Hello all, I am new to the forums, and have only been brewing for about 6 months or so. So far I have 4 successful brews under my belt, all of which were brewers best kits.
A friend of mine is wanting to get into brewing and asked me to give him a hand with his first brew, but he wanted to try more of an experiment, due to the lack of hops and the fact that neither of us has ever done a mash before, and do not yet have a mash tun. Here is where things get odd. He has read somewhere online, I'm not sure where, that he could use sweet feed to brew with. The recipe he was basing his on was actually one he found for making moonshine, and apparently the poster of that recipe indicated the brew was almost good enough to bottle instead of distilling. This recipe consisted of adding a sweet feed mixture consisting of oat, cracked corn and molasses to a fermenter with some warm water and sugar, then pitching your yeast. He then got the idea to attempt to use malted barley with the sweet feed mixture in an attempt to convert the starches in the corn to fermentable sugars. Since he has no mash tun we attempted this by first adding the sweet feed to the brew pot and bringing it to a boil, then lowering the temp to 150, adding the malted grain in a grain bag, and simmering for 90 minutes. Once this was done we cooled the wort and added it to the fermenter, then sparged the sweet feed and grains with warm water. At this point he was adamant that we add some of the cooked sweet feed to the fermenter as well, since the original poster advised to ferment on the grain, which I advised against, to no avail. we pitched the yeast a little warmer than I normally do, at around 79 degrees F, put on the lid and airlock and set in in our spare room where all my other brews have gone. It should also be noted we only made a half batch, but we used a 6.5 gal bucket, so there was more headroom than I would have liked as well. As a side experiment, I had some yeast in the fridge from an old batch, so just for fun I used the portion set aside for the S.G reading, placed it in a small jar, added some of the yeast cake that has been in the fridge and popped an airlock on it. 24 hours later the bucket doesn't appear to have any airlock activity at all, but the small jar is bubbling away like normal. Now, I was skeptical as to whether his chosen method would even work or not, but what I am looking for here is feedback on the methods incorporated in this brew. The recipe and other specifics were as follows:
2 lbs sweet feed mixture (oats, cracked corn and molasses)
3 lbs 2-row crushed malted barley
20 oz. malted corn (which he had malted himself, so I'm not sure if it was done correctly as I have never malted anything myself)
Munton's ale yeast
2.5 Gallons of water
S.G. was 1.021
My main concerns were the use of sweet feed at all, the choice to ferment on the grains, and whether or not we even achieved any starch to sugar conversion.
A friend of mine is wanting to get into brewing and asked me to give him a hand with his first brew, but he wanted to try more of an experiment, due to the lack of hops and the fact that neither of us has ever done a mash before, and do not yet have a mash tun. Here is where things get odd. He has read somewhere online, I'm not sure where, that he could use sweet feed to brew with. The recipe he was basing his on was actually one he found for making moonshine, and apparently the poster of that recipe indicated the brew was almost good enough to bottle instead of distilling. This recipe consisted of adding a sweet feed mixture consisting of oat, cracked corn and molasses to a fermenter with some warm water and sugar, then pitching your yeast. He then got the idea to attempt to use malted barley with the sweet feed mixture in an attempt to convert the starches in the corn to fermentable sugars. Since he has no mash tun we attempted this by first adding the sweet feed to the brew pot and bringing it to a boil, then lowering the temp to 150, adding the malted grain in a grain bag, and simmering for 90 minutes. Once this was done we cooled the wort and added it to the fermenter, then sparged the sweet feed and grains with warm water. At this point he was adamant that we add some of the cooked sweet feed to the fermenter as well, since the original poster advised to ferment on the grain, which I advised against, to no avail. we pitched the yeast a little warmer than I normally do, at around 79 degrees F, put on the lid and airlock and set in in our spare room where all my other brews have gone. It should also be noted we only made a half batch, but we used a 6.5 gal bucket, so there was more headroom than I would have liked as well. As a side experiment, I had some yeast in the fridge from an old batch, so just for fun I used the portion set aside for the S.G reading, placed it in a small jar, added some of the yeast cake that has been in the fridge and popped an airlock on it. 24 hours later the bucket doesn't appear to have any airlock activity at all, but the small jar is bubbling away like normal. Now, I was skeptical as to whether his chosen method would even work or not, but what I am looking for here is feedback on the methods incorporated in this brew. The recipe and other specifics were as follows:
2 lbs sweet feed mixture (oats, cracked corn and molasses)
3 lbs 2-row crushed malted barley
20 oz. malted corn (which he had malted himself, so I'm not sure if it was done correctly as I have never malted anything myself)
Munton's ale yeast
2.5 Gallons of water
S.G. was 1.021
My main concerns were the use of sweet feed at all, the choice to ferment on the grains, and whether or not we even achieved any starch to sugar conversion.
