As I was eating breakfast this morning, I was looking at the box for my 7 grain muesli cereal and got to wondering if anyone had positive experience brewing with unusual grains. Except for some wheat beers, the rest of my brews have relied upon a majority of malted barley for the grain bill. I’ve used small additions of malted wheat and rye, and unmalted wheat, rye, barley, corn, rice and oats. Just normal stuff.
Has anyone brewed with large amounts of more exotic grains? Spelt, buckwheat, quinoa, etc. or rare varieties of more common grains? How did it come out?
Muessdorfer sells spelt malt, haven’t used it though. I recall reading about people who’ve tried the various grains you mentioned, basically you do a cereal mash to gelatinize them and go from there. I’d maybe do a protein rest since some grains are higher in protein than the varieties of barley we use for malt. Whether they’d bring a substantial flavor component, I couldn’t say.
I would expect each grain to offer it’s own special challenges in the process, but it is really the flavor aspect (and impacts on body, foam, etc.) that I’m really interested in. What did the flaked triticale add to the beer?
I used it in an export stout instead of flaked barley. I can’t really say that it added much. I only used it on a whim; it was cheaper in the supermarket bulk aisle than the flaked barley was at the homebrew shop.
I’ve used all sorts of stuff. Over the years I bought a lot of brewing ingredients from the bulk bins at the local coop. I’ve used all sorts of different kinds of wheat, rye, spelt, buckwheat, barley, oats, rice, triticale, flax, etc. I’ve even added a couple pounds of some 10 grain hot breakfast cereal. In the percentages I used (usually 10-20%, but on a couple occasion mixing a few different kinds up to 50% of the grain bill), the results have been pretty subtle. But it’s fun and they all have their minor contributions.
