YamahaXS
10-17-2003, 10:12 AM
So my neighbor and brewbuddy has done a really amazing thing. He has made Chicha, or Corn Beer, completely from scratch. I am amazed at the amount of energy he has put into this project, especially so since he is relatively new to the hobby.
Basic steps.
1) Find corn still on cob.
2) Dry corn on cob.
3) Remove dried corn from cob.
4) Malt corn.
5) Roast malted corn.
6) Mill malted corn.
7) Brew Chicha.
All of this took at least 6 weeks. Details for each step are below. He malted his own corn b/c he could not find corn that had already been malted.
1) He bought the corn from a local farmer. She thinks he is crazy. He bought 2 big banana cases worth (I guess about 60 pounds of corn).
2) He ran some chicken wire in the rafters of his garage and put the corn up there. This was back in August I believe and the corn dried out nicely. I dunno if the squirrels appreciated it too.
3) He spent an evening 'rubbing his cobs'. Apparently you can rub two cobs together to knock of the corn seeds. He ended up with about 5-6 gallons of seed.
4) Q "So how are you going to malt all this corn?" A "Not sure."
He had read everything he could find on making Chica, there just isn't a lot out there... he decided to Malt enough corn for a 1 gallon batch. This decision was mostly driven by the problem of figuring out how to process enough corn to do MORE than 1 gallon. We couldn't quite figure this out. Essentially, corn is a pain in the ass to mill, and he nor I have a mill and we assumed the LHBS wouldn't really want us using their mill. He planned to only partially dry the malted corn, so that it could be more easily cracked with a rolling pin, but that meant the corn would have to dried, cracked in used within a few days. Simply not possible unless he didn't sleep for those few days. So, he decided to just brew up 1 gal of Chicha, I think he used about a 1/2 gallon of seed.
He spread the corn on a work table with newspaper above and below corn. He re-applied water to paper 2x/day until the corn sprouted, which took about 5 days.
5) His wife's patience is wearing thin at this point. BUT he used the oven to dried the malted corn and stop the germination process. This was probably the easiest step of the process. Part of her irritation stemmed from the fact that he was considering buying a mill. Wife: "Your going to spend $130 for something that will probably taste like crap?!?!" Oh, this was the real reason he decided to do a small batch. hehehe
6) Started to crack the corn using a rolling pin. He was sweating after 1 % of the corn was cracked. There must be an easier way! AHHHHH....Look the wife has a pasta roller.
Pasta Roller worked well, and still functions after this abuse. Time to Brew!
7) He has 1 all-grain under his belt and that beer turned out well. But corn is different than barley. Short version, he got it mashed and sparged. But had really low OG (think FG). Add a bunch of brown sugar (1 lb I believe)...This is a traditional ingrediant anyway. Gravity boosted to 1.050 ish. Pitched yeast and tried to restore the kitchen to its previous state.
TASTING the CHICHA
--------------------------
Well, I got to taste this stuff. Mind you, it is traditionally drunk WHILE it is still fermenting and the first bit I had was still very sweet and had a flavor that was somewhere between the taste of milk left in the bowl after you eat a bunch of Frosted Flakes, and a mild tea served with a bunch of sugar. I appreciated it for all the work he had put into it, but didn't finish the serving.
The second tasting occured the night that the Marlins beat the Cubs in game 7. I don't know if the goat had come by and 'cursed' Mike's Chicha, but the brew had definately changed. First, it was no longer sweet! The flavor was very thin, watery, almost nothing too it at all. However, it was difficult to really examine the flavor profile because the Chicha had started to gelantize. It was extremely viscous and took some effort continue to drink. Apparently, he didn't get a good break down of the starches. BUT he had brewed his Chicha!
He still has 20 or so pounds of unmalted corn and he said he might try to do another batch sometime in the future.
Hats off to him though for doing all that work!
EDIT: I ran my synopsis by Mike and he had a few edits for me. Just for the record I will quote him here.
Minor points - although I should have dried it in the oven, I didn't, but went straight from soaking to milling. - While the pasta roller worked, it took a couple of hours and I wouldn't recommend doing it that way again. - I used roughly 4lbs of corn seed and 4lbs of brown sugar for a 4gal batch. - I soaked the corn in a bucket of water for a couple of days prior to spreading it on newspaper. The soaking increased its volume to about 3 1/2 gallons from the dry volume of about 1/2 gallon--a 7 fold expansion.
Don't know if much of the above is worth editing or not. Also, I estimated about a 95% germination rate. Ah... also mashed at 160 for 30 minutes, but overshot the temperature and may have killed off some enzymes???
Basic steps.
1) Find corn still on cob.
2) Dry corn on cob.
3) Remove dried corn from cob.
4) Malt corn.
5) Roast malted corn.
6) Mill malted corn.
7) Brew Chicha.
All of this took at least 6 weeks. Details for each step are below. He malted his own corn b/c he could not find corn that had already been malted.
1) He bought the corn from a local farmer. She thinks he is crazy. He bought 2 big banana cases worth (I guess about 60 pounds of corn).
2) He ran some chicken wire in the rafters of his garage and put the corn up there. This was back in August I believe and the corn dried out nicely. I dunno if the squirrels appreciated it too.
3) He spent an evening 'rubbing his cobs'. Apparently you can rub two cobs together to knock of the corn seeds. He ended up with about 5-6 gallons of seed.
4) Q "So how are you going to malt all this corn?" A "Not sure."
He had read everything he could find on making Chica, there just isn't a lot out there... he decided to Malt enough corn for a 1 gallon batch. This decision was mostly driven by the problem of figuring out how to process enough corn to do MORE than 1 gallon. We couldn't quite figure this out. Essentially, corn is a pain in the ass to mill, and he nor I have a mill and we assumed the LHBS wouldn't really want us using their mill. He planned to only partially dry the malted corn, so that it could be more easily cracked with a rolling pin, but that meant the corn would have to dried, cracked in used within a few days. Simply not possible unless he didn't sleep for those few days. So, he decided to just brew up 1 gal of Chicha, I think he used about a 1/2 gallon of seed.
He spread the corn on a work table with newspaper above and below corn. He re-applied water to paper 2x/day until the corn sprouted, which took about 5 days.
5) His wife's patience is wearing thin at this point. BUT he used the oven to dried the malted corn and stop the germination process. This was probably the easiest step of the process. Part of her irritation stemmed from the fact that he was considering buying a mill. Wife: "Your going to spend $130 for something that will probably taste like crap?!?!" Oh, this was the real reason he decided to do a small batch. hehehe
6) Started to crack the corn using a rolling pin. He was sweating after 1 % of the corn was cracked. There must be an easier way! AHHHHH....Look the wife has a pasta roller.
Pasta Roller worked well, and still functions after this abuse. Time to Brew!
7) He has 1 all-grain under his belt and that beer turned out well. But corn is different than barley. Short version, he got it mashed and sparged. But had really low OG (think FG). Add a bunch of brown sugar (1 lb I believe)...This is a traditional ingrediant anyway. Gravity boosted to 1.050 ish. Pitched yeast and tried to restore the kitchen to its previous state.
TASTING the CHICHA
--------------------------
Well, I got to taste this stuff. Mind you, it is traditionally drunk WHILE it is still fermenting and the first bit I had was still very sweet and had a flavor that was somewhere between the taste of milk left in the bowl after you eat a bunch of Frosted Flakes, and a mild tea served with a bunch of sugar. I appreciated it for all the work he had put into it, but didn't finish the serving.
The second tasting occured the night that the Marlins beat the Cubs in game 7. I don't know if the goat had come by and 'cursed' Mike's Chicha, but the brew had definately changed. First, it was no longer sweet! The flavor was very thin, watery, almost nothing too it at all. However, it was difficult to really examine the flavor profile because the Chicha had started to gelantize. It was extremely viscous and took some effort continue to drink. Apparently, he didn't get a good break down of the starches. BUT he had brewed his Chicha!
He still has 20 or so pounds of unmalted corn and he said he might try to do another batch sometime in the future.
Hats off to him though for doing all that work!
EDIT: I ran my synopsis by Mike and he had a few edits for me. Just for the record I will quote him here.
Minor points - although I should have dried it in the oven, I didn't, but went straight from soaking to milling. - While the pasta roller worked, it took a couple of hours and I wouldn't recommend doing it that way again. - I used roughly 4lbs of corn seed and 4lbs of brown sugar for a 4gal batch. - I soaked the corn in a bucket of water for a couple of days prior to spreading it on newspaper. The soaking increased its volume to about 3 1/2 gallons from the dry volume of about 1/2 gallon--a 7 fold expansion.
Don't know if much of the above is worth editing or not. Also, I estimated about a 95% germination rate. Ah... also mashed at 160 for 30 minutes, but overshot the temperature and may have killed off some enzymes???