I am completely new to GF brewing and fairly new to home brewing overall. I was wondering if I could get a hand with converting a recipe.
9 lbs DME
1 lbs caramel 40
2 oz chinnok @ 60
1 oz simcoe @ 30
1 oz northern brewer @ 10
1 oz crystal @ flameout
2 oz citra dryhop
WLP099 high gravity yeast
For a 5 gallon batch...
Thanks, Nick
Sounds like a big beer. You can pretty much substitute sorghum extract syrup for DME, though may people choose to use both sorghum extract and rice syrup (as some don't like the taste of sorghum grain, and the sorghum extract syrup is darker than some of the light malts, so blending the 2 can give you a lighter color).
The caramel/crystal 40 is a little bit harder, as there isn't a 'direct' replacement for it. You could try to get the same effect by roasting your own grains, and if you want to do that, I'm sure someone here can help (I've only tried roasting grain once, and I haven't used it in a batch yet, so I don't feel qualified to give advice on it just yet
)
Anyway, what was the recommended DME in the original recipe? (Light, amber, dark?) For the usual light or amber, I'd say something like a 6 lb jug of sorghum extract syrup, and then 3 lbs of rice syrup (either liquid or dry solids), or perhaps change out a pound or two of the rice syrup for corn sugar if you get sticker shock from the price of rice extract.
That also brings me to another idea, you could try to caramelize some sugar as a replacement for the caramel 40 malt.
Hops are GF, so you're fine on that front, and that leaves us with the yeast. There's a discussion
here, but to sum up: liquid yeasts are cultured on barley-made wort, so there is a small amount of gluten present in liquid yeast, which will then be diluted to a very small amount of gluten present in a 5 gallon batch of beer, and could be further diluted by building a starter and dumping off wort...as far as I know, all dry yeasts are GF.
Anyway, that is judgement call you'll have to make. If you choose to use dry yeast, post up, and someone can help you choose the best dry yeast (I'm not familiar with the wlp099 off the top of my head, so I'm not sure what dry yeast would be the closest replacement, but I'm sure I can find out).
