Preliminary Evaluation of Minor Cereals as Non-Traditional Brewing Raw Materials

Recently, “minor” cereals have been gaining interest due to their distinctive characteristics, not only in terms of nutritional and health potential, but also because of their hardiness. To date, the use of several of these cereals for the production, both at artisan and industrial level, of foods such as pasta and bakery products has already been well established, whereas their investigation for the production of malt and beer has been more limited. In this work, a preliminary analysis of the malting aptitude of einkorn, tritordeum, food-grade sorghum and teff was evaluated. Grain quality parameters that influence the processes of malting and transformation into alcoholic beverages were evaluated, i.e., thousand-kernel weight, test weight, total protein and starch content, falling number, germination capacity, germination energy and amylase activity. Grain analyses showed, on average, satisfactory values for alcoholic fermented beverage production in all the cereal species examined (mainly in tritordeum), whereas the amylase activity of the malts produced was lower than that revealed in barley malt. Fermented drinks derived from these minor cereals, therefore, could be interesting for the light and gluten-free beer markets.