Sorghum ale?

[flerchinger]

Hello all, I got a request to brew an ale with sorghum. I found a source for sorghum grain, now i have to figure out how to make beer out of it. Anyone ever brew with sorghum or know a good refrence that talks about this?
Thank you.

[beertje46]

Is your source for sorghum grain or sorghum malt? If it's malt I'd be interested in learning your contact.

[Gurdeep Singh]

Brewing with sorghum

Hi, it would be intersting to know about brewing with sorghum malt. If some body could put light on recipe and further how the beer is different from other brewing material like barley malt,rice,maize.

Thanks
Gurdeep Singh
India

[Ted]

People know use syrup to brew sorghum beers

call Omar at Alcatraz in Indy. He has one on right now.



317.488.1230

[flerchinger]

I tried looking for sorghum malt with no luck. I am going to do a five gallon test batch and toast some of the grain.

[aswissbrewer]

I asked after malted sorghum on another thread, Ingredients-Malt. Check the link to sillyyak, great stuff if you want to try malting a little of your own.

I can tell you what I found out otherwise.

One of the best sources of info into gluten free malt is Carolyn Smagalski at bellaonline (and other beer related stuff as well!).

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art42724.asp

The best chance in the US at the moment is Bards:

http://www.bardsbeer.com

If you can't get a supply of gluten free grain in a hurry, then you'll probably have to use an enzyme cocktail. This works but the beer can be thin. I think the best bet for "beery" non-gluten beer is the malt.

As far as a cheap supply of non-gluten grain goes, try bird-seed suppliers.

good luck!

[Todd]

celiac disease

I think we will be seeing more sorghum based beers in the near future. This is a result of an autoimmune disease known as celiac disease which is now affecting nearly 1% of the U.S. population. Gluten sources come from wheat, barley,rye and oats and are derived from the prolamin cereal protiens. Avoidance of these protiens can be a cure for this autoimmune disease. This disease causes villous atrophy in the small intestine and can lead to mal-nutrition, loss of calcium in the bones, austeoperosis and even loss of night vision. For those who have the disease, the consumption of gliadins,prolamins or glutenins, can be a nasty experience as the effects of villous atrophy on the small intestine is rough. I do not speak from experience, however this information and the explanation of the experiences came from one of the leading brewing scientists in this country who has this disease.

I had the opportunity to do a flavor analysis on a sorghum based beer from
A-B. Look for it in stores under the name Redbridge. I don't know if it is yet released. I certainly was'nt rushing out to find it after doing the tasting panel. It wasn't bad. It certainly was'nt beer. I thought it seemed sweeter than it should be for the style, it had a tart finish, and I was left scrambling for malt in every aspect. It was a nice red color and it was balanced but it was lacking something...malt perhaps.

I don't have formulation specifics and would like to know more about a formulation and technique for brewing sorghum based beers.

Cheers to beer from barley!!

Todd

[Pablo Alvarez]

Brewing with 100% of raw sorghum

Brewing with 100% of raw sorghum


The use of raw instead of malted sorghum has many advantages like no mold growth during malting, no malting losses, normal wort filtration rate and avoids the typical raspberry-like flavour imparted to the beer by malted sorghum.

1) mashing-in at 50°C, with the addition of 0,1% to 0,3% of Sorgainase w/w in relation with sorghum weight, standing of this temperature during 45 minutes. The addition of 0,1 % of Sorgainase will lead to around 80 ppm of FAN for a wort at 12°P whereas 0,3 % of Sorgainase will allow to reach 140 ppm of FAN for a wort at 12°P. See our Sorgainase technical leaflet at:

http://www.cbsbrew.com/Fiches/Fiches_PDF/Fiche_Sorgainase.pdf

2) rising of the temperature untill ebullition; when reaching 75°C addition of 0,1% to 0,2% of Liquamyl T w/w in relation with sorghum weight and in the beginning of ebullition addition of a second dose of 0,1% to 0,2% of Liquamyl T w/w in relation with sorghum weight; ebullition is maintained during 15 minutes; at this time the coloration obtained with iodine test is brown and yellow is obtained in many cases. See our Liquamyl T technical leaflet at:

http://www.cbsbrew.com/Fiches/Fiches_PDF/Fiche_LiquamylT.pdf

The duration of twice first steps will vary from 85 minutes to 110 minutes depending on the maximum heating rate (1°C to 2°C/min) which can be reached by the heating system used to rise the temperature from 50°C to ebullition. The temperature diagram is very simple, this brewing method can be performed with conventional material and does not involve to have to cool the wort after starch gelatinization at 100°C.


3) Wort filtration

4) Wort ebullition and hopping

5) Wort cooling, addition of 0,25 g of Sorgamyl /°P/Hl once wort temperature is below 60°C or at piching. The apparent attenuation obtained by this method will be around 90-95%. See our Sorgamyl technical leaflet at:

http://www.cbsbrew.com/Fiches/Fiches_PDF/Fiche_Sorgamyl.pdf

This method works with different sorghum varieties (white, yellow, red). Some red varieties contain amylases inhibitors and may cause problems to liquefy and saccharify sorghum starch. In this case we have the know how to block these inhibitors.

[beertje46]

Briess Sorgham syrup

Briess offers two types of sorgham syrup. I think I'll order a pail and brew something.

[GarySped]

Sorghum Beer

Folks, I do not know why this appeared as a current post as it looks like this was an issue from the end of last year - but it reappeared today so here is my two cents worth.

A couple earlier papers to look at for those interested:
"Effect of malting temperature and mashing methods on sorghum wort composition and beer flavor" by M. A. Igyor et al (including Graham Palmer - who is an expert on this topic) in Process Biochemistry 36 (2001) 1039-1044 and, perhaps a better paper for the discussion of mashing: " Production of malt extract and beer from Nigerian sorghum varieties" by F. J. C. Odibo et al, also in Process Biochemistry 37 (2002) 851-855.

A review, published in 1997, would be worth obtaining: "Review: Sorghum: a cereal with lager beer brewing potential", by C. I. Owuama, in World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology 13, 253-260.

I have some other recent papers but these cover more the African household production/brewing aspects and technological and socio-economic aspects rather than brewing parameters per se.

[beertje46]

Folks, I do not know why this appeared as a current post as it looks like this was an issue from the end of last year - but it reappeared today so here is my two cents worth.


I have some other recent papers but these cover more the African household production/brewing aspects and technological and socio-economic aspects rather than brewing parameters per se.

Any of these can pop back up as new users find them or there is renewed interest.

I am interested in seeing the recent papers on African household production/brewing. Can they be posted?

[GarySped]

Papers for posting

Some of the papers I have are copyright material so I cannot post them but would prefer instead to deal one on one to see how best I can get the details to you. Any interested party should just drop me an E-mail and I'll see what we can do.

Gary.

[aswissbrewer]

Sorghum Malting

This renewed discussion on Sorghum is very much appreciated by me, as I am in the process of trialling a gluten-free brew.
Thanks for the input guys , very helpful. In return a little input from my side for those interested.
I am trying out a sample of South african Sorghum Malt - available from "Sorghum Malting" forum member. Send him a private message.
(or Email vanderwaltc@unbreweries.co.za)
My tack is using malt rather than raw sorghum and my big problem is wort filtration. This I hope to solve with rice hulls. I wish also to use some other grain - corn , buckwheat, for which enzymes may be of definite use.

All the info I have received up to now makes me conclude that using goood malt is the best key to a product that tastes like beer in the european sense.
But I'm no expert here either, just trying things out at the moment.
Cheers

[Pablo Alvarez]

Raw sorghum instead of malted sorghum

As far as our experience is concerned we think it would be easier to work with raw instead of malted sorghum.

The use of malted sorghum instead of raw sorghum can lead to wort filtration problems which are difficult to resolve even with exogenous enzymes.

Malted sorghum can impart some undesired typical raspberry-like flavour.

Sorghum starch gelatinizes at high temperatures (> 90°C), much higher than the malted sorghum enzymes destruction temperature so thermostable exogenous amylase is recomended.

The unique advantage of malted sorghum on raw sorghum is the level of FAN (free amino nitrogen) reached in the wort.

The use of malted sorghum will probably need an enzyme preparation to improve wort filtration. The classical enzymes (beta glucanases or pentosanases) to improve barley malt wort filtration do not work to improve malted sorghum wort filtration. Trials have to be done. Sometimes some proteolytic enzymes can help but it depends on sorghum variety.

If it is possible for you we recommend you to work with raw sorghum.

If you prefer to work with malted sorghum you could try the same method described in previous post but without Sorgainase addition and maybe you could have some chance and have an acceptable wort filtration rate.

Some sorghum varieties contain an amylase inhibitor we can block.

Cheers.

Pablo Alvarez

https://www.cbsbrew.com

[beecee42]

Sorghum malt syrup

Hi. I found this forum & ProBrewer when I started looking for malted syrup. With out going into too much detail I created with help from Chris Holliland a Gluten-free Pilsner in 2004 at Brewlab in Sunderland, UK. Our partners Pivara Skopje of Macedonia sampled brewed 20k litres and it was not bad. They were owned majority by Brau Union, a joint Heineken/CoCola in Central Europe pulled out of the venture for no real reason, when I had major retail/brewery/pub chains here and in Europe wishing to place orders. I will not labour you with my feelings, but it stills grinds to put it politely! Anyway I'm looking for a supplier of the malted sorghum syrup as I wish (with my brewer) to create a brew kit. Can anyone help me to locate any? Cheers Ben Cowell BC’s GF Pilsner Beer
PS I know this on an old posting's forum but thought I'd start here