Reflections on My Gluten-Free Brewing Experience Thus Far

[igliashon]

So, as one of my baby-steps toward opening a gluten-free brewpub here in SF, I had the opportunity to meet informally with a friend of my girlfriend's family who is a potential future investor. She basically wanted to taste my three best beers and just talk a bit about my background, my plans, and what I'm going to do in the next few years to make myself and my business plan more attractive to investors. I gave her the caveat that none of my beers are yet satisfactory, but that I think they are moving in the right direction, but anyway I wanted to do a critical tasting of everything I've got bottled before I met with her to pick out the three best. So my girlfriend and I sat down the other night and cracked 10 different beers, and tasted them back-to-back (cleansing our palates in between, of course).

Without going into too much detail, I came to the conclusion that extract is not working for me. The best beers were the ones with the most grains, by a wide margin, but even these were a long way from where I wanted them to be. The interesting thing was how similar all the beers tasted--and you guys know that I throw in all kinds of weird stuff to try to liven them up! But they all had too much sweetness, and lacked depth. I think the candi syrups and honey leave too much residual sweetness that is just not "beery" enough, and the sorghum and rice extracts are just totally flat in terms of flavor. Not bad, but not impressive. And indeed, this potential future investor was not terribly impressed. I ended up choosing the No-Nonsense Stout, Purple Hefereisen, and Grapefruit IPA, but of those the stout was the only one she wanted more than a taste of.

So, from here on out, I'm going to be exploring the use of enzymes to do partial mashes, and try to get at least half the fermentables out of grains. If this yields good results, I'm gonna get myself a mash tun and try some all-grain batches. But I've had it with extract-only, and I'm going to tone down the candi syrup and honey additions quite a lot. In fact, I may leave the honey out all together.

 

[KevinM]

Even in gluten brewing, this is seems to be the same case. I hear that only some brewpubs, smaller in scale, are the ones that use extracts for their beers, mostly because they don't necessarily have the room for grain brewing. As a business, it's difficult to want to use the syrups. Certainly it may be less true for a limited product, for example since there have only been a few gluten free beers, the early ones may be able to use extracts until such time and research and money investment has found a good cost effective grain process. Caveat is that I've only read some things on brewpubs and small business and have not looked into my own yet. (Too much work).

Honey and candi syrup are items that are either used sparingly as a flavor enhancer, or in the case of honey, used to make a mead or non-grain braggot, at which point it's no longer a beer.

I'm still not getting good results from my malted grains either but once I get my kitchen cleaned, I'll be trying something different with it.

Have you been submitting any of your beers to local competitions to compare against other beers?

 

[ChasidicCalvinist]

Have you read the pieces by Andrew Lavery out of Australia? He malts millet and gets conversion out of them. Pretty detailed PDFs out there detailing his work. I've read them but can't find them on my computer now. Good luck.

 

[KevinM]

A good question as well, is how often have you tried remaking the same beer? Have you been narrowing down alterations and ingredients on one beer that you can then feel comfortable scaling up (and of course modifying the recipe for a while again)? Have you tried making the same beer with only (ideally) one variable difference?

For example I keep trying the Orange/coriander to try to make that one better but when you get down to it, you need to compare using different hops, different amounts of spices or different amounts of orange peel and other ingredients. And you can't just randomly do it until you get to the point of trying 1 gallon with 5g orange peel vs a gallon with 7g orange peel, with everything else being exactly the same. (I'm trying Mortuka instead of Hallertaur this time around.) I've only made this 5 times so far due to costs and not having enough testers. Finally got to give half a gallon to my bartender and her fiancee to test for me.

 

[igliashon]

I'm finally at the point where I'm re-making beers, but I'm not doing it subtly. I usually change at least two or three things at a time. My goal right now is to refine a few of my IPAs--a "grapefruity" one and a "piney" one, and maybe this white IPA style I'm trying lately--and to get at least one dark beer totally rock-solid. I'm gonna keep doing scatter-shot alterations until I start closing in on the exact flavors I want, at which point I'll make the tweaks more subtle. I try to find the extremes first, and then work toward the sweet spots, but that's hard when I'm simultaneously trying to work out several different styles and I don't even have a basic process worked out yet.

@ChasidicCalvinist, I definitely need to read that stuff. I've been talking with Ryan Bove, who's starting a gluten-free microbrewery in Pittsburgh called Aurochs Brewing, and he's been developing recipes around malted millet, too. Next to sorghum, millet seems to have the best diastatic properties, so it's probably the way to go. But I want to see what I can do with enzymes before I start messing with malting, just because that would be more cost-effective and give me more varieties of grain to work with.

 

[ChasidicCalvinist]

Pittsburgh? I live 45 minutes outside of Pittsburgh! You just made my day!

 

[KevinM]

Yeah, scattershot works at first to try to find an area that you think works, then narrow down the specifics. I'm not scattershotting this orange coriander so much, but I want this as a base brew. Ideally will be doing grain with it too for practice.

Its more of an every other, or every third that I try the orange coriander with a small change. The others are wild shots in the dark.

Just let us know your enzyme results. (I've yet to hear the results from that beta enzyme from people).

 

[ChasidicCalvinist]

Igliashon, I've been thinking about your post and I just wanted to encourage you to keep at it. It can be done--maybe part of the problem was bottle vs. draft? Perhaps you should take investors on a road trip to Deschute's in Portland. I've read their GF beer on tap is very good. http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/brew/gluten-free-ipa I'm pretty sure it is an extract beer.
On our honeymoon years back my wife and I went to the Alchemist Pub and Brewery in Waterbury, VT. THe business went under, literally, during the floods but they have decided to re-open that brewery. They had at least 3 GF beers as the wife's owner had celiac. That was the first time I tasted real, good, GF beer. That place was PACKED when we went. Now it wasn't 100% GF but it had the best GF selections I had ever seen.
So anyways, you can do it!

 

[muench1]

This also harkens back to the issue of whether gluten-free beer can be something different and hopefully better than barley beer, or whether you're trying make the best imitation of what we expect from barley. Do remember that your adjuncts simply can't replace your grain. I think honey and candi syrup are excellent adjuncts that can really help round things out, but if you lean on them too heavily you'll just be disappointed more often than not.

I agree that more grain is the secret in the long run. The tough part is how to do that efficiently. I scrapped my small-scale GF malting venture when CMC started selling their (mostly non-diastatic ) malt at prices lower than I could buy raw materials. If I had an old dryer to rig as a kiln and a couples barrels with automatic rotating mechanisms I could maybe do it, but I just don't have the space, time or capital to dump into that project.

 

[igliashon]

Well I finally got off my ass and called beljica about the Promalt enzymes that he's got too much of, and he should be sending some my way very soon. According to the website, Promalt "is a glucanase preparation which also contains protease and alpha amylase activities. It is useful when using unevenly modified barley, grists with a high beta glucan content or grists containing high levels of adjuncts." The glucanase is essential, I think--I tried to do a mash yesterday of flaked oats, flaked rice, flaked amaranth, and flaked quinoa, using only alpha- and beta-amylase, and it was a total disaster. Only time I've ever dumped a batch BEFORE fermentation. The wort was gummy and as thick as a milkshake, even though the gravity measurement was in the normal range, and for the 6 pounds of grain I mashed, I only got a measly 18 points of gravity. I think glucanase would have broken down more of the cell walls to thin the mash and make more starch available for conversion, and might have given me something usable. But in a couple previous batches, I attempted to use instant oats and got a similarly-milky wort, and ended up getting crazy off-flavors from the yeast that made the beer taste like cough syrup. I had no intention of making the same mistake again.

But in any case, I'm backing waaaaaay off on my experimentation. No more herbs, no more exotic hops. I'm going to keep doing some extract-based dark beers, because those have been coming out fine, but I'm going to do some simple SMaSHes with various roasted unmalted grains + Promalt to see if I can't conjure a decent basic amber or pale ale. I'm gonna try toasted red rice, toasted black rice, toasted millet, and toasted quinoa, with some super-light hopping with maybe northern brewer or cascade. I'm gonna aim to get 2/3 of the gravity from the grains, and the rest from equal parts rice syrup, sorghum extract, and amber candi syrup. I wish I had space for a proper MLT, but even for 3-gallon batches I don't think I can BIAB an all-grain recipe in my 5-gallon kettles, so I have to stick with using some extract for now. I might also try to do an African-style mix of millet and bananas. Once I get these done and bottled, I can try blending them, and try to come up with a multi-grain recipe. I just want to really taste the grains, y'know? I try to taste real beer periodically, and what always strikes me is how I can actually taste the grains. All of my beers have a flat, muted malt profile that's just vaguely sweet, and that's what I want to fix.

 

[muench1]

I'm backing waaaaaay off on my experimentation.

I might also try to do an African-style mix of millet and bananas.

 

[igliashon]

Hey, at least with that one there are examples in the marketplace! I keep waiting for Sprecher to put Mbege back on the market....