buckwheat roasted groats

[Halyard]

Hi folks,

Anybody body ever use Buckwheat Roasted Groats as a speciality grain, maybe in an extract recipe?

Halyard

[zgoda]

Anybody body ever use Buckwheat Roasted Groats as a speciality grain, maybe in an extract recipe?

This is unmalted adjunct and has to be mashed with malt to get starch converted. It won't work in extract recipe unless you steep it with some malt of high diastatic activity eg. pilsner or 6-row, or add enzymes (distillers will know where to buy these).

Anyway, i used buckwheat few times, either flaked or groats. Flakes do not require gelatinization, but to get strong flavor you'll need much more, up to 1.5KG for 23 litres of beer, while up to 1KG groats will be sufficient for the same effect. And flakes pose problems with stuck sparges in such large amounts. So now back to groats. If the groats are whole, you'd better crush them with grain crusher, just finer than malt. Then you have to gelatinize starch - put it in hot (not boiling) water, 1KG in 6 litres, slowly rise temperature and boil for 20-30 minutes. Then return to mash tun and mash as normal. It's better to make iodine test if the amount of buckwheat exceeds 15%.

Here's my last beer brewed with buckwheat ("kasha" is groats) -> http://hopville.com/recipe/979163/speci ... yczane-v12 - it would be really better with another yeast (Nottingham, US-05 are fine). Pilsner malt in this recipe is purely for providing safe amount of enzymes.