[Electro-Organic]

Anyone try actually malting and fermenting acorns?

[imjin]

I made a honey acorn amber ale in 2015 that was fantastic with a slight nutty flavor.  The trick is in the processing of the acorns to get rid of the bitter tannins.  When I went back to to VA one year, i gathered around 20 lbs of white or red oak acorns out in the yard and shipped them back to CA via the USPS.  I had put them in a paper grocery bag and sealed it up with tape, then into a shipping box.  When I received them, they had started sprouting due to the moisture content they already had, plus the closed warm environment.  Unwittingly, I had accidentally started the malting process on those things and it probably had a huge affect on the taste, because those things were awesome in the beer.  I don't recall there being a lot of nutty flavor, but it did contribute something a little different than regular nuts that had more flavor to them.

It took FOREVER to clean them down to the internal nut, peeling the outer parts away, but once i did, i soaked them in a bucket of water for about a week, changing it a couple of times a day to leech out the tannins.  You could definitely taste it in the water.  Once it didn't taste all that bitter, i baked them at 350 for about 30 minutes to get some roast on them.  That dried them out pretty well.  The initial load of 20 lb. worth of acorns had been reduced to roughly 5 lbs of actual dried acorn nuts.  Then i just used them like any other nut with about 3 lbs. of honey in the 5 gal. recipe.

5 lbs. Acorn Meal
7 lbs. Pale Malt
1 lb. Torrified Wheat
1 oz. Magnum (60 mins)
1 oz. Goldings East Kent (15 mins)
3 lbs. Honey (10 mins)
1 Whirlfloc tablet (10 mins)
1 oz. Goldings East Kent (1 min)
Safale US-05
1 tsp. Yeast Nutrient (Primary 3 days)

[BrewBama]

I’ve heard of brewing with pecans but never acorns.


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[EHall]

I've never heard of it, but I would think democrats are one of the least desirable nuts out there for human consumption.

couldn't resist... acorns sure do make squirrels taste good though!

[Brett]

I grew up in the south. We have several varieties oak
White oak, red oak, water oak, live oak, cherrybark oak, Cow oak, willow oak. And they all taste horrible.
Deer, squirrels and wild hogs eat them.
But that's about all.
I'm old school.
I started brewing in 1984.
Dont really understand the new, let's throw anything into our beer thing, but I'm a firm supporter of brewing the way you like. How you like and when you like.
Hey, there's a pine cone. Let's brew a pine cone beer.
But wait, let's use pine straw too. Screw it, throw in some bark too. Oh, I see some raccoon dung, let's try that.
?
Go for it

[Robert]

I grew up in the south. We have several varieties oak
White oak, red oak, water oak, live oak, cherrybark oak, Cow oak, willow oak. And they all taste horrible.
Deer, squirrels and wild hogs eat them.
But that's about all.
I'm old school.
I started brewing in 1984.
Dont really understand the new, let's throw anything into our beer thing, but I'm a firm supporter of brewing the way you like. How you like and when you like.
Hey, there's a pine cone. Let's brew a pine cone beer.
But wait, let's use pine straw too. Screw it, throw in some bark too. Oh, I see some raccoon dung, let's try that.
?
Go for it

Once again, I wish we had a "like" button on this forum.  Well, here goes then:

[Northern_Brewer]

See this for an example : https://www.themadfermentationist.com/2018/12/fermented-acorn-sour-brown.html