Well, tax season has ended, about a month ago, and unfortunately I'm rather behind on several projects.   The temperature fluctuations hasn't helped the beer that I had out in the storage room of my apartment, even though I was monitoring it to make sure it didn't drop below freezing, but somehow, the process didn't go as smoothly as the first lager I had made out there several years ago.    It was the exact same recipe using saaz hops and sorghum syrup, however, I'm beginning to wonder if the pressure based fermentation did have an effect on it.  The first result was a pale, clear beer, however the one this time is more amber, and has the definitive taste of sorghum, and the fruity esters of the yeast.  It will still age under pressure for some time, and I may be trying it this weekend.

I've finally run out of the cider that I've had on tap for two years.  Admittedly, I had been only slowly going through it, due to last year's disastrous apple crop for Michigan.  I don't have a particular apple blend, nor do I have a source for specific apples, or fruit grinder, so I normally pick up ciders from certain producers, I usually look for a tarter cider, rather than sweeter when I was doing this for the prior years.   As of two days ago, there has been a frost, but while there are reports of frost damage, it's nowhere near the damage that existed last year.

I've also finally run out of a too-sweet white zinfandel that I've had for three years.  These have been in kegs, and yes, has been drinkable despite being 3 years old.  This was one of the early batches where I had followed the instructions, rather than the later batches where I've been adding half the sweetener pack during the first fermentation and the other half at the end.

I also brought a keg of a plain gluten free beer that had used the New Zealand hop motueka.  Because of the timing of my drinkers (usually just me), it's been about half a year since it was made, so it had lost a lot of the up front grapefruit flavors that the hops introduce.  The remaining tropical fruit flavor did, however, blend well with the diminished sorghum flavor and my initial testers liked it.  I wound up dragging several gallons out to a brewing day in Ann Arbor to see if I could receive any feedback.  Unfortunately, there wasn't much in the way of detail.   It wasn't a terrible beer, but it was not a favorite (in comparison to the normal barley based beers).  It was, however, the only gluten free beer out there.  Among the taps, it was one of the last two remaining beers at the end of the day, and I still took home a gallon or two.

Again, I managed to discuss some gluten free brewing to people who were looking at trying it out for friends and family, but nothing to the extent of people who were currently brewing gluten free, or had any suggestions for changes.

With two empty kegs, and the third expected to be empty this weekend, this does mean that it's time to start making something again.   Perhaps I might have been able to fit something in January or February in a carboy and let it sit for a few months, but I honestly didn't expect for three to come up at once.  I do have a Cellar Craft Sterling International GSM that is currently in secondary fermentation, so I do expect this to go into one of the kegs, and to finally bring out either the Cranberry mead, or the other Red wine.

I also need to catch up on cleaning, since I won't brew in a dirty kitchen, (And being in an apartment, it's all I've got).  But once that's done, then I can expect at least two more posts of something being made.  I'm considering another variation on the Orange & coriander beer.  Also, I really need to finish the sprayers that for the grain sprouting test in the spare bathroom.

It took much, much longer than I had planned to just empty a container so that I could put the spiced beer into a total of 3 kegs.  This past weekend, I finally drew the final glass of beer from my orange-coriander beer.  With three empty kegs, one from Thanksgiving, one that I had to dump, and finally this one. I made sure to clean and sterilize the kegs and run the cleaner through the outlet on each of them.

It was an unfortunate turn of events for the one keg I had to dump out, and if it happens again, I will have to completely replace parts of it, since the beer had turned to vinegar with odd things in it.  I never figured out what it was, either.

I filled two of the kegs to the top, and put the rest of the beer into the third keg.  The third keg being the one that had issues last time.  This way, if I lose anything, I would only lose 2-3 gallons of beer.  The other two kegs were filled to have 4.5-5 gallons in them and I carbonated them all to at least 12psi.  I may consider going higher once I get a better test.

I taste tested it today, and it's very much like the one I had at Thanksgiving.  It's a little out of date since it is a spiced beer, but it's not one that I want to try to keep until next winter.  I will taste it again tomorrow to define the taste, since it is likely to not taste the same once I give it time to settle and to let the any yeast settle out.

Once the carboys were washed and sterilized, I then decided to rack the cranberry mead.   Apparently I didn't use enough water because there was 1/2 a gallon of space in the carboy that I had to use the plain mead I made last July to finish filling the carboy to the top.  

Another oddity persisted, and that seems to be that I either brought a lot of yeast, or I brought unfermented honey over to the carboy.  The liquid was pretty viscous at the end and it could be from either situation.  However, the measurement taken shows that the racked liquid before addition was 1.018.  I'll taste test this tomorrow, since I put the glass into the fridge to try to drop the yeast out.  I may have to find a different clarifier, and I may also have to find out if it's really sugar that is remaining.

On the way home today to celebrate Mother's day, I stopped off at my brewing supply store to pick up some sorghum syrup.  With the last batch, I had used up my last 7 pound container and will be attempting another lager soon.  So I knew I needed more.

Actually, I picked up a rather dated, yeast vial of a wyeast Czech yeast at my local-local supply store, and I'm seeing if it's still possibly viable.  I could get a newer vial I suppose, but unfortunately, wyeast does not really have a gluten free yeast, so what we have to do, is dilute the yeast to a point where it becomes more gluten free.  That is to say, that the initial vial of yeast and growing medium (was wort, is now beer, or maybe it's just distilled water), is normally said to produce under 2ppm of gluten in a 5 gallon batch.  This meets the European standard of being gluten free, but not the American.  Also, many people have to go on a 0ppm gluten limit, which is why I prefer the strict limit over the relaxed one. 

I'm actually surpised that Europe would designate it this way, especially since many things in Europe have more of a purity rule than the US would.  For example:  Chocolate.  For many european countries, chocolate had to show that it used some other fat source other than cocoa butter, if anything other than cocoa butter was used.   And the German Reinheitsgebot, beer purity law, and the modified version which is still pretty strict in it's additives.  The original law, which is still emphasized as being followed as a matter of pride, though not enforced, said that to be beer, it had to contain barley, water and  hops (and yeast).  Nothing more.  

In any case, what gluten free, or at least gluten reduced brewers have to do, is to create what is known as a yeast starter.  Adding the vial of yeast to a gluten free wort (combination of water and a sugar source, usually sorghum syrup or brown rice syrup) that has a gravity of about 1.040, which the yeast will reproduce and feed off of.  It will ferment like normal beer, and the beer will be drawn off, taking with it some of the gluten protein from the original vial.  This is repeated several times. 

The media used to propogate the yeast uses a 120ppm gluten amount (as reported by Wyeast in 2009).  This is why we gluten free brewers tend to use the Fermentis brand of Safale, Saflager and Safbrew, because Fermentis uses a non-gluten media.  Unfortunately, Wyeast has a larger selection of yeast strains.  So a 50ml vial at a concentration of 120ppm would be normally diluted in a 5 gallon amount of gluten free wort, giving an ordinary dilution of:   120ppm * 50ml=? * 18927ml giving us a 0.31ppm amount.  Not a lot, but still, it's present. 
In a half gallon dilution it becomes: 120ppm * 50ml = ?* 1892ml giving us a 3.17ppm amount.  The beer is disposed of, leaving us with just the yeast.  So again:  3.17ppm * 50ml = ? * 1892.  This now gives us a 0.08 concentration of gluten.
Now:  0.08 ppm * 50ml = ? * 18927ml gives us 0.0002ppm.  So a safer, and lower, concentration of gluten in this gluten free(ish) beer. 

I will still relate this information to anyone who needs to be gluten free, and wether or not they trust the math and feel safe about it.  Knowing my tolerance level, I would be comfortable with the lower concentration, especially since it opens up the option of using a different yeast that may possibly give me a clearer, crisper lager with less diactyl flavors.

This ends the explanation of what I'm doing for the next beer, and why I need the sorghum to produce the next beer.  It will also undergo a gelatin clarifying test.

In the meantime, I picked up another picnic tap.  This way, I can attach it to my 3 foot hose, and then to the keg that I currently have filled with my first kit wine.  Or rather, wine cooler.  I also picked up another wine kit.  I saw it sitting there, in a stack, with a sign that said 50% off for this one day only.  Today happens to be the National Homebrewing Day.  Since the normal price is 135, this means that I get to save almost 70 dollars on a limited production wine.  It will be a Italian Primitivo wine, and requires aging from 6 to 12 months. 

After some consideration, I will still be aging this in a keg.  A keg is a stainless steel vessel.  Many wine producers age their wine in stainless steel vessels.  It is then placed into bottles and shipped out when it's ready to drink.  I will do the same.

Prior to going home, I drained the last of the beer from my first keg.  I tried to fill two bottles and a half-gallon growler jug.  One bottle burst as I was trying to cap it, or more accurately, the neck broke, so I had to toss the bottle.  (I was already doing this in the sink because filling from a keg was kind of messy, and required counterpressure otherwise foam would fill the bottle and come running out.).

Once at home though we finished up the beer and tried the wine cooler.  The wine cooler was pretty good.  Light and sweet, though I think it would have benefited if the day was warmer. 

After searching my beer fridge, I decided to make this:

7 pounds Sorghu extract
.75 oz Whitbread Golding hops @ 60 minutes
.75 oz Kent Golding hops @ 60 minutes
1 oz Kent Golding hops @ burnout (for aroma)
a bit of irish moss at burnout
Safale S04
and eventually some gelatin in the secondary.

The expected IBU is 28, the OG is about 1.045.  I didn't measure the og though, kind of forgot to.  Two of the hops packages were opened from a prior beer, but were subsequently sealed, which is why I didn't want to use them for aroma.  I'm sure there's some other losses involved too, but I'd like to use up what I have in my fridge if at all possible. 

In the meantime, I think I should really start bottling up some of these 3 gallons of cider so I can stop bumping into them.

For the past few months, I've been toying with the idea that some of the tannins within sorghum, is what may be causing the astringent/metallic flavor that many people describe when they come into contact with sorghum-based gluten free beer. 

The loose reasoning behind this is that too much tannin in any product will cause a tart, astringent or metallic flavor.  Not enough tannin in some things, means that the flavor can absent.  Strawberries and cranberries have a tartness to them due to their tannins, they just wouldn't be the same without them.  Black tea also has tannin, which gives it that dry flavor.  Enough tannin in tea makes it taste good, too much tannin, usually from overextracted tea, makes a person's mouth feel dry.

The hardest part though, is that the word tannin encompasses a large range of organic compounds and those compounds are different from item to item. So some items can have the same amount of total tannins (lets say 12 for each) but both can have a completely separate set of 12, and thus the tannin has a different effect. 

Apparently sorghum has about twice as many different phenolic and flavinoid compounds as barley does, and only a few of them overlap.  So the desired experiments would be twofold, to reduce tannin compounds overall, or even to remove one type of tannin, until the desired effect results. 

Now that second option is definately eliminated for me, and I can't even appropriately do the first set of experiments since I don't have any viable setup, including:  Space, constant temperature & environment, which are crucial to having constant elements in an experiment.  I'll still be doing some loose, not so scientific experiments in the meantime.

One set of experiments is to malt my own sorghum. The enzymatic process involved is said to reduce the amount of tannins.  (Note: Link to scientific paper from 1978)
A second set of experients is to first soak the sorghum in an alkaline solution prior to malting, or even using an enzymatic compound to break the sorghum down to fermentable sugars.  (link to 2010 scientific paper studying the effect of alkaline solution & sorghum tannin amounts)
The third set of experiments is to use a fining compound that will react with the tannin to reduce it during the secondary/clearing process of the beer.  Possible fining compounds include gelatin, isinglass, egg whites.

These (and some other) fining compounds react with tannin, which will drop it out of the solution.  If I'm not too careful though, this will also mean that flavor and body will be removed from the beer as well.  In the meantime, I'm using about a gallon's worth of my first 5 gallon beer to test this out on.

My next set of beer, I expect to be testing this as well, and this will be reported on the next post.