I was on a home brewing hiatus and now that the weather has cooled off here in Michigan, I’ve gotten the itch again. I have a cream ale recipe mostly based on Jamil’s “Brewing Classic Styles” book. Basically 50/50 2row and Pils malts, 1lb flaked corn, American strain noble hops and clean American ale yeast I’m using Hallertau and Saaz for bittering and late flavor and aroma respectively.
Had to pickup a new carboy since my old 6.5 gal glass was full of PBW solution and froze solid two winters ago making a big mess for me. That started the hiatus.
In regards to the corn, I would like to try using some popped corn in the tun instead of just flaked. I have a hot air popper I bought awhile ago just for this purpose. Anybody tried this and can give me advice on the process and finished product? I’m planning on adding 1/2 lb popped corn and 3/4lb flaked. I think it will be fun.
Sun King Brewing in Indy makes a popcorn pilsner every year that is tasty. Sounds like fun. You’re on the right track with the air popper because it uses no oil (which would be a detriment to foam retention). IIRC the popped corn just goes in the mash. The amounts sound good to me. Be sure to post how it comes out!
EDIT - FWIW Sun King uses literally dozens of air poppers to get enough popcorn for their batch. I’ve been kicking around the idea for a while. I may just do it now!
Ah… yes that’s important because technically speaking I guess we want POPPED weight, not unpopped.
It might be interesting to see how much water weight is in a 1lb bag of popcorn by popping the whole thing and then weighing the bag.
I know the popper is actually pretty fast once you get her warmed up. The first batch takes the longest and you can only do about 1/4 cup at a time IIRC.
Here’s some guidelines for anybody interested in using popcorn in their mash. I have a 15lb capacity auto-ranging digital scale that displays in lbs and ounces for weighing. It’s a mail scale.
Hot air popper has a removable lid which you fill with kernels and then run in the machine. I’m pretty sure everyone is familiar here.
This volume measures about 1/2 cup.
Weight of this much unpopped corn was 4oz.
After popping it was 3.1 oz. YMMV because not everyone measures the starting volume the same and I didn’t level that little cup with a knife or go full scientist on it before popping each time.
Based on the above, I popped five batches for 15.5 ounces - close to 1lb. I didn’t weight subsequent batches to the first either.
I put this in a garbage bag and I’d say the volume was about that of a typical bed pillow, maybe a bit more.
Smells fantastic!
Note my popper wouldn’t run after 4th batch because it overheated and I had to wait 5 minutes for it to cool down before it would run again. It is FAST though.
Cool idea. I grew some popcorn last summer and still have a bunch in jars. Might have to give that a shot. Next summer I’m going to grow some popping sorghum. I bet that would be a good start to a gluten-free beer.
I grew it once too. It was fun to pop corn I grew myself. They didn’t puff as much as the store bought so the kernels were smaller but they had a lot of flavor. I had a small garden and it took up a tremendous amount of room for what we harvested so I never grew it again.
You might consider grinding the popcorn somehow to make it easier for the enzymes to get at it because even after 60 minutes mash, there were lots of nodules of the largest pieces of popcorn that never melted into the mash. Also I put all the popcorn in the mashtun first, then pumped my strike into the tun and started doughing in. 170 degree water melts popcorn pretty quick as you might imagine but some floats on top no matter how much you stir. A blender might allow you to buzz it up in batches but would be messy!