Sources of starch

[PeteB]

I am right into recycling and avoiding waste, for environmental reasons, for economical reasons, and also for the free publicity it generates.

I have just finished a week of a taste festival showcasing Tasmanian food and drinks.

A stall near me had some leftover cooked potatoes and bread, both should be good sources of starch. The potatoes will be, but does anyone know if the cooked bread will still have usable starch?

I plan to cook it up then add some malted rye and a few enzymes to make sure it converts, then ferment and distill etc to produce a few bottles of vodka to take back to the festival next year.

Thanks

Pete Bignell

[Artisan Still Design]

its been speculated that the first beer was made from left over barley bread.

give it a go, I'd love to her the results.

if its got easily accessible starches, enzymes ought to be able to break them down to sugar.

I wonder how it would taste compared to a wheat based mash.

[PeteB]

Thanks for the reply Steve. I was going to start the cook today but with distractions the day is almost over (probably hasn't started where you are)

If the mash failed I might have been able to blame it on the bread. I do now recall that story about the first beer.

[Natrat]

Should work. How are you going to convert the starches? Add malt? Commercial enzyme?

Theoretically, you should be able to convert any relatively simple starch (unpolymerized) given the right enzymes. I love the idea of using stale bread to make whiskey!

[PeteB]

Thanks for the interest Natrat.

If I was a school teacher I would only give you 5/10 for reading skills I did say "add some malted rye and a few enzymes to make sure it converts"

So far I have got pretty good conversion of the starch according to iodine test. Brix is 11 which is a bit low, assume I added too much water. The still is way too big for the volume I have so the dilution shouldn't matter.

I am sure it is bad economics making vodka or whisky this way, but hopefully the press will find it an interesting story and give me some free promotion, in fact it has already started. A radio station from the West Australian coast (I live S.E.) rang me yesterday and did an interview about me making booze from leftovers. This batch is all leftovers including the yeast. The packet had expired but the fermenter has started bubbling nicely.

Won't be able to call it whisky because of the potatoes so I will distill and carbon filter to a vodka,

maybe I will call it ABSOLUTE ly no waste VODKA

[Natrat]

Thanks for the interest Natrat.

If I was a school teacher I would only give you 5/10 for reading skills I did say "add some malted rye and a few enzymes to make sure it converts"

Haha! I totally deserve that

"changes in the starch are still considered to be the major factor responsible for firming and other changes in the bread crumb during storage. As a consequence, many researchers have attempted to use the changes in the starch to follow the bread staling process. As bread undergoes staling, there is a decrease in the amount of soluble starch that can be removed from the bread crumb. Also, the starch becomes less susceptible to enzyme attack. There is a change in the crystallinity of the starch and in the X-ray diffraction patterns"

and

"The effect of adding two different commercial emulsifiers on the amylose content in the water solubles extracted from the bread crumbs"..."The amylose content was found to decrease as the bread aged, with the greatest decrease occurring during the first 24 hours of storage"

There seems to be less than 10% of available convertable starches in stale bread after 5 days. The amylopectin decreases only by about 50%, so if you can use some isoamylase as well as amylase, you should be good. I'd even try some good old "pectinase" from a homebrew shop. It has a number of weird enzymes in it that may help.

Cool beans!

[PeteB]

Thanks Natrat.

10/10 for your amazing ability to recall a scientific article word for word.

As I have said before, I have a science degree and quite a bit was food technology, but in the 40+ years since then a lot of the detail has faded. I do remember the basic principals and that is why I suspected that some of the starch in bread might not be usable.

The brix 11 might be mainly from the potatoes. It doesn't really matter as long as I get a few bottles of vodka at the end to tell a good recycling story.

The fermenter is bubbling away nicely, I will let you know the results,

[Natrat]

Ha! I hope your ferment is as dry as your humor! I have a lot of experience fermenting "alternative" starches, so I am very interested to see how this works. I think you should call it "Crouton Brut Vodka."