Batch 012: Alterna Gluten Free Brown

This week I am taking a step away from the grain, away from all grain actually.  I am brewing up a gluten free beer for a friend of a friend.   I was asked if it was possible to do and I took it as a challenge to not only do it, but make a great tasting beer in the process.  I spent a good portion of the working life in kitchens and dealing with gluten allergies is becoming more and more common.  It is tough to be sure that you are actually getting gluten free food and drinks and taking a chance on whether or not it is can be risky.  I did a fair amount of research before even looking at recipes for other gluten free beers.  I learned a lot just reading up on how to do and I am sure I will learn more as this brew ferments.

The recipe:  Well this was an interesting one.  Luckily Briess makes a sorghum extract that is used for brewing gluten free beers.  I grabbed myself a can of that and started searching for what else would go in.  Through reading online I found a fair amount of posts describing how to caramelize everything from quinoa to millet to add color and a bit of flavor.  I knew a pale beer would be hard to do without it tasting like it was gluten free.  I wanted to make a gluten free beer that tasted like beer, not sorghum.  Looking through my cabinets I found the molasses I had used from St. Nick's Nog and noticed the gluten free tag on the label.  That's when I decided I would go for a brown/porter depending on the color I got out of it.  Honey is also gluten free and a tasty ingredient so 12 oz were put in.  Near the end of the boil I am adding 3oz of maltodextrin to increase the mouthfeel and thicken it up a little bit.  I looked up maltodextrin about 4 times to make absolutely sure it was gluten free and it turns out that it is so processed that it can come from wheat or barley but by the time that it makes it to the finished product it is gluten free. (reference: http://www.glutenfreeliving.com/ingredient.php#maltodextrin )  I took a similar approach to the hoping as I did with the Brew Year Brown.  I put a small charge of Centennial in just for bittering and finished off the Willamette I had for flavor.

The process: This is where things got a little interesting.  I applied a few past lessons from my burnt mead and threw the honey and molasses in the bottom of my pot with a splash of water and turned up the heat.  I cooked the honey and molasses together for about 45 minutes caramelizing the honey and molasses to give me more flavor and residual sweetness.

After it had cooked down I added back 8qts of water and started my boil.  I added 1.5 pounds of sorghum extract at the beginning of my boil and away I went.  I decided to make a larger batch (1.5ish gallons) so that I could send more than just a few bottles out and still keep a couple for myself.

 

 Everything went really well and I put the wort in a new bucket to ferment with Fermentis S-04 English yeast.  Here is the other interesting thing about gluten free ingredients.  Dry yeasts are gluten free, White Labs vials are just over the limit, but if pitching into 5 gallons of wort will dilute down to acceptable levels(if you are willing to chance that depending on the severity of the allergy), but Wyeast is not gluten free.  The liquid used to store the yeast and propagate it is a standard starter wort and thus, not gluten free.  I went with the safest option and have no problems using dry yeast.

Sidework: While brewing I also racked my American Wheat Tattoo'd Graffiti to secondary and added the first dry hop of Citra and Amarillo.  It smelled amazing and is only getting better with the hops added. I will add more next week and bottle the week after that.

This brew was important to me and I am a little upset that I kept pushing it back.  People can't control the cards they are dealt in life and I really respect the people that take it in stride and do the best that they can with what they have.  Something such as being celiac or gluten free doesn't mean you have to hide in a clean room and shut your life down.  If you want something you just have to take the extra step to find a way to make that happen.  By brewing this I hope that I can give people a nice craft beer that someone that is gluten free can enjoy, but also that someone who isn't gluten free would like to.  Below is a list of the ingredients that went in to this along with suppliers so if there is any question to whether or not something is gluten free you can know before getting sick.

Cheers!

Recipe: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/alterna

Briess White Sorghum Syrup 45HM Link
Brer Rabbit Full Flavor Molasses Link
Great Value Clover Honey Link
LD Carlson Maltodextrin Picture (see above link about being gluten free)
Fermentis S-04 Brewing Yeast Link
Hop Union Hops (Centennial and Willamette)

Batch 011: Brew Year Brown

I realized I said my next brew would be something special that would challenge me, this isn't that beer.  This was a fairly unexpected brew day and didn't have the money on hand to pick up the necessary stuff to do it. Anyway, on to what I actually DID brew.

Brown ales are a bit of a sore subject for me.  90% of the commercial brown ales that I have tried just taste kind of muddy with no clear purpose.  There is one brown ale that I have had that defied that though from Crown Brewing in Crown Point, IN. My hopes in making this is to make something as rich as that.

The recipe: I started off with Maris Otter as the base malt to accentuate the maltiness with special roast for some nice toasty flavors and chocolate malt for color and flavor.  I used Willamette hops for a mild hop flavor.

The process: I upped my batch size from 1.1 to 1.25 gallons with this batch.  I doughed in with 8 qts of water at 161F for a mash temp of 154F.  I kind of overshot the temp so I had a bit of stirring to do, but it was down to 154F within 5 minutes so I'm not too worried about it.  60 minutes later I checked my gravity and had a pre-boil gravity for 7.5 Plato when I was expecting 9.3 Plato.  I checked two more times and it was the same every time.  I lautered anyway and brought the wort to a boil before checking my gravity again and making a decision on adding DME to bump up my gravity. I checked again and it was at 9.2 Plato so I continued with the boil.  What happened was the the wort stratified and basically the sugars sank.  The boil stirred everything up and unified the wort allowing me to take an accurate reading. One more reason to not freak out about every detail while brewing.  I also tried upping my boil rate to match what I have in my software other than trying to match the software to my process.  I realize that is kind of backwards, but it was just something to try before trying to figure out what my burner was at and repeat it every time.  Knowing my burner is at 100% is easier to repeat.  At the end of the boil my gravity was 13.5 Plato when I was expecting 13.2 so I am pretty happy with the results.  It wasn't exact, but a lot closer than past brews.  Over all this brew day had a hiccup or two, but turned out to be one of the best ones yet and a great way to start the New Year in brewing.

While brewing I also racked over my berry cyser to secondary and added more fruit to it: raspberries, blueberries and blackberries.  The color was awesome and the taste was good too.  Tart and dry so I added sulphites and sorbate so that I can backsweeten later.  Two more weeks for that one until it gets racked to tertiary and sweetened. Excited for that one.

So, next week I will finally get around to that challenging brew.

Until next time, cheers!

Recipe: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/brew-year-brown

Batch 002: St. Nick's Nog v2

It's that time of year again, time to brew a Christmas beer.  Last year I was a little behind and ended up bottling on Dec 21.  Not really in time to enjoy for Christmas (that and a recipe mistake made it undrinkable until about April/May).  So this year I am doing it on time and will be enjoying a bottle on Christmas day.  This is a complete rewrite of the St. Nick's Nog I brewed last year.  I wanted a med-light brown with some spice.  Everything was going great and with 10 minutes left in the boil I add 1# of honey, 2 cinnamon sticks, and 3 cloves.  I thought those spices would be about right for a 5 gallon batch.  I was wrong.  When I tasted it on bottling day there was barely any cinnamon flavor and way too much clove.  I smashed up another cinnamon stick and added to my priming sugar as I heated it on the stove.  I bottled and set them aside hoping that all would work out.  Three weeks later I opened the first bottle.  There was a great cinnamon smell and it was pretty murky, but I assumed I had gotten some sediment while pouring.  The flavor floored me.  All I could taste was clove and it penetrated every taste bud.  After only a few sips my mouth was beginning to numb and I was pouring it into the sink.  I decided to just hold on to it and see where it went.  Months later the cloves faded out and now (10 months later) it is a pretty nice beer.  So I scraped that recipe entirely and went with the following.

The beer.  Again, you can find the recipe at the bottom of this post.  I simplified my grist and decided to let the beer do its own thing instead of forcing flavors into it.  There is a handful of chocolate malt giving me my color and hopefully some nice chocolate flavors.  I am adding some dark molasses near the end of the boil.  Looking for a really deep caramel flavor and some sweetness too. I went dark to try to leave some unfermentables in the wort.  One cinnamon stick will also be added to the end of the boil.  After a 2 week primary, I will rack to a secondary fermenter and add another cinnamon stick to age for 1 week.

The process.  This week went much smoother than the last.  I mashed in fairly high at 155F to leave it sweeter.  Some of the molasses will ferment and dry this out so I compensated with a high mash temperature.  Held a steady mash temp unlike last week and proceeded to the sparge.  Last week I hit my preboil gravity, but was short on my OG.  I assumed I had just not boiled off as much as I had told my software that I would so I dropped that down this week.  I sparged to 1.25gal and started the boil.  A small bittering addition at 60 will help balance the sweetness. With ten minutes left in the boil I added my 2oz of Full Flavor molasses and one stick of cinnamon.  After cooling I took a gravity reading and overshot my estimates by about 17 points.  I then realized I was also a quart short.  I added some water to get me back to the 1 gallon mark and measured my gravity again.   After topping it up my gravity was dead on.  I have to figure out my boil off rate and get that nailed in.

So overall, I fixed my mash problems and found a boil off rate issue.  Next week that will be fixed and we will see what pops up then.

Until next week, cheers.

-Mike

Recipe: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/st-nicks-nog