Grocery Store Homebrew

[Llew Bardecki]

This is one of my favourite all time threads on the homebrewtalk.com forums.  It's basically a discussion about how to make beer (or a beerlike beverage) entirely from ingredients found in a grocery store.

I'm finally going to give it a try myself, and thought I might run it by folks here...
Here's my current recipe:

MASH INGREDIENTS
1.0kg Kumara
0.9kg Raw soft wheat
0.5kg Treacle
0.1kg Toasted raw wheat
0.02kg Ginger root

Mash for:
60 mins at 63C
30 mins at 68C

Apparently Kumara contains beta amylase.  And in good quantities.  I've found some sources that say various varieties of kumara have a diastatic power of 150-300 lintner. 
The articles I've read describe the enzyme as "beta amylase," but I'm still not certain if it'll be the exact same as the one found in barley malt.  Maybe some temperature other than 63C would be good?
I've also found some sources that suggest that ginger root contains alpha amylase.  These seem a lot less certain, and give no indication of how MUCH, but it's worth a try.

If anyone has any ideas about things other than malted grains that can convert starches I'd love to hear about it.

Given that I may well ONLY have beta amylase, I'm hoping that the treacle has a reasonable amount of unfermentable sugars, though I can't seem to find much info on that.  Any other suggestions for adjuncts that don't need conversion and are high in unfermentable sugars? 

BOIL INGREDIENTS
50g orange peel @ 60 mins
5g cinnamon stick @ 5 mins

Really not sure what to do for bittering.  Orange peel's bitter, and I reckon it'll go well with the other flavours.  Black tea might do the job as well.  Wormwood? Rosemary? Lavender?
Cinnamon sounds like a nice complement to the other flavours.


FERMENTING
Tasti Bread yeast @ 16-18C

I've actually made some okay beers with bread yeasts before.  It seems to work well in spiced ales where there's plenty of other flavour to hide anything unpleasant, and where a bit of "bready" flavour isn't entirely amiss.  Could just grow something from a bottle conditioned beer, but that feels too much like cheating :)


So there you have it...

Anyone have any advice, suggestions, or ideas of their own?  I'd love to hear about them.

[Chris Banks]

Interesting idea!
"Really not sure what to do for bittering" How about dandelion?
"Any other suggestions for adjuncts that don't need conversion and are high in unfermentable sugars?" Molasses?

[JR]

haha I thought that this was going to be a discussion on how to get good beer out of supermarket beer kits...

Is milo largly malt extract with some milk powder - milk stout? with some oats or grain of some sort roasted till its black.

Could you cook some sugar till it caramelizes to get some unfermentable sugars - or lactose from milk (not sure how you would extract that from the rest of the milk.

[denimglen]

Could you cook some sugar till it caramelizes to get some unfermentable sugars - or lactose from milk (not sure how you would extract that from the rest of the milk.

That's what I was thinking, maybe caramelise the first few liters of runnings?

Dunno about bittering...can you get wormwood at the supermarket? I'd be careful what you use to bitter to avoid a harsh grassy bitterness. Maybe just crank the level of ginger right up so the spicyness from that helps balance the beer, kinda like a soft drink ginger beer?

Or maybe some fruit? Will add both fermentable sugars and acidity to help balance.

[denimglen]

Just had a quick look at Homebrewer's Garden for you. Let me know if you want more info. These are the ones they've listed as having bittering properties.

Alecost, basil, bee balm, betony, blessed thistle, chamomile, clary sage, dandelion, gentian, heather, horehound, lavender, milk thistle, rhubarb (sourness), sage and yarrow.

[Llew Bardecki]

Thanks for the suggestions guys!
I brewed this last night, with a couple tweaks to the recipe.

9.5L batch

MASH INGREDIENTS
1.0kg Orange Kumara (chopped, frozen, thawed, then blended)
0.9kg Raw soft wheat
0.1kg Toasted raw wheat (toasted for 40 mins @ 185C in the oven. Came out looking a bit lighter than pale chocolate malt.)
0.02kg Ginger root

Mash for:
60 mins at 63C
40 mins slow ramp up to 69C
20 mins at 69C

BOIL INGREDIENTS
0.5kg Treacle @ 60 mins
50g orange peel @ 60 mins
20g orange peel @ 20 mins
5g cinnamon stick @ 5 mins

FERMENTING
Tasti Bread yeast @ 16-18C

OG=1.045

I mashed using a BIAB type method with only the solid ingredients included, leaving the treacle for addition at the start of the boil. The mash used 5L of water, then I did two "dunk" sparges with 3.5L, and one with 2L, giving about 12L into the kettle. Unsurprisingly, with a nothing but kumara and wheat in the mash, lautering wasn't easy.
The first runnings were nice and sweet, and a nice dark gold colour. Later runnings were an ugly green-brown colour.

As JR and denimglen suggested, I took 1L of the first runnings and boiled it down to 500ml, hoping to caramelize some of the sugars.

The wort had lower gravity than I'd expected.
Part of this was because I mis-calculated the extract potential of kumara at first.
Part of it was because my efficiency was quite low (about 60%.) This may have been because I didn't let the mash rest long enough to fully convert, though I forgot to pick up some iodine before brewing, so I guess I'll never know.

That said, the kumara and/or ginger definitely DID convert starch to sugar. If I've (finally) got the math right, then the sugars in the ingredients alone should have given an OG of 1.012 or so. Since my OG was 1.045, a good chunk of the sugar in the wort must have been converted from starch.

The wort was pretty tasty. Nice dark brown colour. Quite sweet, with minimal bitterness. Soft, but clearly noticeable ginger and cinnamon flavours. I'm looking forward to trying this when it's ready.

[denimglen]

Nooooooooooice!

Keep us updated bro.

[Llew Bardecki]

Bottled it tonight after 18 days in the fermenter.

It's... Interesting. Doesn't taste much like any other beer I've ever had, but with no malt and no hops I guess that's to be expected.

It's certainly not bad. Dark gold colour, and quite cloudy. Tastes very dry and rather tart (presumably this is from the orange peel.) Surprising how little sweetness I taste given that the FG was 1.010 and there were no hops. I guess orange peel tartness is helping tone it down.

Clear aroma of orange, but little sign of the cinnamon, ginger or kumara. A little bit of some sort of chemically smell.

We'll have to see what it does with a little ageing in the bottle. As it stands now I don't think I'd make it again, but it's certainly been an interesting experiment.

[Stu McKinlay]

reminds me of the prison brew comp we had a few years ago... my bro and I judged it. I think there were about 5 entries... none of them were very good but if I was in jail they'd probably all be stellar!

Wish I could find the link to the old forum...