Malt substitute?

[RumRunR]

I realize I'm opening myself up to a verbal lashing with this thread but I must settle my curiosity. Say I boiled 5lbs of corn making hominy, now I want to add a digestive enzymes supplement instead of any malt.. Why won't this work? Just a stupid question please be kind.

[Tater]

well for one ya use lye to make hominy but once made it could be ground and en-zines added to convert it. Try a search

[RumRunR]

Just pretending like I already boiled 5lb of white corn and it swelled up like a mofo.. Resembles hominy but no lye was ever added. I tried searching malt substitute with no results. Searching malting results in 76 trizillion matches.

[oliver90owner]

At the end of the day yeast needs sugar to ferment (consume anaerobically) to alcohol.

Grain is starch. How you convert it to sugar is really up to you. Malting is the old time favourite method, but amylase from a different source would do the job given the conditions were satisfactory.

Might be better to try 5g to check out the process than 5 lbs at a time....

[Tater]

Might give grain section a read over on parent site .

[bellybuster]

malted grain have 3 main purposes, flavour, starches and the enzymes to break down those starches into sugars. The enzymes certainly can be replaced by the addition of amylase enzymes (at the correct rate and temps) to break down starches into sugars. It is however unpredictable and unreliable in my experiments. modern malts are very predictable in their outcome as long as proper mashing techniques are used.

[RumRunR]

only reason I ask is because I have never made a straight corn run. I thought I'd give it a try and in an attempt to get more outa this 40 gallon of corn sugar water I mite add some enzyme supplement. my next run will have naturally malted corn prepared. yea I got in a hurry when this guy brought me a truck load of corn and just boiled up several pounds.

but this got me thinking bout other stuff,, bean sprouts in my fridge?? they gotta have a certain quality too. and another thing on my mind, straight corn starch!! I got an experiment in the window now. In 2 jars both have 3 table spoons of corn starch water, and a pinch of yeast. one of the 2 has one of my newly acquired amylase enzyme supplement. I just want to see results dont care what happens.

[wv_hillbilly]

Corn starch makes neutral, just so you know. All of the goodies have been removed, taking away the flavor.

[Street Machine]

The last time I tried corn startch it just formed its own cake at the bottom of my car boy. That was fun to clean up. I third it 2 or 3 times but it always failed to stay in suspension. Any tips on that? Does it need to be boiled at a specific temp or have you had good success with just really hot tap water to mix it up?

[Dnderhead]

yes corn starch needs to be cooked.just like making gravy.

[Xnerd]

I just did an experiment using 3 lbs of corn starch added to an all grain mash.
og 1076 as opposed to most of my all grains that around about 1065.
I ended up with much more hootch with absolutely no desirable difference in flavor.

Now having said that I will add that when I do higher gravity wash's I rack into a second fermenter after about 4 days to get it out of the extra yeast waste.
Perhaps that helped. And I should add that I do 12 gallon batches now so three lbs is not a giant amount.

I would much rather see people do this instead of using table sugar. Ruins a mash in my opinion.
I did this out of pure curiosity. I supposed that if i used enough it would cause problems.