Beer Forum

I'll trade you a solid GF IPA recipe.

Good question... 'in the works' in this case means I haven't brewed it. My wife is GF, so I'd been wanting to make it for her, but she's been dealing with some health issues that prevent her from drinking, so it's been put on the back burner. I've included my thoughts on the relevant ingredient choices that would need to be made.


Grain/malt: I'd originally been thinking of a GF Saison as a style that may work better with the distinct tang that you get from sorghum malt. My first GF beer was a "Wit", the wife liked that quite a bit. However, a grain bill of just sorghum malt is rather boring. The shop just started carrying amylase enzyme, so my current thinking is to do a mini-mash with sorghum syrup. For the mini-mash, I was thinking of trying to capture the "whatever grains available" aspect of saisons by incorporating a variety of GF grains... millet, amaranth, oats, buckwheat, quinoa. I'd have to cereal mash with these, then add the amylase enzyme and likely use a bunch of rice hulls to get the wort out. A completely all grain beer using these other grains should be possible with the enzyme, but having not used it before, figure I should start small.

Yeast: Figuring using either T-58 dry yeast (gluten free), or doing a series of stirplate starters (using sorghum malt) and washes on a liquid Saison yeast to reduce/remove as much residual gluten as possible. Probably use the dry since I can't guarantee anything with the liquid yeast.

Can you toast any of these malts to produce some melanoidans? (Refresh my memory here) Do any of them have enough amylase internally to self-convert? If so, you can make your own crystal by mashing uncrushed malt at 150F then kilning it in your oven.

Just a thought-

You could get melanoidins and roast character I'd imagine, but in order to get sufficient amylase, they'd need to be malted. There was an Aussie I believe that had a info sheet on malting your own GF grains.

My brother is GF, so I made him an IPA for his birthday. It was my first attempt with sorghum, but the recipe was a family-wide success (I think you're on the right track with building-up starters for the liquid saison yeast, btw). I'll transcribe my notes:

"5 gal" sized batch | 45min boil
1.072 OG | 1.018 FG | 7.2% ABV

6 gal. cold water
7 lb (63%) Sorghum liquid extract
2 lb (18%) Rice dry extract
1 lb 6 oz (12%) Light brown sugar
8 oz (4%) Malto-dextrin
4 oz (2%) Lactose

45 min: 45 Tinseth IBUs (I used 50/50 Centennial/Newport)
8 min: 28.33g each of whole leaf Cascade/Centennial/Perle
0 min: 21.25g each of whole leaf Cascade/Centennial/Perle (I whirlpooled for 5 and left them in during an immersion chill)
Dry hop: 7.1g each of whole leaf Cascade/Centennial/Perle (7 days, added to primary at day 14)

Yeast: 2 packs (22g) of Nottingham

Notes:
- Cloudy
- Slow to ferment
- Hops cover the "GF taste"
- Used new lines/faucet
- Confirmed malto-dextrin does not affect GF individual

Yes, I believe that brewing maltodextrin is corn derived. I used it in the wit I'd brewed... I posted that somewhere in the forums if you're interested...

Found it: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=23788&

How did that turn out? Also, what's your take on the differences between Nottingham and Windsor? I haven't tried Windsor?

It turned out pretty decent... the haziness became an issue eventually as it clumped and formed chunky bits... cosmetic only, but likely would result in poor storage life. I'd probably take more efforts to crash or fine it in the future. Doing it again, I'd likely go with a different yeast, I grabbed the nottingham and windsor because I knew they were GF (I think at the time I wasn't certain on Fermentis yeasts).