Anyone tried a beer made from bread IE the Belgium Babylone or the Toast ale as seen on Jamie Olivers Friday feast a few weeks ago .

Rainy sunday so giving it a try to brew up some

Interesting, I have a brew of stout into 35 bottles and made another, but very boring kits. Would be interested in seeing how your bread brew turns out.

Well brew day went ok
Beersmith software said I would get 23 Ltrs of 1040 gravity wort using just the 4 kg of marries otter malt
However with the four loaves of bread added to the mash and after the sparge and boil I ended up with
28 litres of 1056 wort
Sat in the fermenter and bubbling like a good in this morning so should have a 6% bread beer in a few weeks

Toast ale is good stuff, had some last night.

Did you post this as a topic on JBK asking about hopping?

Never heard of this but sounds interesting. Will have to add this into my brewing schedule.

Do you have a recipe? Is it just add bread/toast to a normal all grain recipe?

Yes Bazz was after ideas as the brew process was ongoing

@ Pomona
Was a bit of a stab in the dark but the Toast Ale lads are going to publish the recipe on their website
Soon
I replaced 40% of the malted barley with 4 various loaves of bread some toasted. And the rest virgin

Update
kegged it this morning and got the gas on so could not resist having a taste

tastes very summery and light for a 6% beer and very moreish even though its still a bit cloudy and young but very happy with the end result , its certainly got potential for future experiments and bring the cost of the grainbill down a little
Mrs Troutie also had a taste and said it was like a nice Lager She liked it so a winner there .

Damn it I need to get into home brew.

Must give the brew kit a revisit i think .

Got nettle wine on the go from last year along with 2014 vintage hedgerow special too.

Tis a very rewarding hobby but the downside is most pub beer tastes like its watered down piss

Hahaha! It does already unless you pick the right one.

Really? One thing that is probably stopping me just getting on with it and getting into brewing is the fear that what I brew might be a bit crap. I can tell the difference between a good and bad ale in the pub, but how realistic is it to be able to get to the level of quality of when you have a reaally good pint in a pub?

If you want to drop the price of your grain bill drop the maris otter . New varieties like Optic, tipple, propino and venture should all yeild slightly more extract for 25% less cost.

As for your bread beer , I would have used bread crumbs . Not sure if the enymes in malt can get stuck in to bread easily, the DP of wheat malt might be better suited to ths task. But the crumbs would get you more surface area , and an easier route for the enzymes to break down the starchy sugars.

Cheers STM there was no problem with the Marris otter breaking down the bread I got pretty good conversion
Most of it was crumbs just the crusts broke up into lumpy bits .

Will have a look at those other malts for future brews .

All in it was a good experiment and a pretty good beer in return

Tis a very rewarding hobby but the downside is most pub beer tastes like its watered down piss

+1

Really? One thing that is probably stopping me just getting on with it and getting into brewing is the fear that what I brew might be a bit crap. I can tell the difference between a good and bad ale in the pub, but how realistic is it to be able to get to the level of quality of when you have a reaally good pint in a pub?

The advantage of homebrew is freshness, especially if you go down the archetypal and fashionable IPA/IIPA routes. Fresh dry hoped IPA tastes nothing like the stuff you get in the pub.

The downside is hops cover a multitude of sins. An IIPA might win a gold medal in a competition, but brewing something like Carling actually takes far more effort to get something that bland and tasteless.

And TBH 90% of a “good pint in a pub” is down to their cellar management and pouring. I’m sure even Green King doesn’t taste that bad before it reaches a lot of pubs. The trick is learning to identify which flavors come from where in the process.