Yeotgileum Experiment

[rjrink]

I finally broke down and decided to give the Korean malted barley experiment a try. I picked up 2kg of yeotgileum at the store near my house and attempted to pick out as many of the roots as i could. Definitely not worth your time. about two hours later, my neck is killing me and as soon as I added the water to the mash, a ton of little roots floated to the top. I tried to fish out as many as i could, and then just gave up and let it mash.

The stuff doesn't seem to be super mashable. I don't think that it has enough diastatic power to convert itself. After an hour, an iodine test showed that it's not fully converted. I just threw in some six-row and left it to mash for a while more. I wish i measured out how much i put in there first, but unfortunately this is going to be a very unscientific experiment. Hopefully i'll end up with a couple gallons of drinkable beer.

I'll keep everyone updated, as i know several people here were curious.

Wish me luck.

[daxdefranco]

good for you for trying it, i hope it works!

[Rob]

Kevin and I did some experiments with Yeotkileum and they were all pretty much failures. You've gotta watch which kind you get. There are some that are 70% Korean barley and 30% wheat while Kevin found some that was 80% Korean barley and 20% American barley. The original experiments we did were with the wheat one and it didn't work because the malt didn't have enough diastatic power to convert.

All that aside, every batch did have a weird taste. I don't think I will be using it. There's a reason that all of the microbreweries import their malt and do not use Korean malt....it isn't very good.

[rjrink]

All went fairly well so far, and there's about 9 liters of wort in the fermenter at about 1.047 or so. Starting to see some bubbles in the airlock already.

At my local store, there was some yeotgileum that was 20% wheat and another that was all barley as far as i can tell. I got the all-barley one, although it was a bit more expensive (~3,500 per kilogram). I hopped it with around 2oz columbus in 4- 0.5oz additions. I was kind of hoping that the high alpha acids in the hops would drown out any off flavors. I technically should have made as neutral a flavor as I could to get a better sense of what the malt tastes like if i wanted to be more scientific, but ultimately I want something drinkable at the end of the day.

It wasn't fully converted after 60 mins as i said before, so I added some base malt, and about 40 mins later it seemed to be fully converted by an iodine test. The rest of the brewday went as any other, and in the end- it smelled like beer. I don't plan on using this in the future as a significant portion of my grain bill, but if this experiment works out, I would definitely consider running to the local store to grab a kilo or so rather than wait for a delivery to round out a brew.

I'll continue to update as the experiment continues...

[rjrink]

Update:

Suspense was killing me. Had to crack one after work today, 7 days after bottling...

And the result is... *drumroll*...

BEER!

It's a little flat (found it in my fridge and don't remember putting it there, so it probably only carbed for 3 or 4 days)
It's pretty bitter (~2.5 oz Columbus hops @ 14.5%AA for 9L)
It's definitely a bit green, but it's also definitely beer.

I would attach a picture, but I'm not quite sure how.

I would say that the experiment was definitely at least a moderate success. It's quite drinkable and it's got some flavor, so it's way better than Cass, and probably around half the price! I think i have less than 10,000krw into this batch.

I don't think I would be afraid to throw a kg or so of yeotgileum into a batch if I was short some malt (which i might be on the next beer). I would def recommend the slightly more expensive, all barley (보리) variety. It was around 3,500KRW for a kilo at the local store. Also, definitely make sure you have sufficient base malt because it didn't convert itself, but i'd say it's a reasonable addition even with the sprouts. I'm pretty sure I didn't get more than 25% or so out...

I'll try to bring some for tasting at the next homebrewkorea event.