Time to Get Real About Eating Spent Grain

[Clint Yeastwood]

You've done it, right? Just between you and me.

 

[day_trippr]

Actually, no, I haven't. Never did the cookie thing, I donate my spent grains to my neighbors chickens.
I have masticated pinches of dry malted grains often, though.
Especially Golden Promise. Can't resist that one

Cheers!

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Oh, um, me neither.

 

[day_trippr]

lol!

 

[Ridenour64]

I have taken a pinch of spent grain and ate it. I read about people making spent grain bread and other foods but haven’t got around to actually doing it. I think some people make dog treats? Curious to hear what other people are doing.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Never turn down fiber.

 

[agentbud]

Funny this just got posted. Been brewing 10+ years and the last brew a couple weeks ago was the first time I tasted the spent grains. Google is listening! The spent grains did nothing for me but I do enjoy crunching on some fresh grains while getting ready to mash.

 

[TheMadKing]

I've made spent grain pretzels a few times and I'll taste them to see if there's any risidual sweetness after my mash

 

[Airborneguy]

I've tasted them, but I mostly follow the carnivore diet, so beside beer and the occipital cheat (mainly buns for burgers), no grains for me.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

It's like a Barbie brewery.

Better get brewing and baking @Clint Yeastwood !

 

[Kickass]

I started early one morning on a double batch brew day on my old 3v system. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and started drinking too early. At the end of my second mash, with no time to make breakfast and a serious need for sustenance, I ate about a pound of spent grain. That was A LOT of fiber.

 

[IslandLizard]

Raises hand...

But I prefer baking bread with some of the wet spent grain. Just mix in enough flour to make a no-knead dough.
The wet grain is even better a day or 2 later.
And without any rice or oat hulls.

 

[Brewskey]

Raises hand...

But I prefer baking bread with some of the wet spent grain. Just mix in enough flour to make a no-knead dough.
The wet grain is even better a day or 2 later.
And without any rice or oat hulls.

Not surprised......

 

[Protos]

I always feel regretful when throwing out my beautiful spent grains.
I tried to eat some - but, husks? With them, the grain tastes like straw. (Yes, I know the taste of straw, I tried it once when I was a child, looking at our animals happily munching on it).
How do you cook them to make them edible at all?

 

[DuncB]

Mixed in a few tablespoons with my porridge. It's fibre.

 

[Miraculix]

Fibre, yes, so is straw. I don't eat straw.

Unless you're constantly constipated, the beneficial fibre is mainly soluble fibre that feeds the gut microorganisms. Normal fibre does not really contribute in that respect so it is a bit useless.

I don't think that there's much soluble fibre left in spent grain.

I just inoculated my last batches spent grain with oyster mushroom, lionsmane mushroom and some maitake. Let's see how that goes.

 

[ebbelwoi]

A few times when making Weizens, I've mashed the wheat separately, then added some of the spent wheat on granola. It's huskless and has lots of fiber.

 

[madscientist451]

I've tried roasting the spent grains on a cookie sheet in the oven, then putting into the blender to make it more like flour and then using it as an ingredient in bread. A little is good, but too much makes the bread heavier than I like. I decided its really not really worth all the extra effort. I've made some mostly wheat beers in the past and never thought about trying to save that for bread, thanks for the idea, ebbelwoi.

 

[Old Medic]

We usually made a loaf or 2 of bread every brew session, the chickens got the rest. Have done pizza crust a few times 2.

 

[CDS]

I've made bread once or twice but that only takes a couple cups of it, and I'm still left with a ton to deal with.
We have a municipal organic collection program, so I just put it all in a compostable bag and leave it for pickup.

 

[brewbama]

I dump them in the wood line so my wife can see the deer they attract

 

[scrap iron]

I taste them after the mash to see how much sugar is left. Then give a couple of scoops to the chickens, they love them, then the rest goes onto the compost pile with the spent hops. I may give some of the spent hops to the chickens if I think about it.

 

[rallenhall]

My wife is a steady bread baker, but a little spent grain goes a very long way. Most ends up in the compost for the garden

 

[bellhp]

Mine goes to the chickens , chickens lay eggs , we eat eggs.

 

[kennyg33]

After making liquid bread, I always save most of the spent grain (in the fridge) for making solid bread. That which does not get made into bread gets dried and food processed into flour for use in many other baked goods.

 

[JAReeves]

I'll normally dry out two sheet trays in the oven overnight, then bag and freeze; the rest of the grain goes in the mulch bin or straight into the yard. Pale ale/Pilsner malt gets used for bread and pizza crust, no more than 1c grain to 2c flour in whatever size batch (the hulls will limit/cut the gluten strands). Stout/porter gets used for cookies or dessert/fruit breads, usually 50/50 is ok because those are quick breads and not yeast risen with gluten-based air pockets.

I bought a flour grinder attachment for my stand mixer, but after 20 years, the mixer has decided it needs repair, so I have yet to actually make my own flour out of the spent grains.

 

[IslandLizard]

I tried to eat some - but, husks? With them, the grain tastes like straw.

Barley husks are soft, especially after the mash, fine to eat, IMO. And goes very well in a good home-baked bread.*

It's rice hulls (added for mash permeability) that have the texture of razor blades in your mouth. Then oat husks are like eating leather shavings. So no, not edible, spent grain containing those all get dumped onto the compost heap.

I'd doubt spent grain could be used in commercial bread due to health regulations and inspection standards. So homemade spent grain breads are very unique in that regard, and yummy.

* When I was a little kid our corner bakery sold "barley bread" (at 54 cents a loaf, weighing the mandatory bread standard of 800 grams, before baking) which was just wonderful to eat with the quite distinct barley flavor (as compared to wheat), I learned later on. That's the only bread my mom ever bought while we lived on the east side of the city, 60-some years ago. The bread was a medium tan color inside, with a chewy crust, from what I remember. It most likely didn't contain husks or spent grain either, (smaller) breweries were not that common then.

 

[balrog]

I'm with the "no, but thanks for asking" crowd.
Tried it, my boat was not floated.
My mentor loved to take a cup or two, add enough water to process in a blender, turn it into much finer stuff, and bake in bread. That was just too much for me to contemplate for the return on time investment. He did make a mean loaf of bread, that's to be sure. Also a killer Bock.

 

[passedpawn]

Also a killer Bock.

His Bock was the GOAT? (weak, but there is a pun there)

 

[balrog]

His Bock was the GOAT? (weak, but there is a pun there)

Only 29 responses to get to goats. Decent, but no record.

 

[Protos]

Barley husks are soft, especially after the mash, fine to eat, IMO.

We must be having either different barley or different standards for edibility...
Every time I read someone makes bread of it (and I read such stories pretty often) I wonder what do they do to the husks. It seems they do nothing, they just eat it as it is. The world is full of weird dishes.

 

[Knightshade]

I stumbled upon this when I started brewing, Brewers grains | Feedipedia so with it in mind I try and utilize as much of the spent grains as possible whenever something is being baked. Thus far, we've added either dried or dried then pulverized to:

Pizza Crust
Sandwich Breads
Various other breads (Zucchini, Pumpkin, Banana)
Muffins
Pancakes

Pooch will get the occasional spent grain dog biscuit, but for fear of him being referred to as "Ottoman shaped" by our vet again, it doesn't happen very often.

I eat steel cut oatmeal every morning and add flax. Think I might try and add some of the ground up spent grains tomorrow morning and see how that turns out.

Whenever we don't have room for more grains, they get put into various vermicomposters I have on our side yard.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Raises hand...

But I prefer baking bread with some of the wet spent grain. Just mix in enough flour to make a no-knead dough.
The wet grain is even better a day or 2 later.
And without any rice or oat hulls.

From Sunday's brew I dumped 29 pounds of wet grain on the edge of the woods - all yours if you want it. Had a couple days of snow and rain so it should be really wet!

 

[Christoff]

My dogs love it, but if you give them too much you can’t pick up after them. It just crumbles. And they cough it up for 10-15 min after because it gets stuck in their throat. I made granola with it once, and I’ll second the razor blades in the throat effect. Also coughed it up for a bit afterwards. After second running’s it’s straight to the compose now.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

I've read where deer love spent grain, but I haven't noticed them devouring the piles I put out. I have seen some signs of something digging around them though but for the most part the piles just revert back to Mother Nature. I have seen pigs gobbling up spent grain, but I can't get my wife on board with pigs or chickens or any barn yard animals.

When summer comes back I want to try mixing the warm, wet grain with shredded paper and try making those paper logs. I thought that would fun to try and might smell nice in the fire pit.

 

[day_trippr]

On days when there is simply too much spent grain to give it all to the chickens (eg: an imperial stout that uses 42 pounds of malt) the better portion ends up in the compost pile. We have seen members of our local deer herd surround that pile at night with most of the dumped grain gone the next morning. I've never been able to determine if rice hulls bother them much...

Cheers!

 

[El Whedo]

If I feel lazy it goes in my composter.

If I have time on my hands I take some to a neighbor with chickens, and some to a neighbor with the most friendly goat I've ever met. Merle (the goat) also gets about 40ish mammoth sunflower plants a year from me, and after every cannabis harvest and trim, he gets the rest. That goat loves me.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

My wife is a steady bread baker, but a little spent grain goes a very long way. Most ends up in the compost for the garden

Same here. I think the biggest downside of spent grain is that it is...umm...spent. The good stuff of the flours, grains and seeds that make great bread have already been extracted to make great beer. Spent grain is mostly just the left over husks. I have used it in bread and pretzels (as dried, dried and ground to flour, and wet). It is novel to take to a homebrew club meeting as a "spent grain" product (spent grain pretzels are a hit), but I have never really felt spent grain added anything positive to a food product. At about 1 cup per loaf of bread, you have to bake a LOT of bread to make a dent into the spent grains from 1 batch of beer.

I have been curious about grinding up some non-spent grain (say Crystal Malt, Golden Naked Oats, Munich Malt, Honey Malt, etc.) and using that in a loaf of bread. I just have not gotten around to it. Has anybody else tried?

I have also been curious about adding flour to a beer. The malted wheat that I often use is over $2 per lb, where a bag of whole wheat flour is around $1 per lb. Anybody tried this?

 

[ebbelwoi]

I use ground-up Carafa Special III (it's dehusked) in breads to darken them and add a little flavor. Works pretty well.

 

[BongoYodeler]

I've never baked with them or otherwise eaten them. I generally do one of four things with my spent grains:

1. Down the drain and ground up by the garbage disposal, which I really don't like to do.
2. My back yard is the 6th fairway of a golf course. After dark I take my bucket out a and spread
the grains all around.
3. Give them to a friend for his chickens.
4. Give them to a different friend for his compost pile.