The GaP (Grocery and Produce) Beer Experiment

[NeiloGD]

I think this may actually be my first post....

Anyways, I tried this experiment. These are the ingredients as I remember:

750g of Pearl Barley. (Crushed)
750g of Rolled Oats.
500g of Brown Sugar.
2x Grapefruits. (Hop substitute) (Squeezed juices, also put peels into it)
Some digestive enzyme pills I found in my local store (used for the mash)
8l of Tap Water.
10g of Bakers Yeast.

Measured up around 3.5-4% ABV (I think, I measured a while ago, didn't document it)

I put this on back in Feb, let it ferment out and bottled it. Tasted god awful at that point (1 month in the fermenter). I have summoned up the courage to try it again tonight after bottling. I must say, it has turned out "Ok". It is drinkable, VERY drinkable. Tastes like a white wine, just a touch anyway. I can't say it is my fav brew so far, but I am surprised at how well it has aged. It tastes alright, nothing fantastic - a little sour, rather than bitter. Overall I am impressed that it turned out as a nice drinkable piss. That is all it is, but I do want to improve upon this now.

 

[sahdff]

This amazing thread inspired my second post to the site and my second brew. This is my first attempt at a Grocer and Produce Alcoholic Beverage and also at washing yeast. I'm not really sure it could be called beer, but it will definitely have alcohol in it. I loosely based it on post #300, but with no grain it's probably going to turn out more like a bitter hard tea ( but really, where else could I get away with posting this recipe?).

64 oz of sun tea (Red Rose Brand, my personal favorite)
.5 oz Rosemary (dried) (for bitterness)
2 TBSP Cocoa Powder (for bitterness)
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
Yeast washed from Munton's Bock Extract Kit. (probably generic ale yeast)

First I put 8 tea bags in 64 ounces of water and set it in the afternoon sun for a few hours. (I actually forgot about it until after dark, but it was cool outside.) I then boiled the brown sugar in about 1.5 cups of water and let that cool. Then I boiled the cocoa and rosemary together for around 5 minutes, and strained that into the tea jar. I got around three to four ounces of moderately bitter, very aromatic liquid. The rosemary actually overpowered any hint of cocoa. I then added my yeast slurry to the cooled sugar water mixture and let that get a jumpstart. I let that work for 30 minutes to an hour, and then added it to my tea/rosemary/cocoa mixture. The bubbles didn't start back within an hour, but was bubbling along finely this morning. I debated on adding more sugar, but ultimately decided against it.

I tasted this before I added the yeast, and it was like a decent herbal tea. If it turns out tasting like donkey ass, I'm only out a couple of bucks and I got a good lesson in yeast washing. If it is close to drinkable, next time I will use molasses instead of brown sugar. BTW, this site is an excellent resource for GaP type beverages.

 

[ICWiener]

My local Whole Foods actually has a homebrewing section! That would be cheating I suppose.

Shoot, for about 8 months there, they were the only place I could get Citra hops. Who knew? Maybe that's why they had them, not a lot of people go to the grocery store for brewing supplies.

 

[Deadrasputin]

For my next GAP Ale project I used a slightly different recipe then I did in post # 300. I wanted a thicker wort then before.

Grain Bill
2 pounds of corn meal
2 pounds of rolled oats
1 box Grape nuts cereal.

seasoning
2 ounces rosemary
2 cups Foldger's black coffee

sugars
2 pounds molasses
1 pound clove honey

extra
2 gallons spring water
1 package fleichmanns yeast

I soaked the grains and Rosemary in the spring water for 20 minutes in a mesh bag. Then added the molasses, coffee and honey to the kettle. Boiled every thing for 5 minutes. Cooled to room tempeture. Threw the 3 gallon mixture into the fermentor and pitched the yeast. Now the wait begins

Starting Gravity read 1.030

Really this project is nearly impossible without being able to malt any grains. I can add a grain flavor to the wort, but it is not the same as working with a malt extract.

The fermentable sugar is another issue. Too much honey makes a Mead. Not only does that break the rules of this post but it makes an Ale that tastes like white wine.

Substituting honey with molasses creates too much sweetness. Coffee and cloves could mask that.

At this point I feel like I am making bread flavored braggot's, not true Ales.

 

[bootscity]

I was wondering if the Saccaromyces cereviseae sold in the supermarket are active yeast. Anyone tryed it? couldn't read the whole thread.

Also, could bananas replace malted grain for beta and alpha amylase? Or should I just spit in my Mash? (Apocalyptic cenario, I should malt my own cereal )

 

[Crucial-BBQ]

I know this is an old thread...

...and I know the rules say no cider...

...but...

...apples are in the produce section...

...and in a real "zombi apocalypse" this would be the easiest way to make alcohol...

When I was a young punk rocker hanging out on the streets back in the day some friends and I used to make cider the "old fashioned way".

1. Core 10#s of apples.
2. Slice and dice them how ever you like.
3. Place in five gallon bucket, fill with water.
4. Let sit uncovered for one month.
5. Strain and drink.

The concoction begins to look real funky towards the end but tastes just like cider. Not sure of ABV, though.

 

[Pitron]

Here is what I call "Pirate's Champagne":

Boil 500g of Wheat Bran for 90 minutes for yeast nutrients and a great wheat taste. Cool and decanter off the solids. Add some lemon juice to drop the PH of the mash a little.
Add 4 kg of raw sugar (optionally invert the sugar by boiling for 15 minutes with added citric acid for faster fermentation). Fill water up to 25 liters and pitch bakers yeast however you please.

Ferments out to 9.5% Abv and tastes surprisingly well! Bottle condition with some more raw sugar or do what it was originally intended for and distill it into a very light rum.

 

[Likn07]

Sooooooo. I did this before. Basically make kvass. 3 slices of rye bread, a table spoon of ground coffee, a couple of table spoons of rice, and 1/2 a bag of sugar.
Use cheesecloth as a steeping bag. Boil it for about 45 minutes cool in the sink over ice remove bag and transfer to a carboy when its about 80 degrees. Pitch bakers yeast still dry let it ferment for 10 days. Then prime bottles with a tea spoon of sugar let the bottles sit for a week.

 

[Likn07]

It tastes kinda weird, but definitely beer. This is an experimental type thing, or apocalyptic type situation. Otherwise buy some grains.

 

[HoosteezMorgan]

What about the vitamin b supplements that say they contain 100 mg of brewers yeast anyone tried growing a culture from it is it possible I mean according to my research the vitamins and minerals in these pills would be wonderful for yeast health not just human I'm not sure how much 100 mg of yeast actually is but I being a former drug addict can say there's no more than 400 mg of yeast in a typical dry yeast packet if that so any thoughts experience

 

[Revvy]

What about the vitamin b supplements that say they contain 100 mg of brewers yeast anyone tried growing a culture from it is it possible I mean according to my research the vitamins and minerals in these pills would be wonderful for yeast health not just human I'm not sure how much 100 mg of yeast actually is but I being a former drug addict can say there's no more than 400 mg of yeast in a typical dry yeast packet if that so any thoughts experience

That yeast is "dead" yeast. I's not an active culture.

 

[phug]

Might make it handy as a yeast nutrient though

 

[Bosh]

What I'd probably do for this:
-Rice malt (even the smallest markets here have it as a cooking syrup).
-Citron tea (big jar of sweetened citron pulp).
-Starter made from Hoegaarten bottle. What stuff has live yeast, right?

No real bittering but good bit of sour from the citron.

 

[HoosteezMorgan]

I got an idea to throw out what about using honey that is unpasteurized with the amylase enzymes that could convert the starches using the pearl barley you can find at many grocery stores along with honey in a long mash probably with wild rice or the likes to prevent major gelatinous type issues what do you guys think about that idea

 

[Norselord]

I'm assuming we are not allowed to use cans of Malta?

 

[Revvy]

I'm assuming we are not allowed to use cans of Malta?

This was hotly debated "back in the day" by those of us who did this originally... I was pro using malta.... others weren't

There really is no hard and fast rule.... If this were the zombipocalypse we wouldn't be making this distinction imho.... we'd ferment everything we could.

But I will say Malta goya tastes like crap, even fermented, so I would say NO to just sticking yeast in and calling it a day.... You'd still need to balance the intense flavor... so let's say no more than i dunno 30% of it can be goya.... there's probably not even 5 gallons of the stuff in any single grocery store UNLESS you were raiding a Mexican Bodega or an India/Ethnic grocer. In most American stores I don't think I've seen more than 2-3 six packs of the small bottles on the shelves.

I think some sort of graff type beer/apple juice combo with MG would be interesting.
Also maybe a MG/roasted sweet potato combo.

The funny thing is, when we started this thread and were doing it, this kind of experimentation was new to me.... Now usually I have at least one beer going at any given time with some sort of odd ingredient/process involved.

 

[Deadrasputin]

So I was able to finally solve this using only products from a grocery store. The secret to it is Kvass.... A Russian drink thats traditionally made with Rye bread and only about 1% ABV... However after some alterations to the original recipe, mine comes out at 5%..... Tastes like a flat root beer soda with a touch of sourness... Not bad at all.... Very drinkable

for 5gallons

8Lbs of rye bread,
2Lbs of wheat bread
2 lbs of sugar
25 raisins
Fleischmann's ActiveDry Yeast

Toast all bread till dry and very crispy.... then Crush it like a grain.
Add crushed bread to a pouch of cheescloth... Or a couple if it all does not fit.

Add the sugar to about 3 gallons of water, stir and bring to a boil

Steep the bread crumbs in water at 150 degrees farenheit for one hour

Remove the crushed bread crumbs from the wart,

Remove the wart from heat, drop tempature to 75 degrees

Add water to the wart to bring total volume to 5 gallons

I then add air by pouring this from one bucket to another a few times

Toss in the raisins, add the yeast and ferment 4 weeks


You could also add apples, or pears or currants to this recipe for flavor.... I have done that post fermentation with black currant tea.... Just poured in about half a gallon before adding this to the keg

It does feel a bit weird trying to check out of the store with like 12 loaves of bread... In a zombie invasion... I am not sure that much bread would survive! Its shelf life in the store is like 5-7 Days. And that bread might me more valuable to eat then brew at that point

 

[Deadrasputin]

So the rye bread works, but you need at least 2 lbs per gallon of brew to do it. Not sure why it works since it is not sprouted? My guess is maybe Rye bread is made from sprouted rye grass, or there is enough sugar in the bread to ferment.

I just noticed in the bread section of Safeway, sprouted breads... Lots of wheat to choose from.... My next idea is to try and make a wheat beer from it. Anybody else notice this health food craze?

As Sprouted breads become more popular, and Rye bread can be used as a GAP beer ingredient, we need to discuss Hops, or hop substitutes.... Or do we just assume GAP brews are going to be Gruit's?

Could we achieve a decent bitterness using bakers chocolate? Or Grapefruit?

How could we make a pale ale with GAP?

Say a few lbs of Sprouted Wheat bread mixed with a 1lb or 2 of Rye bread, 8 oz of bakers chocolate or grapefruit?

 

[booschnache]

Try Basil.

 

[HoosteezMorgan]

Grapefruit kumquat and lemons all go well with basil and rosemary which could to a point help with ipa gap

 

[Paps]

Nothing to add ATM but this is just too weird to not subscribe.

 

[piersonm]

Awesome thread. I now have faith that humanity will have some kind of alcohol in a post apocalyptic world. I found this site http://www.thebrewsite.com/apocalypse-beer-ferment-anything/ which, in my opinion, sums up everything that has been talked about in this thread. Brew on!

 

[Queequeg]

How about citrus fruit pith to bitter? You could then use the zest as an aroma edition

 

[Revvy]

*Bump*

So, on a facebook brewing group someone mentioned that there's a Homebrewer Character now on "Fear The Walking Dead" and evidently it's the most accurate portrayal of one of us on TV yet. I mentioned that on most brewing forums forever the topic of post-apocalyptic brewing has been around forever. And that in the dim dark recesses of HBT we had a grocery store challenge thread that every now and then got re-started. Thought maybe some of the newer folks would take up the mantle that a bunch of us started forever ago.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

There's already been not one but two threads on the FTWD saison recipe, although that seems to assume access to a LHBS.

I think my comment on this thread would be that people are trying to do too much at once, it would be better to take individual parts of the problem and try to solve them separately using "good" ingredients for the other parts in any one beer.

For instance, here in the UK I know I can get (bottle-conditioned) Fuller's 1845 or Adnams minikegs in my local supermarket and I know that it also has sterile 1.050 sugar-water in the form of UHT apple juice, and yeast nutrient in the form of Marmite yeast extract. So in principle I could shake up some 1845 dregs and a dab of Marmite in a carton of UHT apple juice and know that it would work pretty well as a GaP starter culture. You could even mix juice/Marmite with gelatine to plate out yeast, using jam jar lids or something as Petri dishes. If we were in a zombie apocalypse and could flex the rules a tad, I could scavenge yeast from the empty casks at my local pub.

But I don't need to do all that for R&D purposes, I can use WLP002 as an interim measure which will be easier and more reliable whilst I work on more difficult aspects. As an aside - a lot of bread yeast is POF+, so makes phenolics like Belgian yeast, I'd trade one of my nubile slave girls in return for POF- yeast from eg bottle/cask dreg as it will mean better beer and more NSGs in the long run, if NSG numbers are your measure of success.

Malting/mashing is obviously the big problem. Beano is not a thing here, in fact I'm struggling to think where you could get any kind of enzymes off the top of my head. I like the banana idea, and surely potatoes must have huge amounts of amylase once they are chitted? I've also seen maize suggested as a good source of amylase. But the one I'd probably try first is (mung) bean sprouts, we literally eat malted beans, there must be a ton of enzymes in there.

But in the meantime, I know it is on the borderline between beer and "wine", I'd been thinking of using golden syrup as my fermentable with a dash of Marmite in it as yeast nutrient. Maybe boil pearl barley in it for barley taste, maybe some Scottish porridge oats for better mouthfeel.

We may not have Beano, but we do have anti-wind medication based on simet(h)icone, the active ingredient in Fermcap. So we can prevent boilovers, in fact even pre-zombies I use things like Deflatine as an alternative to Fermcap.

Water chemistry - the supermarket has citric acid, limescale cleaner, and I've been in supermarkets on the continent which sold eg hydrochoric acid. And there's always lemon juice and Coke for acidity adjustments... Keeping the pH down will help minimise tannin extraction from some of the weirder ingredients. Epsom salts and table salt are no problem, I'd have to go to the DIY shop/builders' merchants for building plaster, which is essentially impure gypsum, or (proper) Plaster of Paris which is the same stuff, dehydrated and a bit purer.

In the zombie scenario, I have access to wild hops and bog myrtle - a tea of the latter tastes surprisingly like an APA. But in GaP terms, I'd start looking for bitterness by using tonic water (preferably full-fat) as my brewing "water", and adjust bitterness adjustment using either Sodastream tonic concentrate, or Angostura. I've had a beer with hops and quinine in it, it does work, and your beer is fluorescent!

For flavouring my "pale", I guess lemon/orange/grapefruit zest, maybe a teabag or two. For a dark - coffee beans, cocoa nibs, some home-toasted grains.

I didn't intend it but I guess that's ended up as quite a British take on the problem - golden syrup and Marmite dissolved in tonic water with pearl barley and porridge oats, fermented with Fuller's yeast and flavoured in part with a teabag. But localism is part of the story, right?

 

[JAReeves]

You got the premise of it pretty good...

I don't really know the amount of beeno to use...I just know that on chat, Eviltoj told me he used 10 beeno's for his "grainbill" and didn't get good conversion...I used 15 and didn't either....

I haven’t finished reading through this thread yet, but I am wondering if; instead of Beano, can you soak some barley from the store, start it growing, and then stop it by heating in the oven? Would you get the enzymes you need for conversion from this?

I’m going to keep reading, as I find this topic fascinating. I have wild apple cider and wild sour cultures from my own grapes munching away in the “cupboard under the stairs” at the moment.

 

[Pugnacious Brewing]

I have been reading through this conversation and am very intrigued. I am very interested in trying my hand, in the future at this idea.
I pose a question to all of you here.
Has anyone tried mashing rice and mango for your base? Perhaps even rice, raw wheat and mango? I saw people talking about bananas, but I’m still reading through to see how this worked. On my search for knowledge it seems that mango it very high in amylase enzyme and should be able to convert the grist. Any input on this idea?

 

[tll77]

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but my first ever attempt to make beer was wholly from the grocery store. I haven't read the whole thread so, sorry if this has been said already.
I was much younger and had no idea home brewing was even a thing, or that there was a store for it nearby. I went to the library to read up on as much brewing literature as I could get a hold of to try and grasp the concept, albeit in a very rudimentary way.
After I felt I had an understanding of that, I went to whole foods for ingredients.
I cant recall the amounts at this point, but the 'grainbill' was flaked wheat and rolled barley flakes from the bulk section but I knew there were no enzymes here so I grabbed a couple bags of Bobs red mill malted barley flour(sometimes labeled diastatic barley flour). I was not able to find bitter orange so I bought fresh sweet oranges and some coriander. I picked up a small block of fresh bread yeast.
I proceeded to mash this in a pot on my stove top for a little more than an hour before pouring it through a strainer lined with cheesecloth. This was boiled with a little sugar added and the spices. I let it cool in the sink in an ice water bath. I then poured it through a strainer into a bucket for fermentation with the bread yeast.
Keep reading, it gets worse
After fermentation, I 'bottled' this by pouring it into mason jars, though I did try to minimize splashing. The jars conditioned on the counter for 2-3 days before I got nervous they might blow and I put them in the fridge for a week or so before opening them.

Knowing what I know now, it wasn't good, but at the time I recall having quite impressed myself as I had most certainly made beer.
I have been a home brewer ever since. I was totally hooked. Ironically, shortly after that I saw a home brew store across town(probably because I wasn't looking before but now I am).
I bought a starter kit and ingredients for an extract batch there.

 

[bracconiere]

can you use the local feed store for this challenge? i all ready malt my own, so i'd just need to find something for hops/bittering then? i suppose they probably sell wheat berries i could malt at the health food store?

And i have brewed a rice beer from a 20lb bag of rice from the store quite a few times, but had to use amylase and gluco for it....and A LOT of rice hulls...

and yes, this thread is new to me. And i haven't read all 328 posts yet....

 

[jorjon000]

Posted this elsewhere...
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/sweet-potato-mash-experiment.211386/page-2

Similar to aomagman78...

I made all sweet potato beer (added 8oz of 6 row for enzyme activity just in case). I peeled, grated sweet potato. Held at 140F in 'mash' step, removed sweet potatoes from water, and boiled separately. Put the boiled sweet potatoes in a blender, and returned to mash now at 152F for 90min. I ended up at 1.048 (2.5 gal) with 6 kilos of grated potato. Added Saaz, and S04 which devoured the sugars, leaving me at 1.004. I pulled it off the trub (lots of it) within 10 days, as suggested previously. Now I'm holding at 60F and it's starting to clear up a bit.
Any suggestions on flavorings for secondary? I'm splitting my batch into several 1 gallon secondaries to test some ideas. I want to stay away from pumpkin pie, as I already made one for fall.