Gluten free beer, on it's own, has not been very difficult.  Surprising to find out.  Consiting of sorghum syrup, hops, water and yeast and a total of two months worth of time.   Most beers that are created this way are easily two types.  An IPA or a pilsner and I'm working on finding how I like mine in these ways.  Most people are limited in their Gluten Free beer choices.  New Grist, Redbridge, Woodchucks and Strongbow (The latter two of course are ciders, but can usually be found where the other two may not be.)  I also have the Jolly Pumpkin Bellipago near here.   As I've mentioned before, I have had about 10 gallons, in single gallon sized batches that I have been working on.  The most recent of which is on it's second week.

I've been reading about some gluten free stouts.  Two or three people have made some successful chocolate stouts, and I wanted to see about doing something similar.  I've never been much of a lighter bodied hoppy beer fan (IPA, pilsner etc) but really like reds and stouts.  Both of these get much of their color from toasted grains (barley) which will often give it a toast and caramel taste, and sometimes a bit of body.  Doing this as a gluten free beer using extract is harder.   Because I don't quite know how toasted grains act in a beer, other than from some minor articles, I decided to practice roasting some and seeing what it does to a beer.  What's generally accepted is that it will give the beer a nutty flavor and probably some excess haze rather than anything else.  In order to get other good things from it, it would require a process known as malting.  Something I'll be trying to figure out.

What I had practiced with was oats.  Plain, whole oats that were not malted, not cooked, not rolled. Pretty much whole seeds.  I toasted these in a popcorn popper for 4-6 minutes until they gave a toasted flavor and stuck it into a bag for about two weeks to release the volitile scents (getting rid of the charred burnt smell, but keeping the toasty smell)

On November 17th I used this recipe:
1 gallon water (60 min)
.25 oz Columbus Hops (60 min) for a mild bitterness
1.47lbs Sorghum Syrup (60 min)
2 oz toasted whole oats (15min) - I have no idea what it'll do
irish moss (15 min) - for some clarity
English Ale yeast that I had been waking up using some old English Ale yeast from a month or two ago in some water that had been boiled and some brown rice syrup so that the yeast would feed and grow for a few days.

This means that for one full hour, I boiled the water, the hops and the syrup together.  Fourty-five minutes into the boil, I added the oats and the moss.  Once the hour was up, I then chilled the pot in the sink with cold water, then filtered the liquid into a jug and added the yeast.  I did take the measurement and found it to be around 1.060 gravity which tells how much sugar it has in it.


On November 29th I racked the beer, meaning I transferred the slightly alcoholic liquid into another jug, leaving the sludge behind.  There was quite a bit of sludge, probably from the oats rather than the yeast.  I tossed the yeast, forgetting that I had wanted to try a process known as yeast washing which would clean off the yeast and let me have the yeast which is even more gluten free than before.  (I'll try it next time).
Into this secondary fermenter, I added:
2 oz Chocolate nibs soaked in vodka to sterilize
Cold Brewed Coffee (Planned on .5-1 ounce)

Oops, I used a full 8 ounces of cold brewed coffee.  A Burundi Kayanza Bwayi roasted on Tuesday the 23rd (So that I could bring some home for the holiday weekend).  I cold brewed the coffee in a french press then decanted it into a bottle and chilled it to let the sediment settle.    It's a mild tasting coffee when cold, and Sweet Maria's recommends it at a City to City+ roast describing it as a "True Bourbon character.  Sweet and balanced cup with creamy body, mild citrus, raisin, plum, honey, refined sweetness.  Delicate and great as a single origin espresso.

It's not a strong coffee, even when brewed hot.  It's delicate, slightly sweet, mild, not overpowering and just good all around from what my family agreed on.  It kept this sweetness even as a cold brew, which I had tasted during the first decanting. 

I'll let it sit there for about a week, then bottle it and let it stand for at least one month before testing it to find out what flavors come out.  Maybe I'll also do a pretest by putting some into a 20 ounce soda bottle and pressurizing it with CO2 for an immediate test.