GF Oatmeal Stout - Fail

In the continuing saga to provide the best in gluten-free fermented beverages for my bride, I'd long planned to try my hand at brewing her a beer with alternative grains; I still have the oats I toasted for that project, though they're probably getting stale at this point.  With an abundance of time, materials, and fermenter space this summer, though, it made for a perfect time to experiment with gluten-free brewing.

Given DeAunn's preference for roast over hops, an oatmeal stout was an excellent pilot brew.  Oats themselves are a gluten-free grain; my understanding, though, is that they're often processed on equipment that also handles grains with gluten, making them unsuitable for those with Celiac disease unless clearly marked as GF.  Since DeAunn just has a sensitivity to gluten and not full-blown Celiac, regular oats would probably be fine.  I roasted a pound of rolled oats the day before brewing; however I was unwilling to completely fill my parents' beautiful new home with smoke and the stench of burning grain, so they came out without quite as much colour as I would've liked ideally.  Normally I'd give the roasted grain a couple weeks to mellow before using them; in this case, I put the roasted oats in a bowl that I swirled and agitated often that day to get out as much of the overboard bitter flavours as possible.

The homebrew shop my dad frequents, Scotzin Bros. in Lemoyne, carries an impressive array of small-batch gluten-free malted grains, including millet, amaranth, teff, and more.  For this first GF outing, though, I tried to play it safe, basing the recipe around sorghum extract and brown rice syrup.  Having given many of the GF beers on the market a try in the last year, DeAunn and I had both decided the tang associated with using a

high percentage of sorghum was not really to our taste.  Unsure of how to best treat other grains for this beer, though, I went with the devil I knew, relying on the other ingredients, such as the roasted oats, dark candi syrup, coffee, and vanilla bean, to counterbalance the sorghum.

By the end of brewday, though, we were left with a carboy full of opaque, almost latte-coloured liquid that only fermented down to about 1.020 over the next couple weeks.  Having started at 1.062, that's pretty sweet.  The taste was very twangy, much as I'd expect of a sorghum-based beer.  In the end it seemed like it would be a waste of good coffee and vanilla to add them to this batch; the pound of D-180 hadn't really helped much to darken it or improve the flavour.  With heavy heart, this batch went down the drain, a failed first GF experiment.  Fortunately, a followup brew of a similar nature by my dad later in the summer turned out much better; it still has a distinct sorghum flavour to me, but DeAunn's really enjoying it.  It inspires me to continue exploring GF brewing.

GF Oatmeal Stout (extract w/ grains)

Batch size: 4.8 gallons
Projected OG: 1.062
Projected SRM:
Projected IBU: 23.0
Boil time: 30 minutes

Grains/Fermentables
36.7% - 3 lb 15 oz Brown Rice Syrup
30.7% - 3 lb 4.8 oz Sorghum Syrup
9.3% - 1 lb Rolled oats
9.3% - 1 lb Rolled oats, roasted to brown malt
9.3% - 1 lb D-180 Dark candi syrup (3 days into primary)
4.7% - 8 oz  Lactose

Hops
1 oz Centennial (8.7%) (30 min)

Yeast
1 pkg Nottingham

Extras
2-3 Vanilla beans, cut & scraped (end of fermentation)
Cold press coffee (bottling)

Brewday: 14 June 2013
Post-boil OG (w/o sugar): 1.056
Not very stout looking; very milky, yeast coloured.

21 June 2013
Added D-180 syrup
Active fermentation has slowed considerably

Ended very twangy, not really close to traditional beer, and not very tasty in general (to me).  Dumped.

Aliss IPA

Homebrewing is a hobby my dad and I share.  Shortly after I told him I’d started brewing, he ended up winning a silent auction for a Mr. Beer kit, which he’s greatly enjoyed using.  Once he'd gone through all the kits he had, I started putting together 2-gallon extract-with-grain recipes he could brew in his small kettle and ferment in the Mr. Beer fermenter.  We also try to brew together as often as we can, which ends up being once every couple months or so; it’s been a great bonding experience for us.

Among the many things he does well, my dad is an accomplished woodturner.  In line with this, he’s named his homebrewery Turned Timber; his beers are usually named for different tree species or woodturning paraphernalia.  Our most recent brew, Aliss, is instead named for the bulldozer he used this summer to pull up tree stumps from several acres he and a couple friends cleared that will eventually be the location of my parents’ new house.  An American IPA, this is by far the most hop-forward beer we’ve brewed together, and will be the first dry hopping he has done; it should be a fine thirst-slaking beverage after a hot day pulling stumps with Aliss.

The brewday went smoothly, and enjoyed a bit of notoriety for our use of snow in the cooling process.  I’m looking forward to my next visit when I’ll get a taste of this one.

Aliss - American IPA

Projected OG: 1.072
Projected SRM: 11.1
Projected IBU: 59

for 2 gallons:

Grain/Fermentables
2.75 lb  Light DME
2 oz        C 120
8 oz        Table sugar (10 min)

Hops
.25 oz     Columbus (14.4%) (60 min)
.25 oz     Columbus (20 min)
.5 oz        Amarillo (7.5%) (10 min)
.5 oz        Cascade (5%) (5 min)
.5 oz        Amarillo (Dry hop 7 hops)
.5 oz        Cascade (Dry hop 7 days)

Yeast
½ pkg     US-05

Brewday: 5 February 2011
Fermented at ~63̊F ambient.

Citra Bitter

I needed to make a starter for the Wyeast 9097 Old Ale Blend I used for the wheatwine portion of my recent parti-gyle.  While I could’ve just used some of the final runnings I’ve saved from previous mashes and thrown them on the stirplate, I decided to make a small (1.2-gallon) extract batch of beer.

A few months ago, fellow brewer and Northside Homebrewers Connection founder Ted Danyluk shared with me a bottle of a pale ale he’d made using only Citra hops.  I’d read about the intense tropical fruit flavour and aroma from this hop, but wasn’t prepared to be walloped by the papaya scent emanating from this beer.  It was amazing, and I’d been keen to get this hop in my kettle.

I’ve brewed a number of extract batches with my dad in the last couple years, but I haven’t made anything more grandiose than a few starters with extract since I put together my mash tun.  With few exceptions, my extract beers just never measured up to what I was able to brew with my all-grain setup.  This simple recipe has proved to me that it may well be worth revisiting extract brewing from time to time; the hydrometer sample I tasted when I bottled this beer was fruity, hoppy, and clean, with none of the extract “twang” I remembered from my early days of brewing.


Citra Bitter (Extract)

Projected OG: 1.032
Projected SRM: 9.3
Projected IBU: 44.3

for 1.25 gallons:

Grain/Fermentables
1 lb    Pilsner DME
8 oz    C 20

Hops
.2 oz    Citra (12.3%) (30 min)
.2 oz    Citra (10 min)
.6 oz    Citra (dry hop - 7 days)

Yeast
WY9097 Old Ale Blend

Brewday: 16 January 2011
30-minute boil
Fermented in basement, ~56̊F ambient

19 January 2011: has been fermenting strongly; moved upstairs to finish out

24 January 2011: moved to ice bath to flocc out yeast

Secondary: 30 January 2011
Volume: 1.2 gallons

Bottled: 7 February 2011
FG: 1.012
ABV: 2.6%
Bottled with .7 oz light brown sugar