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Research Asks: Work the Field Can Move Forward
This is not our internal to-do list. It's the public list of work that would move gluten-free brewing forward, written specifically enough to act on. You don't need permission, credentials, or a relationship with us to take one. You need a kettle or a lab and the discipline to write down what happened.
How to respond: report the batch — a short form that asks for what makes a report usable. A useful report names what you changed, what you held steady, what you measured, and the result — including failures, which are often worth more than successes. Contributors get credit under whatever name they choose; results that contradict us are the most valuable kind.
The asks
Scale is not a gate. Each ask lists the minimum it takes to run — equipment, not identity. A homebrew kettle, a pilot system, a production floor, and a lab bench are welcome on every one of them, and the same experiment repeated at two scales is worth more than either result alone.
| # | Ask | Minimum it takes | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hop varieties against sorghum malt | A split batch on any system, five gallons up | Open — seeking testers |
| 2 | Tavern Ale honey load and timing | One batch on any five-gallon system | Open — seeking testers |
| 3 | the Reliable Mash at homebrew scale | A recirculating homebrew system | Open — seeking testers |
| 4 | the Maltose Mash against the Reliable Mash | Any system that can hold 132°F for 100 minutes | Open — seeking testers |
| 5 | Run the proposed evaluation standard | A malt-analysis bench — commercial, university, or serious amateur | Open — seeking review |
| 6 | How far can enzyme doses come down? | Repeated batches at a consistent scale | Open |
| 7 | How far can the 190°F baseline come down? | Multiple batches across multiple malt lots | Open |
| 8 | Sorghum malt data from anywhere | A filing cabinet | Open |
| 9 | Screen sorghum cultivars for brewing enzyme activity after standardized malting | A malting bench and an enzyme assay — a lab, a university, or a maltster with a partner lab | Open |
| 10 | The calcium ladder: what does the mash actually need? | A homebrew system and water salts | Open |
| 11 | Can anything close sorghum's FAN gap, and at what cost? | A system that holds a rest temperature, plus FAN analysis — a lab partner or university bench | Open |
| 12 | Where is the rice-hull floor? | Any all-grain system, five gallons up | Open |
Ask 1 — Hop varieties against sorghum malt
The question. Do some hop varieties genuinely clash with sorghum malt, or is that impression an artifact of the beers we happened to brew?
Why it matters. Twenty years of commercial brewing produced a consistent field impression — German varieties integrated well, Saaz clashed — that has never been tested. If it's real, it changes hop selection for every gluten-free brewer. See Hops and Yeast for Sorghum Malt.
What would count. One 100% sorghum malt wort, split, each half bittered and finished with a different variety, everything else held steady. Tasting notes from more than one palate. Two or three independent reports would settle it.
Ask 2 — Tavern Ale honey load and timing
The question. How much honey, added when, produces the balance in Tavern Ale Version A?
Why it matters. It's the one number that was never recorded in a beer worth reconstructing — and honey timing (flameout vs whirlpool vs fermenter) changes whether it reads as aroma, sweetness, or nothing.
What would count. Brew version A at 1 lb, 2 lb, and 3 lb per 5 gallons — or split one batch across honey timings — and report where the balance lands. A version that beats ours gets published as version B with your name on it.
Ask 3 — the Reliable Mash at homebrew scale
The question. Does our production protocol actually work at 5 gallons, and where does it break?
Why it matters. The translation is arithmetic on a production process, and arithmetic isn't a brew day. Nobody has validated it.
What would count. Efficiency, mash behavior, runoff time, gravity, fermentation curve, and what you'd change — plus your equipment description, so results are comparable.
Ask 4 — the Maltose Mash against the Reliable Mash, on a split wort
The question. Does a protease rest plus a fungal-alpha coolback produce a materially better beer from sorghum malt than the glucoamylase finish — and why did Bard's abandon it?
Why it matters. the Maltose Mash was written and played with at Bard's; the Reliable Mash won, and the reasons were never recorded. Everything downstream of wort sugar profile — fermentation behavior, body, drinkability — rides on this.
What would count. Same recipe, same malt, the Reliable Mash vs the Maltose Mash, side by side. FAN, wort sugar profile (HPLC if you can get it), fermentation curves, and honest sensory comparison. A documented failure is as useful as a success here.
Ask 5 — Run the proposed evaluation standard
The question. Does the external-enzyme reference mash in GFB-SME work as a practical evaluation method?
Why it matters. The field evaluates sorghum malt with instruments built for other questions. A proposal nobody runs is just an opinion in a nicer font.
What would count. A lab running the reference mash on two or more malts and reporting friction — what was ambiguous, what wouldn't reproduce, what should change. Criticism is the deliverable.
Ask 6 — How far can enzyme doses come down?
The question. Our published doses are conservative production insurance. How much can be removed before conversion, runoff, or fermentation suffer?
Why it matters. Enzymes are a real line item. If half the dose works, that's money back for every gluten-free brewer — and nobody has published the curve.
What would count. Staged reduction across batches on one malt and system, tracking conversion, iodine result, runoff, gravity, and attenuation. Report the point where something broke.
Ask 7 — How far can the 190°F baseline come down?
The question. The 190°F, 60-minute hold is deliberately conservative — 30 minutes worked in most runs. Where is the real boundary?
Why it matters. The extra thirty minutes is insurance bought without knowing its price. It costs energy, tank time, and throughput on every batch anyone runs, and it is the first thing a brewer at scale will question. We hold it because the boundary has never been established, not because we have evidence a shorter hold fails. Settling it would either retire a conservative default or turn it into a measured one, and either is worth more than the current answer.
What would count. Controlled alternatives across multiple batches and multiple malt lots, judged on liquefaction, viscosity, iodine, extract, runoff, fermentation, and repeatability. One clean batch is encouraging; it isn't a baseline.
Ask 8 — Sorghum malt data from anywhere
The question. What else exists? Screening data, malt analyses, brewing trials, failed programs, dusty spreadsheets from a project that ended.
Why it matters. We published every dataset we have cleared for release because the published North American record is nearly empty. Ours can't be the only surviving data. Some records are still in review and a few are held for reasons we will state if asked — the claim is what we could publish, not everything in the archive.
What would count. Any dataset with its methods and units, whatever its age or format. We'll publish it with attribution, or help you publish it yourself. Negative results and abandoned programs included — especially those.
Ask 9 — Screen sorghum cultivars for brewing enzyme activity after standardized malting
The question. We design conversion around external enzymes because current sorghum malt doesn't supply reliable endogenous activity. How much of that is the grain? Across available cultivars, malted under one standardized protocol, how much do alpha-amylase, beta-amylase, and limit-dextrinase activity actually vary — and is any cultivar materially better than the current baseline?
Why it matters. The external-enzyme position is a workaround, and we say so. If cultivar variation is large, breeding and selection could change what gluten-free malt is capable of; if it's small, the answer lies in malting method instead, and that's worth knowing too. The alpha-amylase and diastatic-power spread is published — our own Madison screening carries 25 cultivars malted under one standardized schedule, with units. Beta-amylase and limit-dextrinase are the gap. Neither that dataset nor the 2002–2004 screenings reports them, and we have found nobody who has.
What would count. Several cultivars — including whatever the screenings already on file point to — malted under one published steep, germination, and kiln schedule, with enzyme activities measured by one named method and reported with units and replicates. Report the baseline cultivar alongside the rest. A result that shows no useful variation is as publishable as one that finds a winner.
Ask 10 — The calcium ladder: what does the mash actually need?
The question. Production ran ~100 ppm calcium as a complete-process baseline; the enzyme is documented to work below 20 ppm. Where between 20 and 100 does performance actually change — and in what?
Why it matters. The gap between the enzyme capability statement and the production condition is this site's standing open contradiction. A brewer targeting 100 ppm may be hauling chloride or sulfate along for a reason that no longer applies — or for one that matters and was never written down.
What would count. The same 100% sorghum malt recipe run as a calcium ladder — say 20 / 50 / 100 ppm, everything else held steady — reporting mash behavior, conversion (iodine), runoff, pH path, fermentation curve, and finished-beer impressions. Even two rungs move it. A bench running the GFB-SME reference mash across the ladder counts double.
Ask 11 — Can anything close sorghum's FAN gap, and at what cost?
The question. Sorghum malt FAN runs roughly half of barley malt's. How much of that gap can a protease rest, malting modification, or cultivar choice close — and what does each close cost in foam, body, or flavor?
Why it matters. Every sorghum fermentation inherits this gap; yeast nutrition is currently designed around it rather than through it, and kafirin is the mechanism underneath. Knowing which lever moves FAN — and what it breaks — turns a permanent workaround into a design choice.
What would count. One variable at a time against a control: a protease rest (time and temperature declared) versus none on the same malt; or one cultivar at two germination lengths; or two cultivars under one malting schedule. Report FAN in ppm with the method declared, the fermentation curve, and honest foam and body notes. Partial answers are answers.
Ask 12 — Where is the rice-hull floor?
The question. On a given malt, crush, and system, how low can the rice-hull rate go before the bed fails — and does a deliberately coarse grind reach zero?
Why it matters. The published position is "start around 5%, then move down" — direction without a floor. Hulls are cost and bed volume; the floor is the number every production brewer actually wants, and the historical figures were never reconciled.
What would count. A split batch — one grist coarse-ground with no hulls, one at 5%, same malt and system — reporting runoff time, bed behavior, and whether either stuck. A descending series (5% / 2% / 0%) across brews on one system is the full answer. Include your crush description: the grind is half the experiment.
Status vocabulary
Open — nobody is known to be working on it. Seeking testers — we're specifically looking for people to run it. Seeking review — a proposal needs technical criticism more than data. Under evaluation — results are in hand and being worked through. Closed — answered, with the page updated to say so. Superseded — the question changed.
An ask leaving this list should leave a mark on a published page. That's the whole point.
Related
- Open Problems — the frontier these asks are drawn from
- Research Library — the data behind the questions
- Proposed Standards — proposals that need criticism
- Homebrew: The Research Bench — where several of these asks get run
- Contribute Research — what happens to what you send