Craig,
I hear ya man, I loved me some Canadian beer. But those days are long gone but not forgotten.
As for short boils, they can be had as long as you achieve hot break. My only concern is that won't be enough time for bittering hops. Who knows you might be onto something.
Here's a tip I was going to save for a complete batch write up but I'll share now.
I'm not making gluten reduced beer but 100% gluten free beer from 100% gluten free ingredients. I don't want any confusion here. I started using Clarity Ferm at first to help prevent any chill haze and to make the clearest quality beer I could with the equipment I have. Gluten free beer in my experience tents to hold onto its cloudiness longer than non-gluten free beer. So after doing a lot if reading on white labs enzyme I thought I'd give it a try in my go to sorghum based brew.
Here's what I found and what I believe is going on. I'm not a scientist only what I've found by experience. I believe that sorghum twang is relative to certain proteins found in the sorghum, possibly after or during hot break. By adding 10ml of Clarity Ferm to a 5 gallon batch theses "twang proteins" will tend to mostly drop out during fermentation. Now I use. FastFermemt 7.9 gallon conical for all my brews. I believe in letting nature take its course so I do as little as possible to disturb the process other than dumping the collection ball once and adding hops for dry hopping. Once I feel the beer has cleared and all unnecessary proteins have dropped out of suspension do I even consider bottling.
As for bottling I mix my priming sugar solution right in the FastFermemt conical, let it sit for 30 mins then I begging bottling. Once bottled I simply place a sterilized cap on each bottle and let the bottles sit another 30 mins before capping. I know a minimum amount of fermentation has restarted, which will help push any oxygen out of the bottle. I believe this is also important to reducing any residual "sorghum twang". Can't hurt any ways because we all know the effects that oxygen can gave on our brew.
I have read so much about this dreaded twang and have drank commercial beers that have the twang, my homebrews do not.
Many of my friends have tried my beer, most think they are drinking something Canadian which was my goal. All have said they would buy this in a bar without hesitation.
Once I obtain some soda kegs I will convert my Danby 4.4 cu ft mini fridge into a kegerator and the learning process will begin again for kegging. But I'm just not there yet. Same goes for all grain brewing, eventually but just not there yet. I wanted to perfect my processes for extract brewing before jumping into the next venture. Ya know horse before the cart syndrome.
I believe that I've perfected the sorghum based beers and this is why I'm looking to move on to rice. Currently it costs me about $25 per case I brew, not bad considering the cost of a 6 pack of crappy commercial gluten free beer. But I know I can and will do better with rice or other ingredients if I can source them at a reasonable cost.
Hope the info on Clarity Ferm helps, I have read some reviews on this enzyme here in the forums but nothing regarding a reduced twang when using it. As I find more and more out with experience I will be posting it here for others to try it out, comment or simply post replies.
If someone has posted some of this info already kudos to them as I'm not here for recognition. I'm only going to post my experiences for others who struggle with gluten intolerances or like myself celiacs. This is an awful disease that not only makes you suffer physically but socially as well.
More to come,
Labatts
