No sooner did I say that I haven't done anything, the I went and did something.  I saw that a nearby store had started listing sorghum syrup as one of the products they carried, and I know I did not see that several months ago.  It turns out that the store just started carrying them as of the end of December.  They purchased ten 7 pound containers, and it seems that they're down to half already, so they said that they would be getting more.  I also said that I'd spread the word because I would like to have more gluten free brewers in my area, as well as a source of sorghum syrup. 
True, eventually I'd like to be able to use malted grain and such, but until then, this works.

I finished building my wort chiller using 50 feet of copper refridgerator tubing and some compression connectors and tested it for leaks.  Not getting any, I then filled up a large 6 gallon aluminum pot, used for turkey frying.  I added 5 gallons of water and started it heating on the stove, it took an hour or two to heat up to boiling.  I then used a similar recipe to my very first batch, since I wanted something simple.

7 pounds sorghum syrup (30 minutes)
2 oz Kent Golding hops (60 minutes)
1 oz Kent Golding hops (10 minutes)
Irish moss (as a clarifier)
The OG turned out to be 1.054 at about 65 degrees. (However the brewing calculator calculated it at 1.048)
The expected bitterness should be about 41.40 IBU
and I'm using a full packet of Safale S-04 (English ale yeast)
I also plan on dry hopping, with 1 oz Kent Golding hops in a nylon bag, tied up and suspended in either the primary keg, or the secondary for about a week.

The wort chiller worked as expected so the 5 gallons of liquid was quite cold.  I shudder to think how much water I waste, perhaps I'll eventually circulate ice water like others do, but at the moment, the cold water runs from the faucet, through copper coils and out the other end which drains to the sink.

I then siphoned the liquid from the pot down into a keg, where it was filtered by a nylon bag.  This was perhaps a bit of a mistake because the nylon bag kept getting filled up with hop bits and was difficult to try to drain.  Some of it spilled out due to this.   I believe next time, I'll stick the siphon into the nylon bag and put that into the pot so it filters there.

I then poured in rehydrated yeast and sealed the keg shut then tossed it into the bathtub and rinsed it down with the shower to try to clean the spilled sugar liquid off of it.  I also had to mop the puddle on the floor too.
I think shook the keg, even to the point of laying it on it's side and shaking it, just to try to airate the liquid.  Perhaps I'll get the drill attachment to make it easier to airate, or even an airstone, plastic tubing and an oxygen regulator to connect to a typical oxygen tank sold at a hardware store.

Cleanup was difficult too.  I pretty much emptied the sludge into the sink and tried to spray out the remaining gunk using the plastic hose connected to the sink, as well as running a bottle brush around the thing.  I still managed to get water all over the place and had to mop up again.

Hopefully, this batch will go well.  I also need to get a keg piece that I left behind at the store, so I can transfer beer from one keg, to the other, but leave the yeast sediment behind.

Over the weekend, I was browsing around the farmer's market.  It's always an entertaining thing to do especially if it's a nice day outside.  The farmer's market provides a chance to meet and speak with the providers, and see what's in season.   Most farmers markets involve the local farmers and producers, usually within a certain radius, but may include small farmers from surrounding states as further defined by an acceptable radius.  Some larger markets can involve dealers and resellers or farmers from a more distant areas, they just don't call themselves local.

While looking through the stalls, I finally found the stall that had gluten free baked goods.  It was mid to late in the day for a farmer's market (1pm) and the market was slowing but there were still a few cookies left to buy.  I bought one of the two remaining packs and spoke with the baker.  It was interesting to find that along with the more common gluten free ingredients (rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch) but also used coconut flour.  I've seen, and even purchased coconut flour (from Bob's Red Mill) intending to use it for my own baked goods but I just couldn't decide on an application.  She had said that it creates a softer, chewier cookie since all of us bakers who have used the standard mix of rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch have tasted how grainy the cookies turn out to be due to the physical structure of pulverized rice and lack of liquid to soften it. 

The cookies were delicious, so unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of them, and the person getting the other cookies said how the brownies are even better and we talked about those.    I'll be certain to try those next time, but in the meantime it turns out that she got the chocolate she used in them from a local chocolate maker. 

I wandered further and found the Mindo chocolate makers.  What's interesting about them being local is that they purchase from a source in Ecuador and ferment their beans in Ecuador where they had purchased land after living in the US for many years.  On their land, they have a resturant where they may process and sell chocolate in Equador, but the fermented beans also are shipped up to Michigan where they process (roast, ground, conched etc) all the way to finished chocolate.  This also means that they sell the fermented whole beans, the roasted nibs (the inside part of the bean), chocolate liquor (the pure chocolate in liquid form after the beans have been roasted and ground, doesn't contain alcohol), and of course chocolate.  This refers to unsweetened chocolate at 100%, dark chocolate at about 77% and 66%.  It also refers to some chocolates that contain nuts, fruits and other ingredients.  I didn't think to ask if they sold the cocoa butter.

I picked up some cocoa nibs as one of the ingredients for a gluten free stout that I'll be making soon.  Only a few ingredients left to figure out.
Here's the reason why I haven't been writing about, or creating any gluten free beers lately:

There's also two more to the left that can't be seen.  I'm not really sure how the beers in the four glass containers will turn out being.  I had meant to make them a stronger IPA, something like a double, each with different hops.  It turns out though that my calculations were off and I had a LOT more sugar than I had expected.  This means that the alcohol could be up to the 11% range where this yeast will stop at, and will unfortunately still leave sugar behind.  If I want it to go any further, and I'd have to use a wine or champagne yeast.  I'm not even sure how to carbonate those at this point.

The plastic jugs are ciders where I added some champagne yeast and have been letting ferment as well as the mead that I described creating last post. 
Soon, I will get to the point of detailing out my measurements and dates so I can reference them better.

As for my prior beers, I had some people test out #3, 4, 5 and 6.  My earlier batches.  It seems that #3 was the most well received so I'll have to see if I noted down anything about the recipe to find out what it was.  Ah, poor note taking procedures, how did I ever get through school?



We started eating before I could get the picture (oops!)

1 cup of butter
Roughly 4 large eggs (I had 5 mediums)
4 teaspoons of vanilla
3 cups of the gluten-free flour
I let it bake in a breadpan lined with parchment paper and then let it cool.  I noticed that I probably set the pan a bit too high in the oven since part of the top was a little burnt.

(At the same time, I used some leftover rice, eggs, sugar, vanilla and lemon zest to make a rice pudding that I tossed into a pyrex bowl and stuck into a water filled pot to steam in the oven.)

The next day, I made a simple lemon glaze from about a cup of powdered sugar, a few spoons of water (a little at a time) and some lemon juice.  I drizzled this over the top of the pound cake and served it up.


Lessons learned?  To use a larger pan for the pound cake since the center turned out a little crumbly (but still good) or two pans.  To make the glaze slightly thinner since it was pretty solid when it hardened, possibly adding a little milk or more water (probably milk), and to actually measure and mix the rice pudding a bit more.

Was this possibly it? 

I pulled it down and read the ingredients, it was like the bottles I looked at before except one ingredient was missing.  Wheat flour.  This might be it.  I couldn't just look it up, so I bought it, along with a few gluten free gains that I plan on testing out for my beer.

A moment of explanation for people who are not familiar with this asian food staple.  Oyster sauce is a product of Lee Kum Kee, a company known for sauces.  My family has used oyster sauce for ages and we always got a bottle that had a boat and a child on it.  This was known as the premium brand.  The other brand, which we thought wasn't quite as good, was their panda brand.  To my family, it lacked the depth of flavor that the main bottle had.  The sauce is like a demiglace, the product of oyster stew that cooked for too long and reduced itself to a salty, slightly sweet, slightly tangy glaze that had a full, savory flavor that worked well as a finishing sauce for noodles, vegetables and would lend a special flavor to ribs and chicken.  Oyster sauce fits one of the asian tastes known Umami. 

Once I got home, I looked up the sauce on their website.  I had checked several times this year but found the new entry, it was of this very same bottle.  I even looked up their section on gluten free sauces and it was in the list!  I was excited so I popped it open and poured it onto my plate and ate it with plain rice and chicken finally getting to taste a sauce I had missed for years.  It was everything I remembered.  It brought back years of having Sapporo Ichiban noodles with an egg dropped in, drizzled with sauce.  Gai lon, or common broccoli, lightly stir fried with ginger and garlic, finished with this very sauce.  Green beans with ginger and garlic and this sauce.  Oh, so many recipies I had to cut away from because I could not eat this. 

For a while, I've been using a storebought stock reduction that didn't contain wheat flour, it wasn't quite enough.  I was attempting to make my own, using a combination of chickenstock, vegetable stock, or mushroom stock reduced to a glaze.  I had just started with a reduced chickenstock that even now sits in my freezer, waiting for me to figure out what steps to do next, but it's no longer needed for it's original purpose. 

Gluten free fans of asian foods rejoice, there's another sauce that's made the list and we're a step closer to authentic asian food free of gluten.   This is surprisingly difficult when some people don't know about gluten allergies.  I've found a few who do, but even they couldn't guarantee anything.   I'm crossing my fingers for Hoisin sauce next and perhaps a good version of Pearl River Bridge mushroom soy sauce.  I know that San-J does a geat gluten free tamari soy sauce, and I use it quite often, but to me, it's thinner than the syrupy dark mushroom soy sauce that I love.  Gluten-free, we're getting there.

Hello everyone,   I'm Kevin.  I've been mostly gluten free for three years now, and I've decided to start up this blog in order to review products I taste, items I bake, and perhaps a large range of other gluten-free related things that I might do.  I also may try some thing that have absolutely nothing to do with gluten-free topics, but most likely, they won't be gluten related either.

As I said, I've been mostly gluten free for at least three years now.  Before that, for about twenty-some years, I was living a lifestyle without concern for allergies.  As a child, I had seasonal allergies that I took an allergy pill for, and I eventually, around the age of 8-12, found that I had some problems with dairy.  It was minor in that the symptoms lasted for only a day and were only gastrointestinal (if you don't know what it means, look it up, but make sure you're not about to eat a meal). 

I had trouble figuring out why my digestive system was acting up.  I thought that I wasn't getting enough fiber.  I then started baking.  Heavily.  I would bake using whole wheat, and white whole wheat.   Baking bread every other day, cakes every other week.  They would be loaded with high protein, high fiber wheats.  My digestive system got worse.  I soon looked up symptoms and cures and found bits and pieces of the disorder called celiacs.  I wasn't totally sure if I was just intolerant, or fully allergic, but I though that it was probably a bad idea to eat whole wheat each and every other day.  For several months, I went without gluten.  I lost some weight, felt less bloated and more energetic.  My digestive system got better.  Not 100% I think, but better. 

Despite this, I feared.  I was afraid that I would no longer be able to have bread, cake, beer.  All the fun dessert type items that I wanted to travel the world for.  For a year I would sit there, reading about gluten free products, the increasingly abundant. What was worthwhile, what was nutritious?  What was empty carbohydrates that were far worse than ordinary flour?

People think that the gluten-free lifestyle is healthier.  That is half true, and half false.  It's true if you look only at eating vegetables, legumes/beans, rice and animal protein (meat).  However, the baked goods that we eat, usually sparingly, consist of rice, processed potato, tapioca and maybe beans.  This means that the potential whole grain ability for baking is pretty hard to come by, and that our blood sugar is a little more volitile.  Eventually, people found that there were other high protein, gluten-free grains, like millet, quinoa and buckwheat.  These have been food staples for people, but they never got full recognition until the necessity for gluten free.  Some people, those who may not even be allergic, choose gluten free as a dietary path.  As for me, I'd love not to have to do it, but, until there is a cure, I'm happy with the substitutes, and I'm more than willing to share what they are, and my opinion of thm is, here, right on this website.   There are times when I may go off on  tangent, but I'll always come back to gluten free, and I hope to share all that I've experienced with you, dear reader.