non boiled all grain

I would like to try and and brew a beer that isn’t boiled at all so all the vitamins, enzymes, and minerals are intact, I was thinking of  doing the mash then adding water with some hops that were boiled separately. I believe the beer would have to be drank early while still brewing in hope that it isn’t contaminated to bad This would also mean the beer is filled with nutritious live yeast so that is another plus.

Has anyone ever tried a brew like this? Is this even a due able proposition? Any tips on doing some brewing like this would be awesome.

Kregg

There are some good books out there about indigenous and ancient brewing traditions and in many there was no boiling of the ‘wort’ The one suggestion I would make right of the bat is to think about alternatives to hops for bittering. There are lots of other herbs that can be used and some of them I imagine would isomerize at a low enough temp that you could include them in the mash and not worry about having to boil hops. I would say that  you are likely right about having to drink it young. I make a heather ale on occasion that is not hopped and it goes sour even though it was boiled.

I did an old school (faux Sumerian) beer a few years back. No boil and yeah, it requires quick drinking! After 3 days the lactobacilus was becoming intense.

Gilgamash Sumerian Beer

Be aware that boiling hops in plain water doesn’t yield the same flavor/effect as boiling them in something with gravity (ie. wort).  I’d look at morticia’s suggestion of using something other than hops for bittering.

The no-boil method is one that some brewers have used to make Berliner Weisse.  In that case, the hops are traditionally added into the mash, and not boiled at all.  They probably only add less than 10 IBU, but the beer is so dry that higher IBUs aren’t really desired.

A no-boil beer is going to be sour, since much of the fermentation is going to be lactobacillus, but that’s the appropriate character for that style of beer.  It’s quite possible that you may need to throw a little unmashed grain into the fermenter to replace some of the bugs that are killed off by the heat of the mash.

The yeast in all beer is alive and nutritious if you don’t pasteurize.  You’ll get some protein and B vitamins from brewers yeast.  I’m not sure theres a whole lot of vitamins in the barley itself.  The minerals are going to mostly carry through regardless of boiling.  I don’t think enzymes are something that is nutritionally relevant, they are simply proteins and they mostly get denatured in the mouth, stomach and intestines.  You absorb amino acids.  I suppose you might get more protein from a non-boiled beer but then the yeast probably contributes as much or more protein and its got a good balance of amino acids.

You might consider making bread and then using it to make your beer.  Thats an old-world method of beermaking that bypasses the malting step and sterilizes the beermaking material in the process.

I do think you can make a no-boil beer that isn’t necessarily going to sour on you immediately.  I’d make a fairly low OG beer with a recipe that would finish fairly dry, and pitch a large amount of yeast to speed the consumption of the sugars and beat out the other organisms.  Then I’d keep it cool and drink it fast.

Will adding hops into the mash also have an anti bacterial effect? maybe hopping the mash with other bittering agents added would give a good modern flavor and kill some of the unwanted bugs at the same time.

Not sure what was meant by adding unmashed grain to the fermenter to replace the bugs that got killed. I think ideally I want no bugs in the beer except for the yeast added for fermentation, but I do understand there will be some souring to the beer no matter what I do with a non boiled beer.

Thanks all for the replies coming in. All good stuff,

Kregg

Consider pasteurizing your wort (161 F x 20 seconds or longer). 
Technically, it would still be a “no-boil” method.

http://www.micromatic.com/draft-keg-beer-edu/beer-pasteurization-cid-1753.html
http://blog.timesunion.com/beer/pasteurization-and-shameless-plug/295/

If you’re one who appreciates history, you’ll be happy to know the Pasteurization process came about when Louis Pasteur was trying to prevent BEER spoilage.

I thought you were trying to make a “living” beer, thus the no-boil method, so I assumed you didn’t want to kill off the native bacteria.

The added grain was there because I was giving an example of a specific beer that can be made by the no-boil method that takes advantage of the fact that the beer will tend to sour.  The hops are kept low to limit the anti-bacterial effect in this beer, but, yes, more hops will tend to suppress Lactobacillus.  A lot of bitterness and some hop flavors will clash with sourness, so in this case it would be desirable to keep the bitterness low.

If you want to make a more middle of the road style, you could try making something like a Stout or Porter.  In those beers you would need less hop flavor or bitterness thanks to the roast flavors.  Also, a little souring was common in these beers, traditionally, and wouldn’t necessarily ruin the flavor.

One thing I never understood about no-boil beer is why there isn’t a risk of botulism.  Is it because these beers would usually go sour and end up with a low pH?  In that case, would an un-soured, no-boil beer still be safe?

Low pH, plus the alcohol. So a non-soured beer should still be highly toxic to Clostridium.

Can one even make a non-soured beer without boiling, though? I guess technically you can pasteurize at sub-boiling temperatures. That’s splitting hairs though IMHO.

Yeah, if you are trying to maintain native proteins and not damage nutrients, pasteurizing isn’t boiling, but it is still essentially cooking.  I assume that the reason that pasteurization works in the first place is because it denatures (cooks) the proteins in the native organisms to the point where the organisms can’t survive.  You aren’t going to have many active enzymes left after pasteurization, if you are trying to make a “raw” beer.

One of the best Berliner Weisse I’ve ever had was a no-boil, though.  I also had another one from a different brewer recently, however, and the DMS was very high, approaching unpleasantly so, which I suppose is a logical risk.

You can definitely pasteurize without denaturing a lot of the proteins.  That said, when you add ethanol and drop the pH via fermentation, some enzymes will be denatured anyway.  But they might not coagulate and drop out the way they do in the break, so you’ll probably get more protein than if you boiled.  Any enzymes that aren’t denatured will be broken down by digestion anyway.  Or you could just drink a beer and have some peanuts, lots of protein there. :wink:

It seems to me that if you sparge at 165, then you’ve already heated the wort to pasteurization temp. Though I guess the entire wort has not been heated to that temp, but it is probably close depending a bit on the rest temp. You could also boil a small portion of the wort with hops to extract alpha acids, then add that back to the wort to raise it to a pasteurization temp while maintaining the bulk of the wort at a no boil temp.