Hi All:
I’m not sure if this is the right place for this question, so my apologies if not. But I’m ending up with a fair amount of spent grain after brewing 5 gallon batches of beer (approx 11 lb dry is a lot heavier when wet!) It seems like a waste to have the trash guys haul that away to a landfill. Do you compost your spent grain? Are there any other ways to dispose of it responsibly? If you compost, do you have any tips for someone with little experience? Thanks!
yeah go ahead and compost, mix in grass cuttings or hay to help eliminate the smell or if you have a dog make yourself some biscuts.
Its imperative that you avoid letting the mass of grain go septic (anaerobic). The smell is horrendous! Mixing the grain with other loose organic materials can help keep the pile open and breathing. Occasional fluffing and turning of the compost pile will also help keep the environment of the pile aerobic.
If you are starting out a new compost pile, mixing in a little bit of the local soil will help innoculate the pile with microbes needed to perform the composting. Place the compost pile in a shaded area to reduce the moisture loss or be ready to ocassionally wet the pile to keep it moist.
I have a large enough yard that I can simply spread the spent grain on the lawn. I basically put it in a homer bucket, use a large spoon and broadcast spread it as if I were planting wheat in the days before modern equipment. The squirrels love it and it decomposes without any issues.
The only time it has ever gotten a little ripe was a year or two ago in the spring. I had brewed quite a bit over the winter. When the snow melted I had a lot of grain on the ground and it was all wet. A little sun and a couple passes of the lawn mower got rid of it though.
Paul
The grains contain way too much nitrogen, which is why they smell, the breakdown can create ammonia and other smelly compounds. But that means they can be mixed with carbon-y materials like grass clippings, wood chips, leaves, etc which normally don’t compost well.
Absolutely. The best way of doing this is to add in a lot of carbon(brown material) like paper or wood and to make sure the pile is well mixed so there are no pockets of anaerobic activity. I use free woods chips from our county. Spent grain has a lot of moisture in it already so this is even more important to mix well and add carbon. Vegetables scraps, Coffee, Grass clippings, and green leaves/plant cuttings are green material. The more you have of them in the compost pile the more carbon you have to add to the spent grain. If you have a compost pile already, cover the grain with composted soil after mixing in the carbon. Covering the spent grain will help keep the smell down and unwanted pests like mice and rats away. I live in an urban area and our yard is small, so I have to pay attention to our compost pile or our neighbors will complain. I think the most I put in my compost bin in a week was 40 to 50 lbs without problems.
I like to make dog treats, and I have a friend who has a small farm, and she has several pigs who love to eat the left over grains!
Thanks for all the tips! I also live in an urban area, so it’s good to have these warnings going in.
I don’t have a dog, but my daughter (who lives nearby) does. How do you make dog biscuits? Squish together and bake?
+1 I do the same thing. The squirrels and birds go nuts for it, especially in the Winter, and it is usually gone within 24 hours. But when spring hit, and they actually had something else to eat…that’s when it started to get a little ripe.
I spread it way in the back, so I don’t ever actually smell it.
Just google it, and you’ll find many recipes. Most include some peanut butter. But be careful there are no hops in it.
I have a co-worker with small pig farm, and they love the spent grain. And now that I’m brew 40-50 gallons a month, it’s helpful to have a good way to get rid of this grain. And, the pork chops I get each fall are good too.
There are several types of problems you can get with spent grains and spent hops.
-You can get vinegary and fermentation smells in the beginning
-Ammonia smells from being too rich in nitrogen later
-Anaerobic smells from going septic later
The vinegary and fermentation smells come from too much sugar or beer in the grains, which then attract hornets. The best way to combat this is to have higher efficiency and then to continue sparging with water to extract out all the sugar and starch; I use that water for irrigation so the water doesn’t get wasted. Mixing in dry materials would probably help too.
To avoid ammonia smells, mix in browns (not grass clippings).
To avoid anaerobic, mix in enough dry materials so the pile isn’t water logged and air can get into the pile.
In addition, it is much easier to reduce or avoid smells in the winter if you live in a cold climate. In the Chicago winter, I make no special provisions in managing the compost pile; I dump and run to where it is warm.
The last two classes of smell are automatically avoided if you mulch the spent grains rather than compost. For mulching, do a high efficiency mash and sparge, dump the grains, and hit the grains with water from a hose to spread the grains out, wash out the sugar into the soil and irrigate at the same time.
I have accidentally developed a super-species of giant suburban rodent which subists on spent grains from the compost pile. Be careful out there. ;D
go online and order yourself some black soldier fly larvae. They will eat that grain up in no time. It’s fairly gross to watch as masses of half inch long black magots roll around in the spent grain but they don’t smell bad, eat alot quickly and then leave. the flies themselves don’t eat so they aren’t much of a nuisance once they metamorphose and can actually help reduce the populations of other flies through competition. If you ahve chickens they will eat most of the larvae anyway.
I learned that the hard way the first time I chucked a load of grain in the composter. Whoa! Made me wanna put my head in a dumpster for some fresh air :o
+1 That’s always a good way to get rid of shredder paper. I’ve got a bin composter. I’ll put a little paper in, then the grains, and cap it with some more paper. Keeps the stinkies down!
I thought about starting a earthworm colony for composting purposes. I wonder what spent grain would do to them?
avoid letting dogs get at things with hops. it can cause malignant hyperthermia and can be deadly, especially to large dogs. it was like crack to my beagle.
I give mine to my buddy, a local farmer to use in his compost pile. He in turn gives me some land to grow hops. Win, win.
Are these hard to get in your compost pile naturally? I must be pretty lucky because I get them every year. They definitely do their work on grain and are pretty gross. I will never forget the first time I turned the pile and saw all those big suckers wiggling around.
The worms love the grain in my compost bin, I would think they would in a worm colony. It may be hard to keep the colony from going anaerobic though.
I don’t really know. I also got them naturally last year, although I havn’t seen them yet this summer. perhaps in the winter. I know you can buy them on line. and you can also buy devices for keeping them in. It’s like a composter but with special adaptations so you can collect the larvae as they leave the pile for easy feeding to your birds or what have you. but if you get them naturaly good on ya.
That’s funny. I just saw them for the first time this summer this weekend. I added grain two fridays ago from that brewday and when I went to add our normal compost scraps this weekend, the pile was full of them. I usually have them earlier. It may be because it’s been such a strange weather year.