Unhulled millet

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CartoonCod
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Unhulled millet

Post by CartoonCod » Sun Oct 28, 2012 8:34 pm

I've been researching gluten free beers, and it seems like using millet is the way to go. The problem is that you have to malt your own grains. I've found a few articles that describe malting millet at the homebrew level, but now I just need to find some millet. I've found lots of hulled millet, but if you want to malt it, you need the unhulled version. Does anybody know where I could find some food grade unhulled millet? I read somewhere that bird seed contains lots of unhulled millet, but then I read somewhere else that the bird food millet might have lots of pesticides and other chemicals added to it. Any thoughts?

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Re: Unhulled millet

Post by mr x » Sun Oct 28, 2012 8:42 pm

I'm assuming you tried the organic food store.
At Alexander Keith's we follow the recipes first developed by the great brewmaster to the absolute letter. :wtf:

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Re: Unhulled millet

Post by CartoonCod » Mon Oct 29, 2012 9:47 pm

So far I've just been searching the online world, but I plan to make my way around the organic food stores this weekend. Tonight I found some online, I realized that you have to search for whole millet. I was searching for unhulled millet, which didn't provide a good yield.

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Re: Unhulled millet

Post by Graham.C » Mon Oct 29, 2012 11:01 pm

CartoonCod wrote:So far I've just been searching the online world, but I plan to make my way around the organic food stores this weekend. Tonight I found some online, I realized that you have to search for whole millet. I was searching for unhulled millet, which didn't provide a good yield.
I know the local owners of our little gluten free shop in Sackville. I could ask them if you haven't found anything yet. If its only in huge quantities I'll split it with you. I want to make a Gf beer for some folks around here.
-Graham

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Re: Unhulled millet

Post by CartoonCod » Tue Oct 30, 2012 6:42 am

Great!

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Re: Unhulled millet

Post by Dirt Chicken » Tue Oct 30, 2012 3:54 pm

woh, thought for a second that this was a post regarding Unhulled-mullets... what a let-down

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Re: Unhulled millet

Post by CartoonCod » Wed Nov 21, 2012 9:42 pm

I finally got my hands on some millet seeds! I had to order them from the US, and they said they would only send 5 lbs at a time because of issues with customs. This is not an ideal solution, but at least I can make 1 small batch. In total it cost me about 50$ for 5 lbs with shipping. I'm sure it would be much cheaper if I found Canadian retailer and ordered it in larger quantities
Graham.C wrote:I know the local owners of our little gluten free shop in Sackville. I could ask them if you haven't found anything yet. If its only in huge quantities I'll split it with you. I want to make a Gf beer for some folks around here.
Graham, if you could find some larger quantities of millet seeds I would be in your dept. I was also thinking of giving the "Brasseurs sans gluten" guys a call to find out where they get there grain from. If I find out anything I'll post it here.
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Re: Unhulled millet

Post by CartoonCod » Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:54 pm

I just figured I'd post an update to this thread. I just started sprouting the millet, and it seems to be working nicely, thanks to a handy temperature controller. I plan on making about 50 % of this malt into a light pilsner type malt, 40% of it into a munich type malt, and for the last 10%, I'm going to roast until I can't roast anymore (I hear it makes quite a stink in the kitchen). Once I've kilned my millet malts, I plan on mixing them 50/50 with sorghum extract to make a few GF beers.

Graham did you ever find out if you can get unhulled millet for that organic food store? I've checked many stores in Halifax, and it seems you can only get in very small quantities at high cost at best. I found out that they grow lots of it in Manitoba, but I haven't got much response from the farmers out there...
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