Please, Sir... Maibock I Have Another?

John made a maibock this weekend and set aside some spent grain for me (without me even asking - I can't tell if it was sweet or a less-than-subtle hint. Either way, does it matter?). I set out to make Spent Grain Loaf #2.

The first loaf didn't turn out so well. I pulled it off some random homebrewers' site and only read the first couple pages of the 9-page thread. The recipe seemed decent and the initial comments were positive. I should have known something was amiss when I had to add about twice as much flour as the recipe called for. Thus, the amount of yeast was off and the bread was doomed from the start. Clearly, the author had omitted his process whereby he dried his spent grain before using it. Here's the final product:


Bread Fail. It tasted okay, but had much too great a proportion of spent grain to everything else.

John suggested we try a recipe on a site he'd seen before. The balance of ingredients seemed appropriate, so I tossed this one together to rise. Much better. After a couple of rises and 40 minutes in the oven, here's the result:

It's delicious & makes excellent toast.

I had quite a bit of grain left, and thought it might be fun to try something sweeter - a spice cake or cookies or bars of some sort. I Googled "spent grain cookies" thinking I'd come up with nothing but dog biscuits, but sure enough - recipes!

I ended up modifying a recipe from Omnomicon, which had modified a recipe from Seven Bridges Cooperative. I omitted the nuts (primarily because I think nuts ruin the soft, delicate texture of cookies) and doubled the chocolate chips (primarily because, well, it's chocolate!).

They turned out fabulously! They almost have the consistency of muffins, so I think the addition of oil in the first recipe was probably a good idea - a bit more fat would have reduced the cakiness of them, but they're delicious nonetheless.


I'd recommend trying the bread or the cookie recipes if you ever get your hands on some spent grain. These babies are so good, I'm almost not impatient for the Maibock to be ready. And they're high fiber, so they count as health food, right? RIGHT?!