This may be heresy, but...

[Steelbacks]

Thumper is punching it - great are the efficiency boosts for you're dealing with flour. Typical grain weight has husk and rabbit bones all that junk, so the weight of the flour doesn't have that, just more sugary potential, plus for typical grain you're not getting that level of grind that lets you get right to the centre of the ectospermigiund. With flour your enzymes don't even have to fly down the trenches of the Death Star - every amylase torpedo hits the exhaust port. Problem is when draining every footstep is like you're in a swampy Dagobah.

I did a beer called "Brexfast" which was a comedy beer made with breakfast ingredients but NOT contienental breakfast ingredients.

I did toast, Shreddies, porridge, Weetabix tea, can't remember what else off the top of my head - as cascade is meant to be like grapefruit that was the obvious hop choise. And... it was fine. Not amazing but fine, and definitely fine for a beer I did as a joke. A 6/10 from the reviews.

Efficiency of doing toast vs flour - LOW - toasting will add extra flavours but you'd get them elsewhere for a fraction of the cost.

And if you're talking preservatives most of them get killed in a boil so bread you buy and then toast or just mash is fine - and is exactly what the Toast ale people do. They get that bit of sugar from the bread and that bit of "Oh yeah!" from the toasted bits and you can get the same thing from grains but it's fun not to. That's why I do it.

Don't think you can save a stash of money unless you're saving 70p a gallon on an AWESOME (It really is) wheat beer. The extra mashing in faff really isn't worth it... and I'm a super-ultra-mega-uber-master-miser. You do the dumb stuff for the fun of seeing people shaking their head in disbelief when it goes right.

Hi Drunkula. Any chance you could give me/us the recipe for a brew using flour, plus method (as I'm new to brewing, so don't understand all the shorthand and other stuff a lot of Brewers seem to take for granted)? If there's a link you could provide, that would be great as well. TIA!

 

[Drunkula]

This was for a gallon and produced a 1065 starting gravity which made it 6.7% abv, so if you want to drop the values to 500g of each you should get around 5.5%
600g of pale malt
600g of plain cheapy flour
coriander seed crushed and added 5 minutes before the end of the boil about 2 teaspoons (would have added more of this and the peel)
orange peel from 2 oranges added 5 minutes before the end of the boil
Hops
4g of target @ 60 (that's 4g of target hops in 60 minutes before the end if you're not used to hop schedules)
5g of cascade dry hop - added day 10 and left for a week - I'd also up this.
Priming:
Batch primed with 40g of sugar for the gallon - that's 3.3 volumes of co2, much higher than I normally go but it's worked perfectly.

Gelatine for fining on day 18 and put into the cold. Normally I wouldn't have used finings on a wheat beer but I wanted to see if I could compact more of the flour out. To be honest there really wasn't a need.
Bottled 3 days later. Drank my first bottle 6 days after that and it was wow. I took it from by brew freezer at 20c and put it into the freezer until it was nicely cold.

Strike water was supposed to be 3 litres for mashing in but if you've got a pot you can get more in then do it - I'm doing it again tonight and will be using 5 or 6 litres instead.
The temperature of the water is 74.9c that drops to 66.7c when you add the grain - so I was mashing at 66.7. 65c would have been fine as it's got plenty of body.
When I put the flour in it created a super thick wallpaper paste and I gave up and left - then it went thin and I added the pale malt and got it back to mash temperature and left it for an hour, stirring now and again. It eventually looked just like a normal grain mash.

After straining through a brew bag folded a few times in a colander I got it up to the boil and boiled for 60 minutes. 4g of target hops for bittering as it's all I had - have used admiral since then as it's supposed to have an orange flavour.

Used crossmyloof kristalweizen yeast which I really recommend. Only used a 5th of a pack. Final gravity was 1010 so it finished at 7.2%

As you can see above I left it three weeks before bottling. I'm doing some experiments with cutting back on that and now I'd dry hop day 4 to 7 then cold crash after 7 and bottle after 10 to 14 days.

So - I'd say up the coriander and peel and the dry hop. I've done one since with dark malt extract and real wheat malt and dry hopped with 5g of citra and 5g of columbus and that's tasting great.

I'm doing another batch tonight as an experiment with 50% dark spraymalt, 25% real wheat malt and 25% flour. I need the wheat for the diastatic enzymes and the little change of flavour the wheat brings. Will up the coriander and mess about with some extra hops.

 

[Steelbacks]

This was for a gallon and produced a 1065 starting gravity which made it 6.7% abv, so if you want to drop the values to 500g of each you should get around 5.5%
600g of pale malt
600g of plain cheapy flour
coriander seed crushed and added 5 minutes before the end of the boil about 2 teaspoons (would have added more of this and the peel)
orange peel from 2 oranges added 5 minutes before the end of the boil
Hops
4g of target @ 60 (that's 4g of target hops in 60 minutes before the end if you're not used to hop schedules)
5g of cascade dry hop - added day 10 and left for a week - I'd also up this.
Priming:
Batch primed with 40g of sugar for the gallon - that's 3.3 volumes of co2, much higher than I normally go but it's worked perfectly.

Gelatine for fining on day 18 and put into the cold. Normally I wouldn't have used finings on a wheat beer but I wanted to see if I could compact more of the flour out. To be honest there really wasn't a need.
Bottled 3 days later. Drank my first bottle 6 days after that and it was wow. I took it from by brew freezer at 20c and put it into the freezer until it was nicely cold.

Strike water was supposed to be 3 litres for mashing in but if you've got a pot you can get more in then do it - I'm doing it again tonight and will be using 5 or 6 litres instead.
The temperature of the water is 74.9c that drops to 66.7c when you add the grain - so I was mashing at 66.7. 65c would have been fine as it's got plenty of body.
When I put the flour in it created a super thick wallpaper paste and I gave up and left - then it went thin and I added the pale malt and got it back to mash temperature and left it for an hour, stirring now and again. It eventually looked just like a normal grain mash.

After straining through a brew bag folded a few times in a colander I got it up to the boil and boiled for 60 minutes. 4g of target hops for bittering as it's all I had - have used admiral since then as it's supposed to have an orange flavour.

Used crossmyloof kristalweizen yeast which I really recommend. Only used a 5th of a pack. Final gravity was 1010 so it finished at 7.2%

As you can see above I left it three weeks before bottling. I'm doing some experiments with cutting back on that and now I'd dry hop day 4 to 7 then cold crash after 7 and bottle after 10 to 14 days.

So - I'd say up the coriander and peel and the dry hop. I've done one since with dark malt extract and real wheat malt and dry hopped with 5g of citra and 5g of columbus and that's tasting great.

I'm doing another batch tonight as an experiment with 50% dark spraymalt, 25% real wheat malt and 25% flour. I need the wheat for the diastatic enzymes and the little change of flavour the wheat brings. Will up the coriander and mess about with some extra hops.

Thanks for all the info. I've never done a 'proper' brew, just kits, so I'm not 100% sure exactly how you did everything, but once I've read a homebrew book (I should be getting one tomorrow) then I'm sure things will become a lot clearer.

If I was cooking with coriander seeds, I'd heat them in a pan first for a few seconds, then crush or grind them to release the oils. Did you just put them in whole? Also, have you considered putting some flour in a blender with plenty of water to produce a slurry? If you do this and add the slurry to the batch you may get less clumping, but you may need to do it in batches and add just a little flour at a time, or you'll just end up with a dough in your blender.

What do you think about 'toasting' the flour by adding it to a large frying pan and gently heating whilst stirring it to prevent it burning on the bottom of the pan and ensuring an even toast? I'm not sure what effect the heating of the flour would have on the sugars in the flour, or what difference it may have on the end taste. Any thoughts?

 

[Drunkula]

If I was cooking with coriander seeds, I'd heat them in a pan first for a few seconds, then crush or grind them to release the oils. Did you just put them in whole? Also, have you considered putting some flour in a blender with plenty of water to produce a slurry? If you do this and add the slurry to the batch you may get less clumping, but you may need to do it in batches and add just a little flour at a time, or you'll just end up with a dough in your blender.

What do you think about 'toasting' the flour by adding it to a large frying pan and gently heating whilst stirring it to prevent it burning on the bottom of the pan and ensuring an even toast? I'm not sure what effect the heating of the flour would have on the sugars in the flour, or what difference it may have on the end taste. Any thoughts?

I crush the coriander seeds but don't toast them. I might do it with a few right now to check it. I'll let you know how it goes with using a larger amount of mash water, I'm not mucking around with the blender. I'm going to start it in a minute. Only using 600g again as I'm doing a 3 gallon batch but using real wheat malt, too. I'll start with the water unheated and get it up to mash temperature with the flour already in this time.

Toasting the flour would add a flavour change - it would be pretty hard to do, though as even 600g is a lot of flour. If you were to do it I think spreading it across baking trays and doing it in the oven would be easier. I've made toasted malt like that.

EDIT: Adding 600g of flour to cold water is absolutely fine - as I heated it I noticed the flour all fell out of suspension so I kept stirring it. As it hit 60c that's when it thickened and I essentially had a roux. I turned it down to minimum while I went off to get some bottles and stuff and when I got back it had caught a little on the bottom. I stirred and scraped the bottom and there were a few black bits - I don't really care, just know you've got to be careful if you're using direct heat. The wort was darker than before because of the burnt bits but I think it's going to be absolutely fine.

I doubled up the water to 6 litres and it was thin again and I added the wheat malt and got it to 65.5 and put it in the oven to maintain the mash temp. After 15 minutes it had maintained the temp beautifully. It's a gas oven and I have to safecracker the knob under the minimum latch so that the flame doesn't sputter. It kept the temperature spot on and I left it for another hour.

Sparging was a bit nasty. I had to do a pass through a sieve and colander to get rid of the grain, then do a pass through a BIAB bag which netted me this clumpy lump. As I said before unless you're after the specific flavour it really is a bit of a faff.

As I got loads of trub last time I wondered if it would bump up the hydrometer reading while in suspension so I took a reading before and after and it's almost exactly the same - 1052.

Before doing a dry hop the ingredients for this are costing me £2.11 for 3 gallons - that's less than 9p a pint. The flour saving over more wheat malt - 70p for the entire batch, not worth the aggro.

 

[Steelbacks]

I'd say it's probably worth investing in a couple of brewing books as most of your queries appear to be around the mechanics of the process and recipe-building.

Thoroughly recommended Greg Hughes' Home Brew Beer and Mastering Home Brew by Randy Mosher.

Greg Hughes' book arrived yesterday. Been too busy to look at it in detail, but it was a great recommendation. I'm planning to take it with me on holiday for 3 weeks, so I should have plenty of time to pick over the contents to better understand brewing. Many thanks!

 

[Brew_DD2]

There won't be many brewers out there that don't own that book. It's a good all-rounder book. Once you've chewed over that and fancy something a bit more geeky then the Randy Mosher book is also very good.

 

[Steelbacks]

Never used bread in a brew but I often used Bread Yeast in "no alcohol" Middle East countries where I worked.

It may have been psychosomatic but I swear I could taste "bread" in the beer I brewed.

PS
I'm pretty sure that many of the locals thought my mate and I survived on a diet that mainly consisted of Malt Loaf; as demonstrated by the amount of Bread Yeast and Malt Extract that we bought in our local supermarket! :laugh:

As I like malt loaf, and you mentioned it (sort of) in relation to brewing, and I've also been thinking about brewing a beer with flour and/or bread, I suddenly wondered this afternoon (while I toasted my malt loaf ready to enjoy with a little butter along with an afternoon cup of tea... well, one can't realistically drink beer ALL the time) I wondered whether one could brew a beer made from malt loaf... raisins 14%, Maise starch, partially inverted sugar, malted barley flour 5%, barley malt extract 4.4%.

So, I have 2 questions. Firstly, will the preservative (calcium propionate) kill off any yeast (I'm guessing not, or how would the malt loaf be 'proved' before baking. Secondly,many most importantly... does anyone have a recipe?

 

[Dutto]

............ I wondered whether one could brew a beer made from malt loaf... raisins 14%, Maise starch, partially inverted sugar, malted barley flour 5%, barley malt extract 4.4%.

So, I have 2 questions. Firstly, will the preservative (calcium propionate) kill off any yeast (I'm guessing not, or how would the malt loaf be 'proved' before baking. Secondly,many most importantly... does anyone have a recipe?

I'm not too sure that yeast is actually used as a raising agent in a modern supermarket Malt Loaf. There are a number of what the French call "levure chimuque" i.e. "chemical yeasts" such as Bicarbonate of Soda and Cream of Tartar (both of which are used in Soda Bread).

On the other hand, I once ran malted grain thorough my grain mill on three every decreasing settings to produce malted flour. The resulting loaf was a genuine "Malt Loaf" that tasted fantastic! I've never done it since because the mill takes forever to re-set to give me the right mill setting for mashing!

I don't have a Malt Loaf recipe but I do know that when using raising agents other than yeast it helps to activate them if the recipe contains something like lemon juice or vinegar.

Hope this helps.