Bread and Beer: Buckwheat

As I've mentioned before on this blog, one reason I like using unmalted grains in my beer is that I can find other uses for them around the kitchen, particularly when it comes to baking bread.  I've been using buckwheat a lot recently, both in baking and brewing, so I thought I'd follow up on my earlier post on spelt and combine some tasting notes for a couple of buckwheat saisons with pictures of how I use buckwheat groats in baking.

Buckwheat seems to have at least some history in brewing.  G. Lacambre mentions it in his 1851 book on brewing in Europe. (Yvan de Baets cites this book in his essay on the history of saison, but its contains very little about historical farmhouse beers, as Lacambre was more interested in the 'fancy' beers brewed by commercial brewers.  There are some interesting sections on Lambic though.)  Anyway Lacambre doesn't seem to think much of buckwheat as a source of fermentables.  He says its used rarely (occasionally in some parts of Germany, less commonly in Belgium), though it does contain a decent amount of starchy matter and is often fairly cheap.  He even describes his own experience with it: a small amount gave the beer a distinctive and disagreeable bitter flavour, prevented the beer from clarifying, converted poorly and caused problems because it became gummy in the mash.  Hardly a glowing recommendation!

Some contemporary brewers might be interested in using buckwheat because it doesn't contain gluten, but I was first drawn to it because I was curious about whether brettanomyces would convert its relatively high levels of caprylic acid into the ester ethyl caprylate.  Caprylic acid is not something you want much of in beer (it apparently tastes 'goaty'), but ethy caprylate is described in Wild Brews as "Waxy, Wine, Floral, Fruity, Pineapple, Apricot, Banana, Pear, Brandy".   Perhaps using larger amounts of buckwheat in a mixed fermentation might encourage the formation of these esters?

I've described how I use buckwheat in brewing in earlier posts: I crush the groats in my mill, boil them into a thick and goopy porridge, then add them into the main mash for the saccharification rest.  One thing I haven't stressed enough in earlier posts is that buckwheat is an absolute nightmare to lauter (as Lacambre warned us!).  I'm doing Brew in a Bag, which usually means I can get away with very gummy mashes using rye or wheat without too much difficulty, but buckwheat is a complete nuisance.  It forms a sort of gummy layer on the bottom of the bag, which means it just won't drain when you lift it out (or at any rate, drains very slowly).  This makes the bag difficult to maneuver (since it extra heavy with all the hot wort) and means it takes a long time to get enough wort from the grain.

In baking, buckwheat is much easier to use.  There are a number of ways you can incorporate unmalted grains into bread (including by making a porridge in a process that is basically identical to a cereal mash), but the method I use most frequently involves sprouting the grains and then folding them into the dough.  Buckwheat groats are particularly easy to use in this way: they only require a brief soak (about twenty minutes, where something like spelt needs four to six hours), after which I drain them, put them in a mason jar with a breathable seal (a coffee filter and a rubber band usually), give them a good shake so that there is plenty of oxygen in the mix, and then leave them till they start to sprout.  You can help them along by shaking once a day and maybe soaking and rinsing them again, but buckwheat groats sprout so quickly its usually not necessary.

Once they're just beginning to sprout, they're ready for use in bread.  I fold them into a wholewheat version of the Tartine loaf about an hour into the first rise (you need to do a few folds to develop the gluten first, as the sprouted groats will cut through it if added too early).  You can also grind up a small handful of the groats and use them to coat the top of the loaf.  They add a nice sweetness, along with a bit of texture, to the final bread.

Back to beer again, I've only ever used buckwheat in saisons.  I've brewed four versions of essentially the same beer now: a pale saison using up to 30% buckwheat.  In every case I've cut the fermented beer with some proportion of aged sour beer.  The very first version used a few litres from a lambic-style beer, but the three subsequent ones all used pulls from my Roeselare solera.   All of them have had flavours reminiscent of the description of ethyl caprylate above, though of course its difficult to say for certain whether this is because of the buckwheat and brettanomyces, or because of the saison yeasts and fruity hops (all versions have had late additions of Amarillo).  I've included tasting notes for two of these beers below.  I packaged the third version just before I left for England, and combined the fourth version (fermented with a different blend of yeasts) with the pale sour so that it can undergo a secondary fermentation while I'm away. The most recent batch was fermented with oak cubes in the primary, and I'm curious to see how these add to the overall flavour profile.

Buckwheat Saison I

This is the first version of the beer: I blended about 10 litres of saison with 2 litres of lambic-style sour, and added some Trimbach Pinot Gris as well.  Its about nine months old at this point, and has been in the bottle since the end of January.  You can read some earlier tasting notes here.

Appearance:  Pale and slightly hazy yellow colour.  Soft, foamy, meringue-like head with great retention.

Smell: Lemons and limes, followed by a hint of tropical fruit. Slightly floral edge as well, but more like dried flowers (almost reminds me of my Grandma's potpourri).

Taste:  Lemony acidity up front, but only moderate.  White wine comes across in the finish.  The strange waxy flavour is gone, or at least blended seamlessly with the rest so that its no longer offensive.

Mouthfeel: Crisp, with good carbonation, but the wine in the finish gives it a slight vinous character.  Nice balance of dryness with mouthfeel that I'm aiming for in using these unmalted adjuncts.

Drinkability & Notes: I'm very happy with how this one is tasting right now, and I'll probably start drinking the majority of the batch as soon as I get back from England, setting aside a few bottles to see how it continues developing.  This has all the elements I'm looking for in my saisons: its tart, fruity, refreshing, but with some complexity and structure as well.

Buckwheat Saison II

This is the second version of the beer, and the first that was blended with a pull from my Roeselare solera.  The idea with this and subsequent versions was to increase my overall yield by brewing four gallons of clean saison (about the most my system can handle) and then blending them with one gallon of aged sour.  This works well, and I plan to continue using this system as I keep brewing these beers.

Appearance:  Same as the first version.  Head retention on these beers is pretty solid.

Smell:  Lemons, yellow stone fruit, and hay.  Reminiscent of a younger version of the first version, but without the strange 'soapy' edge that I think came from the white wine.  Slight funk underneath it.

Taste:  Tart and lemony at the start, then again a more generic fruitiness with some floral honeyish elements.

Mouthfeel: Crisp and dry.

Drinkability & Notes: This one is still a bit sharp and angular, but hopefully with a bit more time in the bottle the edges will soften and become more rounded.  Still a very promising beer, and one of my favourite saisons.  Luckily I have more of this batch so I can check in on it more regularly.

Brew Day: Buckwheat Saison III

I've been brewing quite frequently over the past few weeks, but I don't have time to do write-ups for every beer.  Besides, since I'm back to brewing saisons again, most of the brew days were fairly similar.  For the record though, I started another six gallon pale solera with The Yeast Bay's Melange blend, adding to the other soleras already underway.  I'm hoping to make my first serious blends from these in the Autumn.  I also started another spontaneous fermentation project (post to follow),  rebrewed Table Beer III (adding some Motueka hops at flame out to accentuate the citrusy flavours from the rye), and also made a version of this 'classic saison' recipe, hopped with Sterling and Crystal, and fermented with The Yeast Bay's Saison Blend.  There's more to come in the next few weeks as well: my first attempt at using the Dupont yeast strain (in the form of Wyeast 3724), both as a sole fermenter and as an element in some homemade blends, some with brett and some with other saison strains.  More on that in another post.

The beer I brewed today was another version of the buckwheat saison I've been making lately, and will eventually be another biere de coupage.  The first version was blended with a small amount of 'lambic'-style beer and some white wine, and is currently conditioning in the bottle (tasting notes here).  It still has a slightly unpleasant 'soapy' flavour that I'm hoping will dissipate with time, but otherwise it's tasting quite promising: tart, fruity, and with a subtle but definite funk.  The second version was blended 4:1 with the first pull from my pale Roeselare solera, yielding  a total of five gallons that I packaged last week.  It was tasting lovely at bottling: tart and very fruit forward, with lots of pineapple and citrus notes.  I have no way of knowing if this is from the brettanomyces processing the caprylic acid in the buckwheat, or just a combination of the yeast strains in the various beers and the fruity amarillo hops.  Either way, I like where that batch is headed, so I decided to just go ahead and brew another along the same lines.

Today I produced four gallons of base saison, with a recipe of roughly 30% buckwheat to 70% base malt (pilsner and a little bit of six row).  I've written about my process in earlier posts: boiling the buckwheat in a separate pot to make a gloopy porridge, then adding this back to the main mash for conversion.  Today I did a protein rest around 130°F while the buckwheat boiled, then used the porridge to raise the temperature of the main mash up to around 145°F, later adding a final rest in the mid-150°Fs before mashout.  The hops were Amarillo and Sterling, with a fairly heavy late addition---I'm hoping to turn this one round relatively quickly, before these flavours fade.  (I'd like to dry-hop at least one of these blended saisons to really amp up the aroma.  Perhaps I'll do that with this one.)

The wort is currently fermenting with a pitch of Wyeast 3726 taken from the rebrew of Table Beer III.  Once it has fermented out most of the way, I'll combine the four gallons of saison with one gallon of the pale sour from the Roeselare solera, and give them about a month to reach an equilibrium before bottling (based on past experience, the saison is usually already very dry at this point---drier than the sour, in fact---so isn't much left for the bugs to ferment).  After a month or so in the bottle, this should be ready to drink at the start of summer, though I'll probably keep at least half the batch around to see how it ages.

As I've said before, I'm very happy with the beers I've produced using this method of coupage.  It produces tart, fruity, complex beers that I enjoy much more than most of the equivalent beers I can find/afford on the shelves around here.  I only have one gallon left from the first pull from the solera, and I don't know yet whether I'll use it to cut saisons, or keep it around as a possible element in the blends I'll be making this Autumn.  That means this might be the last coupage I make with properly aged sour beer for a while, although I do have three gallons of no-boil sour ready for blending with some more straight-forward summer saisons.  After that, I'll be waiting impatiently for my big blending project in the Autumn.

Tasting Notes: Buckwheat Saison

Here's some tasting notes for the buckwheat saison I brewed a few months ago.  I transferred the fermented beer onto a small amount of year old lambic-style beer for a month or so, and also added about a cup of Trimbach Pinot Blanc.  As I mentioned before, this one was inspired by a beer I've never actually tried, the Hill Farmstead/Blaugies collaboration Le Sarrasin.  I was also curious to see if the brettanomcyes would produce any interesting flavours or aromas from the caprylic acid in the buckwheat. Its probably been in bottles for about a month now, but I'm hoping it will continue to develop, so consider these preliminary tasting notes with more to come later in the year.

Appearance: Hazy straw-yellow.  Head dissipates down to around a quarter inch that lingers for a while.

Smell: Intriguing mix of tropical fruits like mango and pineapple, but also sweet grass and flowers.  Very subtle musty funk beneath it, and maybe a slight whiff of plastic or soap  as well.

Taste: Lightly tart, honeyish, floral.  Yellow stone fruits, another fruity flavour I can't quite put my finger on (J said maybe strawberry or even rhubarb!), and an aftertaste that I can imagine calling 'waxy' or maybe `soapy'; not exactly unpleasant, but a little strange.  It becomes more pronounced as the beer warms---hopefully this is something that will fade with time rather than increase.

Mouthfeel: Medium carbonation.  I was aiming slightly higher but I actually like it where it is.  The beer is dry but not at all thin.  There's a slight lingering bitterness, even astringency, that will probably fade as it ages, but which I rather enjoy (I know people say it clashes, but coming up at the end like this I think it just prolongs the shifting flavours from the beer).

Drinkability & Notes:  I'm quite happy with how this one is developing, though I'm hoping it will continue to evolve over the next few months and I'm planning to hold off drinking the rest for a while yet.  Its already got a nice complexity, and while its certainly a little different from other beers I've brewed with 3726, its hard to tell if that's the wine, the hops, the lambic, the buckwheat, or a combination of all of these. I brewed another four gallons of a similar recipe, which is sitting in a carboy with one gallon from my Roeselare solera.  I'll probably give that a light dry-hop before bottling in the next month or so, then get another batch going.  As I said at the start of the year, I'd like to make a buckwheat saison part of my regular line up here.

Brew Day: Buckwheat Saison

Like spelt, I usually have some buckwheat groats on hand for baking and other purposes, and I've been meaning to use some in a beer for quite some time.  I finally got round to using some in the grist for a saison I brewed this weekend.  The immediate cause of this brew day was reading about a beer I'll probably never get to try, the Blaugies/Hill Farmstead collaboration Le Sarrasin.  It sounded pretty delicious, and since I'm using the Blaugies strain anyway at the moment, now seemed a good time to try to brew something along the same lines.

The grist was very straight-forward.  The Hill Farmstead page mentioned using 30% spelt, so I followed suit, making up the rest with pilsner and a small amount of 6-row to help with conversion.  I crushed and boiled the groats into a thick and goopy porridge, then added this back to the main mash as I took it through the steps described in Farmhouse Ales: 113°F, 131°F, 144°F, 154°F.  The final wort was hazy and had a slightly silky mouthfeel---perhaps a sign that there were unconverted starches, though I was actually a little over my predicted O.G.  I'm not particularly worried if there is some starch in the wort, as it will provide food for the LAB during secondary fermentation.

I'd originally planned to use a blend of Sterling and Crystal for the hopping, but at the last moment I decided to use up some 2012 Amarillo pellets in place of the Crystal.  They gave the wort a really nice floral character that I hope carries over into the final beer.  Since I'm going to sour this beer I kept the bitterness fairly low, and added the final hops as the wort was cooling.

Primary fermentation will be done by Wyeast 3726.  I have a year old lambic brewed with ECY20 that I'm hoping to transfer onto some fresh fruit in the next few weeks.  I'm a little concerned about how its going to taste, since it has more headspace than many of my aging beers and I've had to move the carboy around a few times, all of which might have increased the oxygen in the beer and encouraged acetobacter.  Assuming the beer is fine, I'll use whatever doesn't get transferred onto the fruit to inoculate this saison in secondary---it probably won't be more than a 500ml or so.  If the beer tastes vinegary, I'll inoculate with dregs.  I may also add some white wine and oak, depending on how it tastes after primary.

It will be interesting to see how this beer ages.  Apparently buckwheat has a significant amount of caprylic acid in it.  Since this fatty acid is associated with various off-flavours in beer (goaty ones presumably), it would generally be undesirable.  But brettanomyces should be able to convert the acid into the ester ethyl caprylate, which is described in Wild Brews as "Waxy, Wine, Floral, Fruity, Pineapple, Apricot, Banana, Pear, Brandy".  That would blend pretty well with the flavours I am hoping for in this beer, though when Michael Tonsemeire tried something along the same lines he didn't get much of this character.  I'm planning to age this one for a few months before bottling, so time will tell.

Recipe:

Measured O.G: 1.044
Measured F.G:

Mash: Farmhouse Ales step-mash.

Malt:

74.5% Pilsner
29.0% Buckwheat Groats
6.5% 6-Row

Hops:

Hallertau (US)        60              9.4  IBUs     (10g@4.7%)
Sterling                    20              6.6  IBUs     (15g@6.6%)
Amarillo                  20              5.0  IBUs     (10g@7.5%)

Sterling                     0               0.6  IBUs     (15g@6.6%)
Amarillo                   0               0.0  IBUs     (15g@7.5%)

Yeast:

Wyeast  3726