BernardSmith
Senior Member
I have been doing some reading on a home brew made in Ethiopia called t'alla (spelling?). This beer is made using malting and mashing techniques that I imagine were used for thousands of years - basically, germinating grains, baking the grains into loaves, crumbling the loaves and boiling the pieces in water then adding the leaves (kitel) of the gesho plant as a kind of hop (the same leaves and stems (inchet) used in the making of t'ej an Ethiopian honey wine.
So last night I cooked 1 lb of teff (an Ethiopian grain that I have never cooked with before) in water and then added the cooked teff to 2 lbs of Maris Otter (2 row) barley. The idea here is that the enzymes from the malted barley will be sufficient to break down the starches in the teff (now "gelatized" after their cooking) and so provide me with fermentable sugars from both the barley and the teff. That is what happens in the mashing process.
Mashed the grains for an hour at about 158 F and sparged at 170 F. I collected about 2 gallons of wort at a gravity of about 1.040 and then boiled for 60 minutes (after the hot break). After the hot break I added about 6 oz of crushed kitel. I poured the wort (now about 5 qts - the rest lost to evaporation) into a plastic fermenter and cooled this in an ice bath. When the temperature had dropped to about 60 F I measured the SG and it was 1.060. In wine that suggests an ABV of about 8% but not all sugars in grain are fermentable and I don't know what the final ABV will be.
Pitched SO-5 yeast (I am pretty sure that the home brewers use wild yeasts to ferment their t'alle but from the photos I have seen and the videos it looks like many folk brew this beer together and the rooms and areas in which they brew this beer may be awash with appropriate yeasts).
The wort is very dark and cloudy with the kitel. The smell of the mash and then the wort with the kitel was mouth watering (so said my wife who does not like beer). My plan is to allow the beer to ferment about 1 week in the primary and then transfer to a glass carboy for the second week, then bottle and allow to condition for two weeks. I think t'alle is usually drunk within a week or so after the grains have been baked into loaves but also think that the process and yeast I am using (and the increased potential ABV) suggest a longer fermentation. I will provide an update on the progress (good or bad).
So last night I cooked 1 lb of teff (an Ethiopian grain that I have never cooked with before) in water and then added the cooked teff to 2 lbs of Maris Otter (2 row) barley. The idea here is that the enzymes from the malted barley will be sufficient to break down the starches in the teff (now "gelatized" after their cooking) and so provide me with fermentable sugars from both the barley and the teff. That is what happens in the mashing process.
Mashed the grains for an hour at about 158 F and sparged at 170 F. I collected about 2 gallons of wort at a gravity of about 1.040 and then boiled for 60 minutes (after the hot break). After the hot break I added about 6 oz of crushed kitel. I poured the wort (now about 5 qts - the rest lost to evaporation) into a plastic fermenter and cooled this in an ice bath. When the temperature had dropped to about 60 F I measured the SG and it was 1.060. In wine that suggests an ABV of about 8% but not all sugars in grain are fermentable and I don't know what the final ABV will be.
Pitched SO-5 yeast (I am pretty sure that the home brewers use wild yeasts to ferment their t'alle but from the photos I have seen and the videos it looks like many folk brew this beer together and the rooms and areas in which they brew this beer may be awash with appropriate yeasts).
The wort is very dark and cloudy with the kitel. The smell of the mash and then the wort with the kitel was mouth watering (so said my wife who does not like beer). My plan is to allow the beer to ferment about 1 week in the primary and then transfer to a glass carboy for the second week, then bottle and allow to condition for two weeks. I think t'alle is usually drunk within a week or so after the grains have been baked into loaves but also think that the process and yeast I am using (and the increased potential ABV) suggest a longer fermentation. I will provide an update on the progress (good or bad).
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