Gluten Free Home Brewing Blog

Close up examples of milled millet and buckwheat malt. A side by side comparison of six different examples of milled millet and buckwheat malt used for brewing gluten free beer.

In our last video we discussed and showed examples of milled hulled and dehulled or “naked” rice malt. Today we are going to discuss and show examples of milled millet and buckwheat malt. Malt is stored unmilled and is only milled prior to using it; milled malt that is not used can degrade quickly. While we make specific mill gap setting recommendations for each type of malt; we realize that different brewers may have their own preferences in how coarsely or finely they prefer to mill their own malt. We will discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of the different gap settings. A mill gap setting of 0.65 – 0.70 mm mm is recommended for millet and buckwheat malt (the second example in the video which is referred to in the video as the recommended mill gap setting; the other examples were used to visually compare a coarser and finer grind).

We will first show examples of millet and buckwheat malt with a course grind. This is a good example of separating the starch from the hull; you can see a very intact hull and starch that looks kind of like a little popcorn kernel. This next example is the recommended grind of millet and buckwheat malt. You can see that both the hull and starch are ground finer; the hull is still intact and the starch is more broken apart. This last example is a much finer grind of both the hull and starch; however, you can see how much the hulls have been degraded.

Next we will take a close up look at examples of the same beer brewed using the partial mash and partial grain brewing method.

Cheers!