BeerBorg

I thought I'd kick off the new food forum with a topic that's directly related to both homebrew and cooking.

I'd love to be able to make more use of my spent grains. Currently, I dump them in a corner of the backyard for the birds and squirrels and other wildlife to snack on.

I know they can be used in dog biscuit recipes (but I don't have a dog, so that's not one of my options). I know bread is an option, as is pizza dough. But there must be other options, and I'm also concerned about process and technique. Should the grains be dried or can they be used wet? What about the best storage techniques? Vacuum seal or freeze?

Please share your recipes and especially your techniques on using spent grains, and if a moderator/administrator could make this a sticky, that would be greatly appreciated, too.

I'm interested in this also. Can't wait to hear some recipes/ideas. I knew about the dog biscuits too, but I don't have a dog. I've been giving my grain to a guy at work that has chickens. He said they devour them. I would be interesting if there are any recipe for a granola or fruit and grain type snack bar.

Dave...as for this being a sticky, since it's the only thread in the Bistro & Bar-B-Q section so far, there really is no need to sticky this. Right now, it will always be at the top. But if it fills up quick and this gets lost, I'll be happy to stick it!!!

Right now, same as you Chris, guy at work lives out in the sticks and has chickens. He says all he has to do is rustle the bag as he's grabbing a handful and the chickens come running toward him, like Pavlov's dogs. I have heard pizza crust from spent grains is pretty tasty.

I really want to try the pizza dough recipe I found online, but as SWMBO is the pizza maker at Casa Dave-Guy, she doesn't want to try it until she has some of the questions in my OP answered. We could always go the trial-and-error route, but if someone had a definitive answer, that would smooth the road no little and more than somewhat.

And I imagine the grains I dump in the corner of my backyard are pretty popular with the wildlife. Otherwise, the pile would probably be the size of a doghouse by now. Nice to know the furry little woodland creatures appreciate my largesse.

Brooklyn BrewShop has a list of spent grain recipes.

I have made granola with spent grain but I can't find the recipe now. The recipe on Brooklyn BrewShops list looks pretty similar to what I did. It was really good I would have it sprinkled on plain greek yogurt for breakfast.

I also made bread with spent grains a couple of times. I gave up. I can ruin any good bread recipe.


All the recipes I saw called for dry spent grain but they all said well strained worked just fine so I just strained mine and put it in the fridge. If there was any liquid the next day when I went to use it I would just pour it off.

I've done a number of the recipes on the Brooklyn brewshop site. Some have been more successful than others. I think the falafels tasted really good but tended to crumble.

One thing I've done is just dry them in the oven on low or in the dehydrator. Depending on what I plan to do worth them, I may leave them as is, or send them through the mill as fine add it will go, or run them through the coffee grinder (for really fine flour-like consistency).

I've used them dehydrated as a substitute for flour (up to 50% if memory serves, but it has been awhile, so it might be best to start at 25% and work up from there). I've used them in pancakes, bread and pasta (I think I only tried pasta once and had poor results, but may have used too high a percentage and/or may not have ground them finely enough).

When you're using them as a flour substitute, you need to remember that spent grains have some important differences from flour. Remember that you've converted most of the starch to sugar and rinsed that off (at least we hope so). You've also lost a lot of the gluten. Each of these is important, for different reasons (It's late and I forget the details, but basically most recipes rely on the gluten and starch in flour for a variety of reasons). That's why you only want to replace part of the flour.

What you're left with is mostly fiber and protein. So from a nutritional standpoint, spent grains are pretty good. From what I've read, 1/4 cup of spent grains has about 10 calories, 6 g fiber, 3.5 g fiber and less than a gram of fat.

I often just dry them and add 1/4 cup (aka 4 Tablespoons) to a smoothie.

I've also added some to home made granola, but I got out of the habit of making granola as I ramped up my fruits and vegetables consumption and ramped down my grain consumption.

There was a spent grain cooking thread on the mr beer fans forum that may be on archive.org. I'll see if I can find it. I think there was a link to a blog with additional recipes on that.

As far as storage, if you don't start drying them within a couple of hours, refrigerate them. If you refrigerate them, either use them within a couple of days or freeze them. If you're not drying them, vacuum sealing before refrigerating or freezing will extend the life dramatically. I'm a belt and suspenders kind of guy. If I refrigerate or freeze, I generally also vacuum seal, unless I know it's going to be a short time.

those recipes sound good. I've just been feeding the spent grains to my chickens, they quickly eat it up.

Here is a good grain bar recipe that I've used many times with good success.
Once cooked I store them in the fridge or in a lock n lock until I eat them.

Two cups spent grain
One cup flour
One cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 big tablespoons of honey
One egg
Pinch of salt

Add 1/2 cup of each ingredient you want to add:
almonds, coconut, chocolate chips, etc.

Roll with pin to flatten out, cut into squares/bars

Bake at 225 for 1 hour
flip, bake for another hour

Kealia wrote:Here is a good grain bar recipe that I've used many times with good success.
Once cooked I store them in the fridge or in a lock n lock until I eat them.

Two cups spent grain
One cup flour
One cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 big tablespoons of honey
One egg
Pinch of salt

Add 1/2 cup of each ingredient you want to add:
almonds, coconut, chocolate chips, etc.

Roll with pin to flatten out, cut into squares/bars

Bake at 225 for 1 hour
flip, bake for another hour

Thanks...that looks good. What do you do to the grain before you make these? Are you drying them, using them wet, squeezing as much liquid out as possible, etc, etc? Are you making these immediately after brewing or are you storing the grains somehow?

BlackDuck wrote:

Kealia wrote:Here is a good grain bar recipe that I've used many times with good success.
Once cooked I store them in the fridge or in a lock n lock until I eat them.

Two cups spent grain
One cup flour
One cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 big tablespoons of honey
One egg
Pinch of salt

Add 1/2 cup of each ingredient you want to add:
almonds, coconut, chocolate chips, etc.

Roll with pin to flatten out, cut into squares/bars

Bake at 225 for 1 hour
flip, bake for another hour

Thanks...that looks good. What do you do to the grain before you make these? Are you drying them, using them wet, squeezing as much liquid out as possible, etc, etc? Are you making these immediately after brewing or are you storing the grains somehow?

You sure do ask a lot of question!
Glad you asked them before me

When I make them I typically do it either right after brewing or the next day.
After brewing and squeezing the ever-loving-hell out of the bag (BIAB) the grains go into a pot. I'll give some to our chickens and then use some for dog biscuits and/or grain bars. So, I don't do anything special to them other than use them within 24 hours or they start to sour.

I have put some into ziplock bags into the fridge for a few days before doing it before, too. But that's about it. You can cook them a bit longer if you want to dry them out a bit, but if you get them too dry they become brittle and damn near sharp at the edges.

Kealia wrote:Here is a good grain bar recipe that I've used many times with good success.
Once cooked I store them in the fridge or in a lock n lock until I eat them.

Two cups spent grain
One cup flour
One cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 big tablespoons of honey
One egg
Pinch of salt

Add 1/2 cup of each ingredient you want to add:
almonds, coconut, chocolate chips, etc.

Roll with pin to flatten out, cut into squares/bars

Bake at 225 for 1 hour
flip, bake for another hour

I'm gonna try this recipe ASAP. These sound really good! And with the additives of coconut, or almonds/other nuts, or chocolate chips, they would be very versatile.

Now I'm wanting to bake some purple rice bars...

I brewed today, and dried out 1 1/4 cups of grains. I separated it into 1/4 cup portions, dried them out in a 200 degree oven, and vacuum sealed them and put them in the freezer. Since I'm on vacation now, I'm going to take one of those portions and make pizza dough at some point (probably Wednesday). For the rest, I'll look at bread/muffin recipes and see what I come up with.

Updates to come.

This is my homemade spent grain pizza I love to make. I don't make flour out of the grain, but I just use regular 3 cups or so of regular bread flour, 1 cup of the actual grain, yeast, salt and water. I like to melt some butter with a bit of garlic and put it on the crust.