What do you do with your spent grains?

[obi_krash]

I have lots of little critters around me, so I put little piles of them out in the woods for them.

Keeps them out of my trash and recycling so that work for me.

I have wanted to try my hand at making some dog treats though. And I hadn't thought about the chickens - I have a friend who is doing the urban chicken thing. Im going to reach out to her and see if she wants them.

 

[Brew_G]

For now, they go into the compost, but I would like to eventually add some to one of my bread recipes.

Next beer will be a pumpkin ale (letting it condition until early fall), so that might be a good time to bake up some dog treats. My dog's food is all grain-free, but treats are treats...

 

[unionrdr]

Adding some peanut butter &/or bacon drippin's is always good too.

 

[Brew_G]

Adding some peanut butter &/or bacon drippin's is always good too.

My pup is all about bacon drippings. That's a great idea. Maybe add a little bit of chopped up bacon, too. Bacon/pumpkin dog treats. Yum...

 

[unionrdr]

Actually, that one does sound pretty good! The spices ought to be interesting.

 

[satownsend]

One of my other hobbies is carp fishing. I used spent grain from my Lemon Drop Saison to make a method mix to catch a 16 lber.

 

[55x11]

during the summer i would either put them in our compost pile or use them to mulch my hop plants...now that winter is upon us i'm going to make a pile behind the garden and in the spring use them to make a mushroom patch

I use them in compost bin.

Supposedly you may not want to just pile them next to garden as the smell attracts animals of all kinds - they will start with grains and then onto your garden next.

 

[razyrsharpe]

compost. as well as the trub.

 

[MEPNew2Brew]

A friend of mine has chickens. I give him the spent grain to feed them. Crack for chickens he says.

 

[hifidelity]

I throw them over the fence for the cows to enjoy.

 

[Jeremy_84]

Neighbor has chickens we have a deal worked out where I get some free eggs for spent grain. Also use some in compost. Tried making a fire log one time with it by building a mold and pressing it. It didn't work out well. It was just a big sticky mess. I was wondering if I throw it in a bucket with some water and let it sit in the sun for a week if I can use it for catfish chum kinda like maze.

 

[catdaddy66]

I'm at a beer tasting that my LHBS has on the last Saturday of each month. The owner's wife made pizza using the spent grains for the crust dough. Omg it's phenomenalView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1437841141.536911.jpg

 

[wardens355]

Neighbor does not want me feeding any spent grains to chickens anymore, thinks it hurts their egg production. Compost now.

 

[brewbama]

Dump them into the wood line so the deer will enjoy them. I like seeing the deer hangin out.

 

[stever1000]

I'm at a beer tasting that my LHBS has on the last Saturday of each month. The owner's wife made pizza using the spent grains for the crust dough. Omg it's phenomenalView attachment 292261

How did she do it? I hate throwing away my spent grain, and I love pizza

 

[dallasdb]

You definitely don't want to just dump them in a pile. They'll actually get mold/mildew and can stink.

 

[Kent88]

Another one for using it in pizza dough. I'm still experimenting with how much I can add, I bet it is a lot more than I am using now.

@stever1000 I basically use this recipe for pizza dough, but I sub in whole wheat flour for an equal weight of dried spent grain "flour". I bet one could also sub some of the bread flour for equal weight of spent grain flour as well, but start with just sub'ing the whole wheat flour. I sometimes sub the sugar with DME, too. Pizza stones are great things, BTW.

 

[stever1000]

Another one for using it in pizza dough. I'm still experimenting with how much I can add, I bet it is a lot more than I am using now.

@stever1000 I basically use this recipe for pizza dough, but I sub in whole wheat flour for an equal weight of dried spent grain "flour". I bet one could also sub some of the bread flour for equal weight of spent grain flour as well, but start with just sub'ing the whole wheat flour. I sometimes sub the sugar with DME, too. Pizza stones are great things, BTW.

What's the best way to dry them quickly? I have a vitamix to make flour, but I find that the grains don't take long to get a sour smell to them so I would need to dry them quick enough to prevent this from happening!

 

[Kent88]

@stever1000 when you are wrapping up with sparging set the oven as low as it will go (it is probably still hot enough to discourage souring bacteria). While you're waiting for your wort to boil line a big cookie sheet with something and spread the spent grain out as best you can and put it in the oven. When you're done chilling the wort and you've got it in your fermenter with yeast pitched, so you can actually pay attention to the spent grain, bump the oven temperature up to 200F to 210F and just let them sit for several hours.

The flour is also good in waffle batter, but not in pretzels. The pretzels I made, it was like I added sawdust to it, I couldn't eat them. Maybe if there had been some beer cheese sauce to dip them in it would have been better, but I couldn't eat them plain. Malt extract in pretzel dough is good, though.

 

[stever1000]

@stever1000 when you are wrapping up with sparging set the oven as low as it will go (it is probably still hot enough to discourage souring bacteria). While you're waiting for your wort to boil line a big cookie sheet with something and spread the spent grain out as best you can and put it in the oven. When you're done chilling the wort and you've got it in your fermenter with yeast pitched, so you can actually pay attention to the spent grain, bump the oven temperature up to 200F to 210F and just let them sit for several hours.

Can I refrigerate it while I brew? I use my range/oven outlet for my e-kettle so I can't dry right away

 

[Kent88]

@stever1000 Last time I made it I decided to freeze my spent grain and I dried it a couple days after the brew. I didn't like doing it that way, though. It felt like a big waste to freeze them after they were already very warm and then thaw and dry them later. I doubt it has any negative impact on the flour it made. I was just trying to give my wife a chance to make supper in the oven while I was using the burner.

Kind of an off-topic thing, and you probably already figured this, but if you are going to refrigerate or freeze the spent grain, try to figure out a way to bring down the temperature of that mass quickly. As you are probably aware, that stuff starts smelling funky and sour really quickly after sparging. I've cleaned out my mash tun and just put the spent grain I wasn't saving in a plastic grocery bag and set it by the guest shower drain and waited to throw them out until after chilling and pitching, and it stunk up the whole bathroom like a mixture of spoiled silage and moldy socks after just a few hours. I'd recommend bagging it in ziploc bags as soon as it cools off enough that spoiling bugs can start growing, and sandwich the bag between some ice packs, or if you really trust that the bag is water-tight, maybe even give it a cold water bath. Throwing it in the fridge or freezer directly isn't supposed to be good for your appliance, either.

 

[stever1000]

@stever1000 Last time I made it I decided to freeze my spent grain and I dried it a couple days after the brew. I didn't like doing it that way, though. It felt like a big waste to freeze them after they were already very warm and then thaw and dry them later. I doubt it has any negative impact on the flour it made. I was just trying to give my wife a chance to make supper in the oven while I was using the burner.

Kind of an off-topic thing, and you probably already figured this, but if you are going to refrigerate or freeze the spent grain, try to figure out a way to bring down the temperature of that mass quickly. As you are probably aware, that stuff starts smelling funky and sour really quickly after sparging. I've cleaned out my mash tun and just put the spent grain I wasn't saving in a plastic grocery bag and set it by the guest shower drain and waited to throw them out until after chilling and pitching, and it stunk up the whole bathroom like a mixture of spoiled silage and moldy socks after just a few hours. I'd recommend bagging it in ziploc bags as soon as it cools off enough that spoiling bugs can start growing, and sandwich the bag between some ice packs, or if you really trust that the bag is water-tight, maybe even give it a cold water bath. Throwing it in the fridge or freezer directly isn't supposed to be good for your appliance, either.

@Kent88 good info - I will have to re-think this idea now to optimize both outcomes

 

[Kent88]

@Stever1000 Good luck. If you live up in the north we aren't far away from the snowy part of winter. The whole of the outside will soon become a useful way to quickly cool a bag of spent grains, if one should feel the need.

For some reason I've just latched onto the idea of re-purposing spent grain in better ways than compost and dog treats. It really is all about using it in moderation and finding the right things to put them in. Things like pizza and waffles are great because you're adding things like sauce and syrup that keep the spent grains from scratching your throat. I also wonder if cinnamon rolls would be a good way to use them. My wife and I just made kolaches and I wonder if a little bit could be used in that dough because of the fruit sauce/syrup/jam/whatever that you put on there when they bake, along with the dough itself including a lot of butter and eggs.

 

[jonny24]

Another vote for the chickens- my brother's in this case. Short walk across the yard, dump the cooler, stop by the hose on the way back, and rinse. Done till next time.

They also got all my grape stems and moldy grapes.

 

[Kent88]

I just brewed another malty lager before thanksgiving and my wife loves spent grain bread made from wet spent grain so I thought I'd share the recipe we use and the tweaks we've made, and even some I'm planning to tinker with.

We started with this recipe. Thing is, this guy seems to love (not like) his dough to be wet. I up'd the bread flour from 11.25oz to 15oz before I even got it out of the mixer and it was still stickier than heck. I think I get what he is going for, I don't want it to end up very dry either, but wow did it need more flour when I started kneading it by hand.

Rather than fiddling around with some water and some milk (which in the recipe was reconstituted from dry for some reason) I just used 1.25Cup whole milk. Instead of using 2.25oz sugar I used equal weight of leftover DME. I figured why not push the beer flavor even more. I bet if a brewer collected spent grain from a no sparge mash that added sugar wouldn't even be necessary.

I'm trying another batch right now where I added an extra egg yolk because I apparently want to die of a heart attack before I'm 60. It has spent grain, which is essentially just fiber, so I suppose I'm canceling out the idea that it is healthy. I'd also be interested in substituting the water in the original recipe for leftover excess yeast starter and reducing the amount of yeast to a teaspoon and just proof it in warm milk.

Interestingly enough, when I weighed out the 1 cup of wet spent grain it was 5oz, the same as 1 cup unsifted flour.