Hey all,
First post here. I'm a somewhat experienced homebrewer (all grain, been brewing over a year, do a pretty wide range of styles) who's recently started doing some small-batch GF experiments. I'm intending to share them mostly with my dad, who's now gluten-intolerant but also a beer lover since well before I existed, and also with some other friends, including one very sensitive celiac.
I wanted to throw out a few observations/rules of thumb I've been going by for others to confirm or disagree with, and also ask a few questions. Here goes.
The rules I've been following regarding keeping things gluten free are as follows (these are meant to be pretty strict, since one friend is quite sensitive):
Do these sound sufficient? Overly paranoid? Am I missing anything?
Next, my qualitative observations on recipes:
Do these match other people's experience?
Lastly, my big question of the moment. I've been thinking about buying some amylase and doing a largely millet mash - I like the taste of that grain. How has this worked for anyone who's tried it? I don't know that I'm up for actually malting the grain myself, so this seems like the second best option.
Thanks for any help, and sorry for the wall of text; I haven't had anywhere to lay these thoughts out, really, so you guys end up with a lot of my rambling to read.
First post here. I'm a somewhat experienced homebrewer (all grain, been brewing over a year, do a pretty wide range of styles) who's recently started doing some small-batch GF experiments. I'm intending to share them mostly with my dad, who's now gluten-intolerant but also a beer lover since well before I existed, and also with some other friends, including one very sensitive celiac.
I wanted to throw out a few observations/rules of thumb I've been going by for others to confirm or disagree with, and also ask a few questions. Here goes.
The rules I've been following regarding keeping things gluten free are as follows (these are meant to be pretty strict, since one friend is quite sensitive):
- Glass and metal equipment can be shared with non-GF uses; all plastic or non-stic equipment must be GF only
- Fermentis dry yeast is safe; White Labs or Wyeast should be cultured through 4-5 generations on a gf medium before being used.
- The equipment chain of custody needs to be solid - for instance, I don't intend to use hops from my LHBS in the final product, since they use the same scoops for hops and barley.
- It's my understanding that Brewer's Clarex and the like can't actually be trusted to chop up the protein functional groups that gluten intolerant people are sensitive to. No shortcuts - or, at least, none so easy as that.
- All these rules are relaxed, of course, for the test batches, which only I drink.
Do these sound sufficient? Overly paranoid? Am I missing anything?
Next, my qualitative observations on recipes:
- I've generally preferred my recipes brewed on more "interesting" yeasts (i.e. WLP550, Wyeast 3711) to those on more straightforward (US-05) yeasts. I think the esters and whatnot may help bury the off sorghum tastes.
- It seems like part of the trick is to get sorghum down to 50-60% of the mash or less without including so much of anything else that its own undesirable aspects start to come out. For instance, I've found that honey up to ~15% of the mash can be nice, after which the brew starts to taste like honey wine or something. Currently doing some experiments trying to find the limits with Belgian candi sugar.
- I've been messing around with steeping millet, amaranth, and buckwheat - unmalted, but sometimes roasted - to try to add some body and grain character, and I've found that it helps, but not as much as I'd like. I don't currently have the capacity to grind these grains, and I suspect I'm getting less out of them than I otherwise would as a result.
- Maltodextrine definitely helps offset the sugar adjuncts in terms of creating a balanced mouthfeel.
- Small batches help. I haven't yet produced anything I want to drink more than a gallon of on this project, and using 1 Gal plastic containers for fermenters also makes it easier to do side by side experiments.
Do these match other people's experience?
Lastly, my big question of the moment. I've been thinking about buying some amylase and doing a largely millet mash - I like the taste of that grain. How has this worked for anyone who's tried it? I don't know that I'm up for actually malting the grain myself, so this seems like the second best option.
Thanks for any help, and sorry for the wall of text; I haven't had anywhere to lay these thoughts out, really, so you guys end up with a lot of my rambling to read.