Dog Biscuits from spent grains..

I was chatting with the owner of BFD  yesterday and he told me that he will sometimes hang onto his spent grains to either make bread or make dog biscuits..

Huh.. dog biscuits? Sounds simple enough.. and happily, the internet provides (see, there are things other than porn on the interwebs)...

First ..a video of the process.. (not sure I'd do that egg shell thing)

....and from elsewhere:

Original recipe:
4 cups spent grain
2 cups flour
1 cup peanut butter (all natural)
2 eggs

Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Press down into a dense layer on a large cookie sheet. Score almost all the way through into the shapes you want. Bake for about half an hour at 350 F to solidify them. Loosen them from the sheet, break the biscuits apart and return them, loosely spread out on the cookie sheet, to the oven at 225 F for 3 to 4 hours (or until they are really dry) to prevent mold growth. Store in an airtight container to keep them dry and mold-free.

...So I guess I'll go get some PB later and try this out.




And... so I can enjoy as well, maybe I'll make some bread as well..
http://www.beeratjoes.com/index.php/beer-dinners/spent-grain-beer-bread/

k.i.s.s. .....

Ferb, I know what we're gonna to today...



Well... tomorrow.. This one is simple and cheap, I'll have to go get the parts in the morning.

Mashing....

I have been contemplating changing things around a bit. I've been mashing my grains via the brew in a bag method.

It works ok and it is pretty simple. The materials are cheap... I use paint strainer bags that barely stretch over the lip of my boiler.

The stretching and the lifting of the bag out of the boiler are the pain in the ass parts of the process.

So.. I've been contemplating the manufacture of a false bottom for my boiler. Then.. I can just set my grains directly in the thing, drain out the wort and then I can dump out the grains, rinse the boiler out and use it again.. to boil. :)

Now I shall cruise the internet for ideas. Hopefully I can find some existing materials around the house. The cheapest store-bought ones are in the $30 range and there's no guarantee they'll work in my boiler...

Some ideas from google images...

Just bottled some...

I just finished bottling up my experimental brew from 10/26.. I'm happy to say that I came away with 4.5% ABV going into the bottle. That should taste alright after a week to condition in the bottle. I'm looking forward to tasting how the licorice root changes the flavor.

Experimenting.. a bit

I Last Thursday, I started another baby brew.. I thought I'd experiment with the ingredients a little and ad an adjunct to the wort.. in this case, Dried licorice root.

The recipe as follows....

Mash for 1 hour @ 152 degrees....
5 pounds Maris (UK... was gonna just use 2-row but my supplier/pusher was out)
1 pound Cara Pils
.5 pound Chocolate malt
.5 pound CaraAroma (German.. crystal malt)

Start the boil for 1 hours and...
@60 min. 1 oz Fuggle hops
@30 min. half oz Cascade hops
@15 min. .5 oz Dried licorice root
@5 min. .5 oz Cascade hops and .5 oz Dried licorice root

After chilling and sticking it into the fermenter, I put it to bed with dry ale yeast.

My OG was 1.041 (about 6% sugar)  ....I gotta improve on the efficiency in my system, I need to hit at least 1.050..

It bubbled away happily for a few days and then stopped. I added wheat beer yeast to kick it in again and that got it going for another day or so.

This evening, I moved it to the secondary fermenter.. The gravity now sits at 1.014. So.. I am now sitting at 4% alcohol. ..could be better, will be after a couple weeks in the secondary.

This batch, after bottle conditioning, will prolly be ready to go by Turkey day..

So I was reading a magazine

I was reading BYO and the latest issue has an article that talks about several old school beers from days gone by and recipes to brew clones of those beers. For the most part, those companies do not exist. Their brands are owned by the big brewers.

Their names live on but they are no longer brewed by the same companies or where they originated. The entire thing is really kind of sad. Take this Wikipedia entry for Hamm's Brewery, for instance. Now they're just a fleeting memory, owned by foreign interests. All that history is ..for lack of a better word, History. If you see a can of Hamms now, it has little connection to the original.. aside from perhaps a warm memory and just maybe they got the recipe right.

At my age, I never had a can of any of the original brew, They were long gone by the time I reached 21 but I do remember the commercials.  They were pretty memorable, with the cartoon bear. If I recall correctly, they used to run the commercials pretty heavily towards the end of Summer/Fall... Ahhh...nostalgia. I may try the clone brew recipe BYO published..

The following one requires you to turn up your volume:

...And one featuring a live bear..

The corn...

The corn, for all its weirdness, tasted really good. As I mentioned before, it was not full of completely red kernels, just kernels with red spots on them.

I steamed them over rice and the red pigment dripped onto the rice and made the rice red. This did not affect the taste a bit.

I think I will grow some more.