Grains in Sausage?

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Grains in Sausage?

Postby JerBear » Mon Sep 17, 2012 4:06 am

I know that there are a couple ways that I've seen grains in sausage. First would be haggis, which could loosely be described as a sausage and second is boudin blanc and morcilla (Spanish blood sausage). While the haggis has oats the boudins have rice. Oh, and don't forget rusk. While technically not a grain, still a filler (not in a negative sense).

So here's my question, I have a lot of friends who are home-brewers and they often have copious amounts of spent grains and I wanted to find some why to incorporate them into sausage. Right now I'm baking a bread but that only goes so far.

The grain bill can be quite varied from malt to oats to barley but the end results will be more oat-like than rice like. Thoughts?
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Postby captain wassname » Mon Sep 17, 2012 7:00 pm

An interesting thought.I am a home brewer and have made beer sausages but never considered grains from the mash tun.
Ill give the matter some thought and post back.

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Postby JerBear » Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:37 pm

My general leanings are towards a black pudding spiced sausage but with pork shoulder (pork blood and offal is pretty hard to come by in the city).

Oh, and the bread turned out awesome!
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Postby Kaiser Soze » Tue Sep 18, 2012 1:39 am

I imagine it would be difficult to incorporate spent brewing grains into sausages. While haggis and blood sausage use oats and rice, both of these are dehusked. Brewing grains still have the husk on, and the husk is actually an important component of the mash, as it acts as a filter for the grain bed straining out small grain particles during the recirculation. The only exception to this might be a 100% wheat beer, as the wheat doesn't have husk, but in this case a proportion of rice hulls are added to the mash to act as the filter bed. If there's no husk in the mash bed, the floury parts of the ground grains tend to gum up, and the mash bed turns to porridge which prevents you from draining the liquid from the mash tun. Therefore, ground grain particle size and husk component are very important parts of the mashing process.

Given that there's still husk in spent grain, I imagine it would be difficult to incorporate into a sausage. The texture, while fine in bread, would be unexpected and out of place in any sausage I can think of. Would love to be proven wrong on that though, as I generally have 10kg of ground grain after each brew.

Despite this, there are still plenty of uses for spent grains. Obviously bread as you've mentioned, and feeding to chickens (my chickens loooove them!). Also use the grains as mulch (they start to smell after a while though), or bury them in the garden for fertiliser. Add them to compost first if you like and they'll break down nicely. Alternatively, I've seen recipes for dog biscuits made from spent grains. You can dry them into patties and use them as smoking fuel. I also know a chef who incorporates them into cures and the like (he used to work at a brewery, so probably has thousands of recipes floating around in his head).
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Postby captain wassname » Tue Sep 18, 2012 9:47 am

Technically I see no problem. The grain comes out of the mash tun wet and the water content is about 50% which is about what you would use if you were making a British type banger with breadcrumb.
I like K.S have doubts about the texture but you could try on a small scale.
You dont want to die not knowing.
Incidentally would you like to share your bred recipe and method.

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Postby saucisson » Tue Sep 18, 2012 2:00 pm

I have used and I think others have used Pearl Barley in White Pudding, so that would be the first place I'd start.

Edit: here you go: http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=5393
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Postby wheels » Tue Sep 18, 2012 2:23 pm

I have used pearl barley, and pin-head oats, in white puddings. But, from what's been said I'm guessing that malted barley is very different?

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Postby JerBear » Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:06 pm

Kaiser Soze wrote:You can dry them into patties and use them as smoking fuel.

Great idea, would you use a dehydrator or oven at low temp? I'd be concerned about leaving them out to dry on their own.

captain wassname wrote:Incidentally would you like to share your bred recipe and method.

I posted the recipe and steps at my blog here: http://hgsausageworks.blogspot.com/

If you read the posting you'll see that I put half the batch in the freezer and I think I'm going to make some dinner rolls out of it. Should be awesome!
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Postby captain wassname » Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:54 pm

probably not a good ides to leave them out to dry.I generally givr mine to a farmer for his chickens and left them in a plastic sack for a couple of days in my garage they developed a green mould and smelt well iffy.
Nice bread recipe,Ill give it a go next time I brew.

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Re: Grains in Sausage?

Postby vagreys » Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:29 pm

JerBear wrote:...So here's my question, I have a lot of friends who are home-brewers and they often have copious amounts of spent grains and I wanted to find some why to incorporate them into sausage...Thoughts?

There are a number of northern, central and eastern European sausages that call for significant amounts of grain, like pinkelwurst, too.

I think you have to consider how the grains are used in sausage. I don't think the applications of grain and rusk are the same. Haggis and Pinkelwurst are frugal sausages, making nutritional use of pluck that might otherwise be discarded, or taking a small amount of meat to flavor a large amount of grain. In both types, the grain is the main source of nutrition, not filler. In the blood sausages, they serve as binder, not filler, and again, contribute nutritionally. Rusk, while it can be filler, retains moisture and contributes to a tender bite.

Spent grains are called "spent" for a reason. Assuming your mash efficiency is fairly high, there is very little left in your spent grain after sparging, except coarse cellulose fiber. What would that contribute to your sausage beyond high fiber? As a fellow brewer, I understand the desire to experiment and to try to find things to do with the spent grain, other than discarding it, like adding fiber and texture to bread. Some ideas are better than others. Certainly, you can add spent grain to sausages, but I'm not sure how it would improve the sausage.
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Postby Kaiser Soze » Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:43 pm

JerBear wrote:
Kaiser Soze wrote:You can dry them into patties and use them as smoking fuel.

Great idea, would you use a dehydrator or oven at low temp? I'd be concerned about leaving them out to dry on their own.


I dry them in a low oven and mix them around every so often, but yes, a dehydrator would be perfect. Leaving them to dry on their own would (as others said) be inviting mould.

(BTW - spent coffee grounds can also be used as smoking fuel. A good idea if you've got an espresso machine and don't want to waste anything. Also useful as mulch).
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Postby Kaiser Soze » Sat Sep 22, 2012 8:36 am

I just spoke to my chef friend about this. He has worked in breweries and specialises in incorporating beer/grains/hops in his cooking.

He said that it could work for a coarsely ground sausage if cooked for a period of time in a sauce, then added to the sausage. So if you were adding some tomato passata in a sausage recipe, cook the grains in the passata for around an hour and they soften up and take on the flavour of the sauce.

Anyway, could be interesting to try. He seemed excited at the thought, said the texture might be quite good in a coarse sausage.
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Postby JerBear » Sat Sep 22, 2012 8:40 am

Thanks for the follow-up. I just used some of the last provided grains and made a full loaf of sandwich bread - really really good stuff. I still can't get this idea of the spent grains in sausage out of my head so it's nice to hear i'm not (totally) crazy [though there have been very clear arguments to the contrary].

I'm going to be meeting my my home-brew group tomorrow for Oktoberfest so will put out the feelers on the need for more spent grains. When I make the sausage I'll try to make it a couple different ways and report back. I've also got some crazy ideas in the works for bacon & beer combos that I'm sure you're chef buddy'll love! More on that to come....
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