What the heck is Fwigg? I'm glad I imagined you asking dear. Fwigg is the brand new community garden plot next to Fwigf. It stands for Field Where I Grow Grains and it does what it says on the tin. This year Husband and I are attempting to grow barley for his brewing efforts. We are attempting to make our hobbies intersect so we can both get more excited about what the other does, and reduce both our costs of doing business. Clever, no?
Posts marked with Fwigg will be things having to do with grain production, malting, brewing, or uses for spent grain. If you have no interest in brewing, or don't know a brewer that you can get spent grain from, feel free to skip these posts. Nothing about regular Fwigf will appear here, and I will try to keep Fwigg business out of Fwigf posts. Ok? Ok.
Today we're going to skip to the end of the brewing process (no, not drinking loves.) What the heck to do with spent grain?
Spent grain are the left overs from brewing. Unless the home brewer has a garden, or turns them into flour like I'm about to discuss, they generally get tossed. Pounds of useful grain just discarded. I don't have enough money to let that keep happening in my house. There are really three ways to deal with spent grain.
1. Compost it. Seriously, just toss the whole wet mass onto your compost pile and let it go. Use it as fertilizer later. Your garden will thank you.
2. Feed it to livestock. Chickens, goats, sheep, cows, ect. Spent grain is a tasty treat.
3. Turn it into flour and use it for baking.
Lacking both a compost pile (thanks dogs) and livestock I'm going with method 3.
First thing that needs to happen is you need to dry your grain. When your beloved brewer (this may also be yourself. You should be beloved to yourself, darlings) has finished with the grain it will be a heavy, dense, sopping, mass. Not very useful or appetizing. Unless you have an industrial dryer you're going to need to use your oven. Do NOT put wet grain in pillow cases and put it through your dryer, I don't care how many websites say this is a good idea. That knot WILL come undone and your dryer, lint trap, and vent will be clogged with grain. That will proceed to be impossible to get out an rot. No I didn't need to do this for myself to know this is poor decision theater, don't make me disappointed in you darlings. I know you're smarter than that.
So, set your oven to 350 F. Spread our your grain in an even layer (no more than 1/4 inch thick) on as many baking sheets as you've got. I used two. You will have to do this in batches. This is an all day affair to process 12 pounds (what I'm working with). Roast your grain, stirring it at 15 minute intervals until it's dry and brittle. Mine took about 45 minutes a batch. Make sure your grain is very dry. Do not cut corners, a little damp is not acceptable here. It'll just clump in your grinder. Transfer dry grain into a mixing bowl, spread out more grain and get those trays back into the oven.
Next you need to grind the dried grain into an powder-like consistency. If you're lucky you have a stand mixer with a four mill attachment. If you're like me and you are not so blessed, use a very clean spice grinder. A food processor will work in a pinch but it really won't get the really fine flour we're looking for. You'll end up with a courser flour and that's ok. If you're using a spice grinder or food processor, pour in as much dried grain as it can safely handle, pulse until it's the right texture, then pour your flour into a container that seals.
Repeat until your grain is gone, your container is full, or you can't take this anymore.
Baking with Spent Grain
Your flour is going to be a little more course than commercial flour. That's really not avoidable. This means don't use it for things were fine flour is a must. IE no malted pastry baking. Really this can replace commercial bread flour, not all purpose.
Because beer is made with malted grains your flour is malt flour. In general it'll be sweeter and hardier than standard flour. Beyond that the flavor profile depends on what the grain bill for the beer itself was. Stout flour will be darker and richer than IPA flour for example. I have scotch ale flour. This is light brown, mildly honey flavored, flour. I like it. For the sake of comparison I've made two loaves of bread, exactly the same, except for which flour I used. The commercial flour was King Arthur Bread flour. Below the recipe are mine and Husband's different impressions of the bread.
Basic Bread Dough:
(single small loaf)
1/4 cup warm water
1.5 teaspoons yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 cups flour
1 table spoon olive oil
Proof the yeast in the warm water, add the sugar, it'll make the yeast proof faster. Put everything into a mixing bowl and mix until the dough is a non-sticky lump. You may need more water. Set it in a warm place to rise. Punch down when it's doubled. Form it into a loaf (I like round loaves on the baking sheet) and let rise again. Bake at 375 F until it the loaf sounds hollow when you knock on the bottom.
I know, I know, I don't normally measure anything. But to make sure the loaves were the same (except for flour type) I needed to. I did end up having to go about 2/3 spent grain to 1/3 commercial flour in order to get it to form anything resembling dough. I either got a mudpie or a crumbly mass. It didn't rise either, but stayed a small, dark, loaf.
My flavor reaction:
This is a very hearty and coarse bread. Not really good for sandwiches but would be awesome dinner rolls. It's got a bitter molasses/caramelized sugar flavor, but isn't sweet.
Husband's flavor reaction:
Needs soup or honey. I'd want it sweeter and it's too dense to eat by itself.
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