#80: Gluten-reduced Brett Saison

[swenocha]

I have had several items/techniques/ingredients that I've wanted to try out, but haven't been brewing much lately. So... decided to do all at once. I have been trying to eat gluten-free(ish) lately (though I've slid the last few weeks), and thus a vial of Clarity Ferm to make a gluten reduced beer. I bought a vial of WLP670 to make my first Brett beer. I bought some cubeb berries for brewing. I bought a box of Kashi Honey 7-grain cereal to make a Sugar Puff beer. So... let's mash that all together! This actually seemed to all work together for a gluten-reduced brett saison. I also have some oak cubes soaking in merlot, but I think I'll save those for another brew. The intent here is to keep this in primary for 90 days (following recommendation by Embrace the Funk), and hoping I ferment near 1.0. I guess we'll see. I'm starting at 64 degrees, and will try to ramp it a bit every few days, settling (hopefully) around 80 or so. The last saison I did was during a summer, so I got near 90 (yikes), but it was one of my favorite beers. The fermenter (and some tubing, etc.) will now be wild beer only. That's great, as I intend to keep wild ales in the rotation from here on out. I had no idea how to account for the cereal in Beersmith, so I listed the weight of it as torrified wheat and the sugar grams as honey. That put things at 1.075, and I hit 1.074, so I guess that was OK.

Recipe here

[swenocha]

Put this one to bed with no brew-day issues. Amazing, considering how little I've brewed lately. Hit OG for the most part, got temps perfect, got it to the fermenter with no issues. Wow. Amazingly clean brew day...

[swenocha]

Oh, and useless stats:

Brewday refreshment: Stone Enjoy By, Founders Centennial IPA
Brewday music: Colin Hay (he is the best thing out there on tour... trust me... go see him if he comes to your town. You won't be disappointed...)

[Brewbirds]

I was reading about Gluten free beers on BYO yesterday ( curiosity after JoeC got diagnosed w/Celiac).

Most of what I read is:

They're hard to make
There is only a handful of grains you can use
Few of the grains are malted
And they don't taste much like beer

What is the Clarity Ferm and how does it work? Can you remove gluten from regular grains?

[swenocha]

Yes, a Clarity Ferm treated beer made from barley or wheat usually tests below 20 ppm of gluten, the current international standard for gluten free. It's what Estrella, Omission, and other good tasting gluten free/reduced beers use. I've done a gluten-free beer with sorghum, and the taste just isn't my thing (try New Planet and you'll get the idea), but the beers made with Clarity-Ferm are quite good.

http://www.whitelabs.com/other-products ... arity-ferm

[Brewbirds]

Thanks for the link Swen I'm going to look into this a bit more.

Would be interested, when you have time, if you posted about your gluten free/reduced journey.

[mashani]

I might have to try the Clarity-Ferm. I can't stand sorgum in my beer. (I can't stand molasses in beer either so it makes sense). I have friends who are Celiac. I've had to use rice in previous low gluten beers but that ends up tasting like BMC and although that's better then sorgum, it's still not what I want.

> I bought a box of Kashi Honey 7-grain cereal to make a Sugar Puff beer.

I've been meaning to do this but haven't gotten around to it. I think that stuff will be awesome in a saison.

[monsteroyd]

Hmm... Sugar Puff Saison.

[jimjohson]

sugar puff...wow I had forgot that cereal

[swenocha]

Here is the original Sugar Puff beer article. There is a basic recipe in that article, but I saisoned the snot out of it and used Kashi, so I didn't follow that article but in concept...

[mashani]

Yeah, but the Kashi will be a lot more complex then plain old sugar puffs. 7 grains of goodness. Like a Carmelite trippel but with even more stuff (yes, I have pondered using them as a replacement for the flaked wheat, flaked barley and flaked/malted oats in a carmalite tripel type of beer).

[swenocha]

I've spent the last week or so slowly ramping the temps on this. Currently at about 82. Out of curiosity, I took a hydro reading as the primary fermentation appears to be done. I'm sitting at 10 days now. Reading is 1.010, so I'm currently sitting at 8.45%abv from my starting point of 1.074, giving me an apparent attenuation of 86.49%, and an actual attenuation of 70.40%. Tasted a small touch, and it tastes like a saison, though not funky (which is to be expected this early). I could get to 9.5% or so after the brett starts up. Liking this yeast blend... really kicks butt...

[Brewbirds]

I stumbled across this when I got kidnapped by the internet on another thread subject:

http://beerandwinejournal.com/gluten/

I've just found this blogspot (?) and there are a lot of interesting subjects discussed there.

[swenocha]

Thanks for the link, bb. I'll have to check it out...



Started at 60 degrees and slowly ramped to around 82 during initial fermentation. Been sitting at 74 ongoing. OG was 1.074 four weeks ago. Was at 1.010 three weeks ago. Took a gravity reading today, and at 1.007 at four weeks. 88 percent attenuation and an 8.7% abv.

Sample shown here was fantastic. A bit of funk already, a bit of pepper from the small cubeb addition. Really happy with this.

I've been consulting with the Yazoo funk wrangler a bit, and he's recommending, based on these stats, that I'll likely be good in a couple weeks. He figures I'll get to about 90 percent attenuation when all is said and done. He recommended just leaving it in primary, but I was getting a bit concerned about two months (or just shy) in the LBK, so I transferred to two glass one gallon fermenters. I dropped the merlot soaked oak cubes in one just for fun, and now both are happily airlocked for the next month. Yeast harvested, so I'll have another go with this yeast pretty soon.