Spent Grain Bread

For the past six months or so, I've been experimenting with making the bread we eat on a regular basis. I like the idea of healthy, preservative free bread that actually ends up being cheaper than a loaf of the same quality. First, I played around with this recipe -- just a basic mostly whole wheat bread. Then, I upped the game a bit and moved on to ten-grain bread with this recipe but with a higher ratio of whole wheat flour.

I really hate to see all of our steeping grains go to waste so I did some research and incorporated the grains from our Belgian Caramel Wit into some bread! I used this recipe as a baseline because it was the only recipe I could find that incorporated whole wheat flour.

How could I let this go to waste?!

The first time I made it, I replaced ALL the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour. I also added 3T of vital wheat gluten.  I put the spent grains through the food processor to break them down some. They should also be wet when you use them and you should measure after they are processed.

Processing the grains.

The bread came out DELICIOUS! It was a bit too moist though and I didn't quite let it cook enough. It was also extremely dense and didn't rise very well. It really wasn't very pretty, but the taste made up for it.

Whole Wheat Spent Grain Bread

Super Dense

The second time I made it, I used 1/2 bread flour and 1/2 whole wheat flour along with the spent grains from our IPA. I still added 3T of vital wheat gluten and doubled the amount of yeast. It came out beautiful! It was perfectly cooked and much lighter than the first version. I didn't get to take pictures of the final product because we were late for Mother's Day dinner with L's mom. We took one loaf over to L's mom and she said I should sell it on Carolina Grown!

While this version was definitely a step in the right direction, there are still a few improvements I want to make. First, it needs to be a bit more chunkier so I won't process the grains quite as much next time. Also, I think it could handle a bit more whole wheat flour and a slightly nuttier/fuller flavor.

When we brew this weekend, I plan on making these changes and figuring out a way to store the grain that doesn't get used in the first batch of bread. Hopefully, I'll be able to post a recipe next week that is a bit more final than these.

Imperial IPA

We found a new home brew shop that we are in love with! Wilmington Homebrew just opened off College Rd. in Wilmington and I think we'll be buying ingredients from them whenever we pass through on the way to the beach. They are extremely knowledgeable but also fun to hang out around. They offer free tastings on Fridays and demonstrations on Saturdays.

Since our last beer was sweet and mild, we decided to go hoppy this time. We got the High-Gravity Imperial IPA kit developed by the WHB folks and we upgraded some of our equipment.

There weren't a whole lot of steeping grains in this batch but we steeped in the full 6 gallons of water because we got an AWESOME NEW POT!We also had much better temperature control because we got an AWESOME NEW DIGITAL THERMOMETER!

8 Gallon Aluminum Stock/Steamer Pot

One of the advertised uses for the pot is steaming lobsters, so the pot came with a shelf, basically that sits about 2 inches above the bottom of the pot. We converted a coat hanger into a handle for the shelf so we could remove it post-steeping. We can also rest the thermometer on the shelf to get a more accurate reading than if it was touching the bottom or sides of the pot. There are pots you can get that have spigots near the bottom for easy removal of the liquid inside, but those are much more expensive. We decided to get the cheapest large pot we could find to make sure we liked brewing with it and our stove (thankfully gas) is capable of heating that much water.

Shelf with thermometer and coat hanger handle.

One thing we learned from this first 6 gallon batch is to measure and filter the water the day before brewing-- especially if you're brewing on a week day. I think we'll try to plan better in the future to avoid  weekday brewing. The IPA recipe called for the smallest batch of steeping grains we have used and it looked really miniscule in the huge new pot!

.75 lb Vienna, .25 lb Biscuit, .25 lb Crystal 40

We steeped the grains for 1 hour at 155° and were able to keep the temperature very steady due to both the new thermometer and the higher volume of water (that doesn't change temperature as easily). Then, we brought the water up to a boil but turned off the heat prior to adding the malt.

Lots of Malt!!

We added all the liquid malt (6.6 lb Golden Light Liquid Malt Extract) easily then hoped and prayed while we added the dry malt (4 lb Golden Light Dry Malt Extract). John, at Wilmington Homebrew, said the best way to add the dry malt was to put it in a bowl first then slide the entire amount in quickly before the steam can make it clump to the bowl. Then, STIR and STIR some more! John also added in the extra 4 lb Golden Light DME to make the recipe super High Gravity. It should come out somewhere around 8.5 - 9% ABV!

It looks like milk for a while!

This IPA is going to be extremely Hoppy. We added 5 ounces of various kinds of hops throughout the boil:

• 1 oz Warrior at 60m for Bittering
• 1 oz Columbus at 40m for Bittering and Flavoring
• 1oz Simca at 20m for Flavoring
• 1oz Chinook and 1 oz Columbus at 0m for Aroma 

That is a lot of hops. During the boil, we actually had to keep the pot covered to keep it boiling. We definitely couldn't boil any higher volume than 6 gallons!

Lots of hops. Lots.

 We again used the wort chiller to drop the temperature of the wort down to about 70°. Its still SO much faster than trying to use an ice bath. We also used the digital thermometer which was a huge help!

So easy and fast!

We tried liquid yeast for the first time with this batch. Unfortunately, it sort of exploded when L opened it and when I yelled he reflexively moved the yeast over the bucket. As it spewed out of the vial, it ran down the outside of both the vial and his hand before dropping into the bucket. We could have our first contamination!!

Because this is such a high gravity recipe, we actually stuffed a large tube over the bottom part of our three piece air lock to prevent any spillage. The other end of the tube rested in a pitcher filled with sanitizer water. It stayed in primary fermentation for two full weeks and will be in secondary for another week.

We're actually planning on bottling a lot more of this batch than we normally would because its going to be so hoppy. We went to the mountains this weekend and L, my brother, Z, and I had some really tasty craft beer and kept the bottles for the IPA. We also stole some of Z's roommates empty bottles, which is pretty gross. 3 boys in one house is not a sanitary thing. We've got quite the collection of bottles now and about 12 full ones in the fridge so we should be set for this weekend. To clean the bottles, we generally dishwasher them twice, scraping the labels after the first cycle.

Cleaning the bottles.

We're bottling the IPA this weekend and brewing a British Nut Brown from Appalachian Homebrew. We're also contemplating brewing again the following weekend as a present for L's Aunt's Birthday/4th of July so watch out for some exciting more posts!! ha.

Belgian Caramel Wit

For our second beer, we wanted to do something summery and lighter than the Pale Ale we did last. We purchased the kit from Fifth Season, an organic gardening store at Western and Jones Franklin. Their prices are better than American Brewmasters in North Raleigh but they only sell Brewer's Best kits. We decided on the Belgian Caramel Wit because it was very different than the Pale Ale and should be quite summery.

The instructions were unexpectedly difficult to follow. For such a widely used brand, I expected something simpler and more detailed to the specific recipe. I doubt we'll ever purchase another Brewer's Best kit.

Because we are still using a 3 gallon pot, we started off pre-boiling about 3 gallons of water to mix with the wort once it was completed. The recipe said to steep the grains in something like one gallon per two pounds of grains so we ended up steeping the grains in only 1 gallon of water. Two pounds of grain is A LOT of volume to submerge in 1 gallon of water. Seems weird to me, but it worked out okay.

Mmmm its like making Beer Tea.

We steeped the grains for 45m at approximately 155° then poured another gallon and a half over the grains to leech out any remaining flavor goodness and bring the boil volume up to 2.5 gallons. Because we were using a tiny hand-held meat thermometer it actually got all the way up to 169° at one point. We were afraid we burned the grains but it ended up being okay.

This recipe called for A TON of malt extract. 3.3 pounds of liquid and another 2 pounds of dry, plus 1 pound of candi syrup. The liquid malt was easy to add and went in first along with bittering hops. We did forget to turn off the burner but the bottom of the pot was easy to clean so it didn't seem to have burned.

Mt. Hood Bittering Hops

It turns green after adding the hops!

After 45 minutes we added the DME and candi syrup. The dry malt extract was much more difficult to add. When pouring it into the pot from the bags, the steam from the pot caused it to stick to the bag and clumped up. It was really hard to get mixed in. (Notice the new paddle spoon! Much easier than our standard kitchen spoon!)

DME is STICKY!

We boiled for another 15 minutes. To cool down the wort much faster than an ice bath, L built a wort chiller! We moved the pot to the sink then put the sanitized wort chiller in the pot. It attaches to the sink and cold water flows through cooling the wort, the flows down the sink. It makes the cooling process SO much faster!

Chillin' the Wort.

For this batch, we used dry yeast, but started it before adding it to the wort. Apparently true yeast starters involve multiple days and malt extract, but this worked just fine.

Yeasties bubblin' away.

We remembered to take an Original Gravity this time. It was 1.013. I think I'm going start a campaign to change the name of "Original Gravity" to "Initial Gravity." As a scientist, it just makes more sense.

INITIAL gravity.

 After a week, we racked it over to secondary fermentation. That's always a messy process.

All the gunk left behind in the primary fermenter.

After another two weeks, we kegged and pressurized the beer. The following day, which, coincidentally was another brew day, we tasted it for the first time!

It was REALLY tasty!! We took it to both of our mom's houses for Mother's Day and all the family agreed it was delicious! It's definitely something I would only want to drink in the summer and I don't want to drink glass after glass, which is good because it is lasting much long than the Pale, which only lasted a week!!