Sorghum hits

[traetox]

Hey all,

I am a fairly new celiac (diagnosed in August) and after a bit of self pity on losing my favorite beverage I discovered Ghostfish and then you guys. I doubled down with a full homebrew setup, kegs and all. I even went so far as to build a heavily insulated fermenting room in my basement.

The first batch came out of secondary last week, followed by a force carb and one week rest. The beer was pretty so so (i over did the citrus) but it was pretty amazing to know I could have beer again.

However, I feel like garbage. Feels like the worst gluten hit I have ever had. Have any of you also been hit by sorghum extract? Any one have any experience with the brewcraft sorghum LME that would indicate it isn't clean? I am trying to track down what did it and wanted to reach out to see if there is any chance that the sorghum and/or hops are the problem.

I used the following:
7lbs Brewcraft Sorghum LME
12oz pure 100% clover honey
2oz cascade pellet hops from a local brew shop
orange zest
dried safeale US-05 yeast.


Thank you

 

[glutarded-chris]

Do you have issues with commercial sorghum based beers like Redbridge or Bards?

I am pretty sure Ghostfish uses millet base. Do you have an issue with their product?
If you don't have an issue with Ghostfish product, and you have gone this far, you could go further and do all grain millet based.

If you find sorghum is ok and want to do a few more batches, I would recommend adding 0.5 lb maltodextrin, 1 lb belgian candy syrup and steep some specialty grain such as crystal (millet or rice) and maybe some roasted rice malt. My experience is that I had to get to about 1.060 OG on my sorghum syrup batches otherwize they were thin.

I am no doctor but have had celiac my entire life. Was diagnosed with "wheat intolerance" when I was 4 (more than 45 years ago) before they really understood gluten. Over the years I have falsely implicated foods and now realize that other sources of gluten were "poisoning" me. Also, it takes some time to heal from damage and my experience is that when I am in that healing phase, hard to digest things like red meat and dairy can give me a "false reaction". I hope you will be able to isolate what got you and that you find that you will be able to tolerate GF brews!

 

[traetox]

I reintroduced ground beef to my diet about 10 days ago. Never even occurred to me that it could be a problem.

I have never actually tried ghostfish. I just saw that they published a recipe and won an award with it which emboldened me. I did just fine with St Peters commercial sorghum beer. Although I can't tolerate more than about 1 omission.

Guess I'll wait it out and retry in a Mon or so. Should give the sorghum time to mello out anyway. Is it better to let the keg condition at 68f or the 34f in the kegarator?


Thank you very much, it helps so much to get others experiences.

 

[max42]

Just keg condition at serving temperature and pressure. I find 4 weeks a good point to drink. Certainly can drink sooner but much better after 4 weeks.

 

[glutarded-chris]

+1 on what max42 said.

I don’t know that the ground beef would necessarily be the culprit, but definitely be aware of consuming a lot of food that is difficult to process.