licorice (natural stick, not the black extract sticks)

First fermentation was finished in 48 hrs :SG: 1015, went down to SG: 1011

This made an excellent beer, the second batch of wort with the lowest SG was best!

I stored some and drank the last of it 26 months later (280494):
delicious, nice colour, very clear, big bubbles, but didn’t keep a head for very long.

 

[EcuBrew]

Potato beer # 2

Date: 27/04/94

11kg small potatoes (culls), pressure cooked

12kg Pale Malt Cosyns

2kg Wheat (probably soft, white)

Mash water: ~35L. Thin mash.

19:30: After adding grain: mash temp: 58C

Put steamed potatoes through foodmill and dropped them straight from the food mill in the mash. Temp: 63C @20:30hrs
20:40: 72C starch almost completely converted!!!
21:20: 68C
21:40: 77C

Started lautering:22:10 until ~00:15. False bottom, fly-sparged with rotating arm.

22:45: stuck mash, had to cut the grain bed several times. This was different from previous potato beer, had no problems then. This time there was even a higher % of grains in the bill...

First wort: ~45-50L and SG: 1042 before boiling.
60 grams of hops and 50 grams of coriander added at the beginning of the boil.
Boiled for 60 mins
SG after boiling: 1050 and ~ 35-40L

Second wort: 65-70L before boiling SG: 1023
60 grams of hops and 70 grams of coriander (probably from beginning of boil).
Boiled for 60 mins
SG after boiling: 1031 and ~ 60-65L

Fermentation almost completed within 24hrs after pitching

 

[Lcasanova]

Those recipes are nice and detailed and everything, but what good will they do for a gluten free brewer?

 

[DKershner]

Those recipes are nice and detailed and everything, but what good will they do for a gluten free brewer?

Well, just because there is barley and wheat in the beers doesn't mean there isn't anything to learn.

My concern stems from the fact that it doesn't look like the potato is adding much in terms of sugars. You didn't post your batch volumes, but I am going to assume it is around 10gal for the first partigyle. In this case, the potatoes seem to add almost nothing, which does not make them a good candidate for a GF base, but could potentially be utilized in other ways, building up body for example. Of course, this all goes out the window if he is making 15gal with a 2nd smaller partigyle.

Also, the fact that they had to be mashed with barley makes it a bit tougher as well.

It is an interesting idea Ecu, and I know potatoes do have sugar in there, but I would just wonder how this could be applied to GF beer.

It would be interesting nonetheless to try and make something from potatoes, I know they have been used in wine with success.

 

[KevinM]

A few weeks ago I was reading this article http://brewery.org/library/Potato.html regarding a potato based brew. It was from 1987, so it was still using the malted barley enzyme in the mash. Reportedly, it gives more of a taste and aroma difference, but there was nothing about the body. I've been curious about how other vegetative items would work as well, but I'm still in the early stages of finding recipes for standard that I like before testing potato, sweet potato, or carrot. (Seems that there was a carrot beer thread on the hbt forum as well)

 

[EcuBrew]

I knew the gluten-free question would come, that's a good sign: you're all awake (lol).

I brewed these beers in 1992 and 1994, earlier in my brewing career. My equipment wasn't as good as it is today (still open for improvement). Until this day I haven't worried about gluten in beer, although I can't eat wheat and spelt anymore. I am eating barley, oats and millet instead (mainly in the cooler season, I switched from vegetarian to nearly 100% raw diet last spring). The (unhulled) barley is extremely enzymatic.

I am not concerned with efficiency that much: I make my own organic malt from barley that I buy directly from a local farmer. I also use very little hops (probably none in the future), so cost is minimal.
All you need to do is substitute the barley malt for a gluten free malt. I would experiment with 100% of that alternative malt first before adding anything else. As you can see I had no problems lautering the first batch, but the second batch got stuck several times and I had to cut the grainbed, although there was a higher percentage of grains. I don't know if I lautered in a pot with a smaller diameter, which would have meant that the grainbed would have been thicker. It was also April, so the potatoes were getting older and that causes some changes.
I recommend the small potatoes: if you are lucky you can get them for free or cheap and they add more flavour than those that are very big and that cost you money. Growing them yourself is best of course. The variety makes a difference as well.

Are some of you guys completely allergic to gluten, or you just have some problems digesting them, like me? When I eat too many gluten or the wrong combination with gluten containing foods I get a heartburn (find that a strange name, because it comes from my stomach) .

BTW: I have added buckwheat to my mash before as well.

 

[DKershner]

The fact that barley is extremely enzymatic is why beer is made with it, and why you can stick damn near anything in a barley-based beer. This is also why we cannot just sub in a different grain, because the enzymes are not there. You can read a bit more about it around this forum, LOTS of info.

Most people here are, or are brewing for people with celiac disease, which functions somewhat similarly to an allergy, but is more serious, and the food that causes it is gluten, not wheat.

Anyway, your experiments with potatoes are interesting, but potatoes have a lot of starches and few sugars. Without enzymes to break it down, your beer would be a starchy mess. I think a different fruit or veggie with more sugars is more in line with gluten free brewing unless someone has an enzyme idea.

 

[EcuBrew]

A quote from the above article:
Charlie Papazian writes in "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing" that 'Fermentables produced from potato starch do not contribute significantly to the character or flavor of beer, other than providing fermentables to be converted to alcohol.' He further writes that '[the] use [of potatoes as an adjunct] is discouraged by beer drinkers justifiably or unjustifiably against "potato beer".'
I don't know how to interpret that, although it looks more like Papazian was talking about potato starch, which could mean the powder version, not the potato itself. The fact that the author (Cary Jensen) added his own text in brackets seems to confirm that.

I challenge the above, because my potato beers where neither lacking in flavour nor in body. And they were not high gravity, the second wort batches in fact very low gravity.

Ever tried to add cane sugar or honey when refermenting in the bottle? Those minimal 5g/L (adding only about 0.25% alc. to the beer) make a significant difference in flavour compared to the addition of white sugar.
If it was powder potato starch in the above article, then I would have been surprised if it would have added anything but more starch > sugar >alcohol to the beer.

Upon further reading the article, I found this:

"One or two caveats are in order here. First, contrary to Charlie Papazian's description, beer made from potatoes does have a unique character. Although this may derive from the fact that I do not peel the little spuds before I shred them, I seriously doubt it. After having made 3 batches of the stuff over a several year period, I have come to notice a distinctly 'potato' aroma and taste. I'm not implying that this sensation is unpleasant, just that it exists."

There you have it, I think I may suspect that not everybody read that far or overlooked that part of the article.

As those poor potatoes cannot defend themselves verbally, I felt called to do it for them...they are suggesting to try a good variety such as Yukon Gold.
I'm only the messenger, don't shoot me!

 

[EcuBrew]

DKershner,
thanks for your insights.
Have you ever found a table with the enzymatic values for different grains and other adjuncts?
It would be worth looking for.

 

[DKershner]

DKershner,
thanks for your insights.
Have you ever found a table with the enzymatic values for different grains and other adjuncts?
It would be worth looking for.

We do not know the enzymatic values for grains, but I do have a table explaining why it doesn't matter. It is in the first post of this thread, here is a link: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f164/gluten-free-beer-ingredient-list-172558/#post1997163

If you click on the 'gelatinization' table at the bottom, you will see what temperatures each grain mashes best at. You will also notice all the GF grains have little asterisks next to them. This stands for grains that need to be boiled pre mash to be mashed. The boiling process kills or denatures all enzymes on the grain.

 

[EcuBrew]

I found a bit of info in my old malt and brew bible:
Green (=not dried malt) from maize seems to have about 50% of the enzymatic power of regular barley malt.
White Persian Dari (= sorghum) is almost as enzymatic as regular barley malt.

Hope this helps you guys.