Greetings!
Several years ago I read a post on the old Tech Talk about a homebrew club making a “Walmart Beer”. They made a beer with 100% of the ingredients coming from your local Walmart. No commercial malted barley; malt extracts hops or yeast.
I wanted our local homebrew club to try this just for fun. The use of all non traditional items will be a challenge.
Does anyone know how to access the old forum posts? Or has anyone else done this and do you have any suggestions?
Any help will be appreciated.
CHEERS!
hubrew
You’re definitely going to need BIAB
Do you have to mash? The biggest hurdle would be finding something with any appreciable diastatic power. If you can find a malted product, then you can use:
Quaker oats, polenta or corn grits, maybe some kind of un-preserved granola? Check the baking isle - maybe you could pick up some coarse-ground wheat/rye flour. Also look at cereal: you might find one that is made of puffed wheat (maybe even barley?). In the dry goods isle (rice, beans, etc.), you can use rice, but you’ll be looking to add to malt/grain flavor.
To add sugars in the kettle, you can use honey, molasses, maple syrup, or any unrefined sugars from the baking isle.
Fruit will be a good source of sugar content. If you’re feeling lucky, you can pick some over-ripe organic fruit for their wild yeast. I would stick with peaches, grapes, berries. And make sure you give it a good wash. Use lemon juice (or another organic, unpreserved fruit juice) to drop the pH of the “wort”/“must” below 4.5 before adding the over ripe fruit. This will keep out the enteric bacteria from unclean worker/shopper hands.
This actually sounds like a lot of fun… I’m really interested to see if you could find something to provide enzymes for a mash!
Unless you kept your own archive of TT, you might be out of luck.
I don’t believe they were archived to the net anywhere, but I suppose it is possible.
EDIT: FWIW, I searched my old TT archives for “walmart” and did not turn up the thread you mentioned in a search going back to 2006. Perhaps a different key word would work.
Not exactly the Walmart Challenge, but this GAP (Grocery and Produce) Challenge thread from Homebrewtalk is very similar:
I also searched my gmail archive and found nothing. I tried Ovaltine too, since that’s something I’ve seen suggested - regular Ovaltine was dry malt extract. I think the modern version has some other ingredients added.
Bread flour (King Arthur at least) contains some malted barley flour in it to convert some starches into sugars during the rise. I don’t know if there are enough enzymes to do significant conversion, but maybe.
I thought it was only for flavor.
Maybe you could use beano as an enzyme to break down the starches. I’m not sure how effective it would be or how much it would take.
I guess you could make it an “extract” beer with steeping grains by using malta goya as “extract”. If you can include Asian supermarkets, they often carry some form of LME designed to be used as a sweetener and thickener in Asian food. Up to you whether that counts.
Probably for most, but if you do long rises or use pre-ferments, enzymes play a big role in flavor. It basically a slow motion mash.
BOOM
some health food stores (admittedly not walmart) carry diastatic malt products as well but beano is a sure fire, just do it before the boil as the boil will denature the beano and you won’t get continued conversion that way.
But is the flour diastatic? Does it actually have enzymes?
Yes, according to the The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, although I doubt it has a lot of diastatic power.
Thanks for the info! I’ve got the book so I’ll check it out.
I find this quote disturbing.
[quote]ingredients coming from your local Walmart.
[/quote]
There is not even in tiny bit of local in the word WalMart.
I opened by buddy’s brewing supply fridge the other day and the door shelves were full of Malta Goya. I pulled out a bottle and gave him a funny look - he said he uses it for starters. Not sure if he uses it full strength or dilutes it.
IIRC, you need to dilute it a bit.
The label shows 32g of carbs and 24g of sugars in a 7 oz bottle.
If that’s accurate, expect 75% attenuation at best. 32g in 207 ml is too strong. I would simply dilute it to 50% strength with water. You can do other dilutions, but that’s in the right range and is easy.
It’s an interesting idea. How much does that stuff cost? I can’t argue with the ease of use, just wondering how it costs out compared to making your own because that’s about $0.25 worth of DME.
I believe it has hops in it too
“Friends don’t let friends drink bad beer”
[quote]Ingredients
Water, Pale Malt, Caramel Malt, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Caramel Color, Phosphoric Acid, Salt and Hops.
[/quote]
Depending on the amount of HFCS and Corn Syrup, you might be better off with DME for starters. I wonder if the pH is low enough to have an effect on fermentation as well. Still, it’s a nice option in a pinch.
i have some pancake/waffle mix that is made from malted barley. (i have brewed once with it but it was just a little bit of a variety that had pumpkin flavor. i haven’t even gotten around to trying the beer. i don’t know if there is any conversion ability in it or not. for that matter how about malt for making vanilla malts etc.