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Spent Grain? Make Your Best Friend Cookies!

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I'm not a professional, but my opinion is that this is NOT dog food, but it IS better than the supermarket treats that have artifical ingredients that dogs go primate poop over.
 
I'm thinking to get some spent grains at a local brewery and make some treats for our community fair as I think it's a great idea.

How many treats do you usually get out of the recipe?

Also, since I don't brew myself, I'm thinking of drying the grains first so I can use them later. Has anyone been drying them? What would you suggest is a quick and easy way to dry them?

Thanks for your help!
 
The oven works pretty fast, but use a low temp.

I've heard a food dehydrator would work, but I never tried it.

I also put them on a baking sheets and directed a fan to blow over them. It took a day or two and you have to mix them up in between.
 
Taurus said:
I'm thinking to get some spent grains at a local brewery and make some treats for our community fair as I think it's a great idea. How many treats do you usually get out of the recipe? Also, since I don't brew myself, I'm thinking of drying the grains first so I can use them later. Has anyone been drying them? What would you suggest is a quick and easy way to dry them? Thanks for your help!

Go to www.byo.com and search for cooking with spent grain. In the May/June issue this year there was a whole article on cooking with spent grain and drying it out. I dried some out in June, but I can't remember at what temp and for how long.
 
I have the spent grain site saved. Here it is; http://brooklynbrewshop.com/themash/category/spentgrainchef/
The drying process is in there somewhere. I put them on cookie sheets with low sides spread out on the sheets. 200F oven,& once an hour turn them over & dpread out again. It takes a few hours,& they're dry & sorta fluffy when dry. Cool & puut in zip lock gallon bags in the pantry. I use a Mr Coffee burr grinder to make flour out of them.
 
I just made dog treats (2 cups grain, 1/2 peanut butter, 1 cup flour, 1 egg) and filled a 10x9 pan at about 1/8" - 1/4" thick doggie treats. My dog went nuts for them. Next time I'll do 2/3 cups peanut butter to enhance flavor. Yes, I tried one.

I also made grain bars for humans. My recipe is:
2 cups grain
1 cups flour
1 egg
1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup honey
1/3 peanut butter
1/3 almond slivers
1/3 cup chocolate chunks sprinkled on top before baking

Both were laid on cookie sheets and baked at 350 for 30 min then 225F for another 2.5 hours. After the initial baking I scored the treats and spread them out so edges were exposed. They both turned out well. I used a base recipe found online and added all my goodies to the grain bars. The dog treats is a basic recipe also found online.
 
I have the spent grain site saved. Here it is; http://brooklynbrewshop.com/themash/category/spentgrainchef/
The drying process is in there somewhere. I put them on cookie sheets with low sides spread out on the sheets. 200F oven,& once an hour turn them over & dpread out again. It takes a few hours,& they're dry & sorta fluffy when dry. Cool & puut in zip lock gallon bags in the pantry. I use a Mr Coffee burr grinder to make flour out of them.

Thanks for posting this! I'm going to have to dry some grain for future use in cooking. :mug:
 
I have the spent grain site saved. Here it is; http://brooklynbrewshop.com/themash/category/spentgrainchef/
The drying process is in there somewhere. I put them on cookie sheets with low sides spread out on the sheets. 200F oven,& once an hour turn them over & dpread out again. It takes a few hours,& they're dry & sorta fluffy when dry. Cool & puut in zip lock gallon bags in the pantry. I use a Mr Coffee burr grinder to make flour out of them.

Thanks! Do you use the flour instead of regular flour and still add spent grains or use the flour instead of spent grains?
 
You have to cut the heavier spent grain flour with regular flour to get it to rise well. It's in the recipes. some recipes just used the dried crushed grains,others use it ground into flour.
 
an alternative to drying the spent grains is freezing them (while still wet). later, thaw them and use right away. saves you the hassle of drying if you have the freezer space.
 
unionrdr said:
I have the spent grain site saved. Here it is; http://brooklynbrewshop.com/themash/category/spentgrainchef/
The drying process is in there somewhere. I put them on cookie sheets with low sides spread out on the sheets. 200F oven,& once an hour turn them over & dpread out again. It takes a few hours,& they're dry & sorta fluffy when dry. Cool & puut in zip lock gallon bags in the pantry. I use a Mr Coffee burr grinder to make flour out of them.

I have to thank you for my new obsession. Half of my rye IPA grist is drying down now.
 
Dog is getting a nice big batch of peanut butter treats and I'm getting a small batch of grain bars with cranberries, chocolate, and almonds. The dog loved the latch batch and is sure to love this one with a tablespoon extra peanut butter. :D

Pardon the blurry pic. I'm sober, I think.
IMG_5928.JPG

IMG_5927.JPG
 
I make these with my nut brown grain . Add in some honey . they are quite good . Some day I will let my dog try one !
 
I have my first batch of treats cooking now. I used spent grain, flour, peanut butter, 2 eggs, and bacon pieces. If these work out the next batch will have corn meal too. Canines, wild and domestic, love corn. If Tuck doesn't like them I'll put maple syrup on them. Sounds pretty good. Maybe I'll make a batch for myself. Then again, Tucker always figures his cut should be 60% off the top.
 
Made a batch for the dogs last night as a Christmas gift. They loved them! Thanks so much for the recipe! :D
 
I'm thinking to get some spent grains at a local brewery and make some treats for our community fair as I think it's a great idea.

How many treats do you usually get out of the recipe?

Also, since I don't brew myself, I'm thinking of drying the grains first so I can use them later. Has anyone been drying them? What would you suggest is a quick and easy way to dry them?

Thanks for your help!


Every brew day, while waiting on the boil I make a batch of cookies for the pups ..
Full size cookie sheet I get 117 cookies (these are not food, but treats, so I make um small about 3/4 x 1")

That takes 4 cups of spent grain.

Then I bag up 8 more cups in two bags (4 cups each) and freeze.. Do not dry, just drop um in the deep freeze.

Pull a bag out day prior to next batch... dump the bag in the mixer using the dough hook, add the other ingredients and 5 min later it is ready to roll out on parchment paper covered cookie sheet, score and in the convection oven it goes.

45 min at 350
remove cool a few min to help solidify , brake apart, and in the oven they go again at 275 (lowest my convection will go)

3 hours later, they are very dry... I have tested with a moisture meter and I just dump them in a zip loc for treat time.. never had any moisture condensate in the bag or any mold grow.

I used my dehydrators once.. left them over night, they dried fine,, but the racks are always a pain to clean... so I went back to the oven.

Bottom line, a typical 5 gal partial mash / extract brew batch for me, leaves me enough grain to make at least 6 batches at 4 cups of grain per batch.
 
It takes me a few hours at 200F to dry my grains from a 5 gallon partial mash.
Cool & store in zip lock bags. Then you have the option of grinding them into flour for some recipes. I grind'em into flour in my Mr Coffee burr grinder. I've made these with spent grain flour-
http://[URL=http://s563.photobucket.com/user/unionrdr/media/PICT0005_zpsae959cf3.jpg.html] [/URL]
And spent grain flour pretzel buns,
http://[URL=http://s563.photobucket.com/user/unionrdr/media/PICT0001_zpsbd329434.jpg.html] [/URL]
Never got a pic of the spent grain flour biscuits,but the pizza crust is made from it.
 
Ah, thank you for bringing this up. There have been a few reported cases of sight hound breeds (mostly greyhounds) developing malignant hyperthermia (kinda like an uncontrolled fever, body just keeps making itself hotter and hotter) after the ingestion of hop products. This is not something that I would generaly not worry about, as it takes a while to dig up the details in the archives of veterinary litterature (translate: pretty freakin rare...) BUT, I would also say don't tempt fate and feed your dog the leftover hops from that IIPA your brewin next weekend ;)

Not sure if anybody replied to this, as I did not feel the urge to read through 54 pages of posts looking for one reply. Hops are poisonous to dogs. My sister's dog ingested some spent hops out of the garbage when they weren't looking and that night she start panting real heavy. The following morning they went to the vet and her temp was 106 degrees. She pulled through it with an IV, but the Doc said he has had 6 cases where dogs came in after eating hops and they all died by days end. Sure, not EVERY dog may react to hops, but I know for sure I will be very careful when I discard hops with my dog around.

On another note, I have made these treats, with some different types of flour (brown flour and oat flour or something along those lines), and my pup loves them! Excellent use of spent grains IMO.

New to the forum, btw!

-Ryan
 
Not sure if anybody replied to this, as I did not feel the urge to read through 54 pages of posts looking for one reply. Hops are poisonous to dogs. My sister's dog ingested some spent hops out of the garbage when they weren't looking and that night she start panting real heavy. The following morning they went to the vet and her temp was 106 degrees. She pulled through it with an IV, but the Doc said he has had 6 cases where dogs came in after eating hops and they all died by days end. Sure, not EVERY dog may react to hops, but I know for sure I will be very careful when I discard hops with my dog around.

On another note, I have made these treats, with some different types of flour (brown flour and oat flour or something along those lines), and my pup loves them! Excellent use of spent grains IMO.

New to the forum, btw!

-Ryan


Hops should be no problem with spent grains. You mash your grains before the boil, so there are no hops in spent grains. So make you best friend the treatsthatthey really love.

All I have to do is whisper " beer cookies" and my dogs come running, even if they were sound asleep.
 
Hops should be no problem with spent grains. You mash your grains before the boil, so there are no hops in spent grains. So make you best friend the treatsthatthey really love.

All I have to do is whisper " beer cookies" and my dogs come running, even if they were sound asleep.

This was my thought on hops too. I know some people go ahead and add the first bittering hop to the boil kettle during sparging and runoff, but I didn't think anyone was adding them to the mash itself. I heard about hops being poisonous to dogs, because a friend of mine was going to order some rhizomes then decided not to for the sake of his 4 dogs.
 
I need to try some of these. I typically just use it to feed the wild game at my dad's house, but this looks way better

Your dogs will love you....... I have not bought dog treats in years. They really love these treats.
 
Just made a batch and infused it with some bacon grease think he is going to go really nuts this batch
 
I too got a surprise when I went on land mine duty. I know my dogs sometimes eat grass, and have odd looking poop, but it took me a couple of minutes to figure out they ate all the spent grain right off of the dirt. Four batches worth. Damn, there goes my simple compost idea. My dogs, 1 Female Dobe, 1 Dobe/Rotty mix, and they are freaking nuts about peanut butter. It appears there are some doggie cookies coming soon, thanks for the recipes.
 
So I went to start cooking these up tonight. Instead of finding the bread paddle, I found a cuisinart blade.

So I'm now at the ER waiting for stitches.
 

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