Teff, Fonio, Quinoa and Amaranth: What the Record Says
Three rules carry through the page. A figure appears only where a directory entry states it with its source, and the directory is linked so you can read the entry. "We have found no" means we searched and say what we searched, per the directory family's rules. And nothing here is a protocol: none of this site's mash methods include these grains, so anything you brew with them is a trial, and the trial discipline on the malt lab mash page applies before the grain goes near production.
How they would sit in this process
All four reach a brewer today, where they reach one at all, as unmalted or pre-processed grain, not malt. That settles the process question before the grain does. This site's position is that external enzymes own conversion, and an unmalted grain in a gluten-free grist is the case that position was built for: gelatinize the starch, liquefy it with a heat-stable alpha-amylase, saccharify with the finishing enzymes, and let the grain contribute flavor, color, body and nitrogen. Gelatinization is the number to check first, because it decides whether the grain needs the 190 °F liquefaction or a cook of its own; of the four, only quinoa has a sourced row on the gelatinization page, at about 53 to 74 °C across collected studies. The other three carry no sourced gelatinization span on this site.
A second thing settles itself the same way. The 5 IBU hop-extract rule and yeast nutrition were written for a sorghum base that gives the yeast little to work with; a grist carrying one of these grains as a minor addition changes that arithmetic by an amount nobody has measured, so measure it.
Teff
What the record says. Teff malt develops real amylase activity, below barley's, with limit dextrinase notably strong and workable free amino nitrogen; that is the 2014 malting review's summary, and the field's definitive one (Teff directory). Malt quality depends on which variety is malted and how the grain was stored, the same lot-level lesson this site documents for sorghum. The best published brewing numbers come from a 2017 study of the Witkop variety, malted under optimized conditions by the Perugia brewing-research group; read that entry before you design a steep, because the parameters are the study's and this site does not restate them.
Where to get it. The United States grows teff at commercial scale; an Idaho company puts its own run at some forty years and mills flour distributed nationwide, and its contract growers span six western states. What you can buy is grain and flour. As of September 2026 we have found no US malthouse listing teff malt.
What has been brewed. One commercial gluten-free beer we have found, a teff gose from a dedicated brewery in Oregon, which per the linked coverage ran whole teff through a cornmeal mill rather than a malthouse. Unmalted teff in a commercial grist, once.
Where it runs out. No published US teff malting that we have found; the malting science is European, concentrated in one group, and quiet since 2017; no funder of teff malting anywhere we can find, as of September 2026. Most US acreage is forage, so the variety and lot identity that the malting literature says matters is not part of how US teff trades.
Fonio
What the record says. A Nigerian biochemistry corpus from 1995 to the mid-2000s malted fonio (acha) varieties and found beta-amylase the major starch-degrading enzyme, an enzyme profile the directory describes as resembling barley's; five of eight varieties in the 2000 study showed good malting properties, with one standout. A 1995 study compared acha malt against pearl millet and sorghum malts and concluded a blend could match barley malt's profile. That corpus has, in anything we have found, no active successor (Fonio directory).
Where to get it. A brewing-supply house sells fonio to US brewers in 50-pound bags as an unmalted, pre-gelatinized grain, and the trade press reports a second distributor carrying it. Pre-steamed grain arrives with its starch already gelatinized, which changes the mash question rather than answering it. As of September 2026 we have found no US cultivation; the American layer is import-based, and the industry's own players make competing claims about whether processing at volume exists.
What has been brewed. Seven breweries on four continents brewed fonio in one 2024 campaign, one of them a research laboratory at 100% fonio and one at 15%. Whether any of them used malted fonio, raw fonio, or enzyme-supported brewing is not stated for most. Published brewing data from any of the seven would be the field's most valuable new document.
Where it runs out. The malting science is dormant and the campaign beers were brewed against a thirty-year-old evidence base. Since 2025 "fonio" is known to cover two independently domesticated species, a which-fonio-is-in-the-bag question no lot standard answers.
Quinoa
What the record says. Quinoa is the one grain here already inside commercial US gluten-free beer. A 2018 study found unmalted quinoa could replace up to 30% of barley malt without added enzymes, with positive sensory results; that is a barley-grist result, and it says nothing about a 100% gluten-free grist. Companion work found quinoa additions measurably enrich wort minerals. A 2016 study covers what malting does to quinoa's phenolics and Maillard products; no malthouse we have found has industrialized it (Quinoa and amaranth directory).
Where to get it. A gluten-free malthouse carries flaked quinoa as an unmalted adjunct, the documented route into US brewhouses. As of September 2026 we have found no published quinoa malt from any US malthouse.
What has been brewed. A dedicated gluten-free brewery in Pennsylvania builds its beers on millet and quinoa, year-round. One profile describes its quinoa as malted; we have not been able to confirm that with the brewery, and it would be the only account of malted quinoa in a US brewhouse we have found.
Where it runs out. Quinoa's bitter seed-coat saponins are removed in processing; the one published specification we have found is the Codex quinoa standard's 0.12% saponin maximum, written for food grain, not brewing. As of September 2026 nobody has published quinoa's behavior in commercial gluten-free brewhouse practice, though it happens every week.
Amaranth
What the record says. Amaranth's brewing science stops at feasibility: an unmalted-pseudocereals assessment and a Canadian study tracking iron, folate and protein through amaranth brewing show it can be done. As of September 2026 we have found no follow-up program, no variety work for brewing, and no commercial brewing practice. The genome, a federal collection and a diversity panel all exist; what is missing is anyone breeding or malting it for a market that would use it.
Where to get it. Real acreage and real food products; no documented brewing chain at all, as of September 2026.
What we would test first
If we brewed one of these tomorrow, the order would be quinoa, then teff, then fonio, then amaranth, and the reason is supply rather than science: quinoa is the only one a US brewer can buy from a malthouse in a brewing form, teff is the only one grown here at scale, fonio arrives pre-gelatinized from an importer, and amaranth has no chain. The first test on any of them is the malt lab mash under the reference mash: extract, iodine, runoff, FAN, turbidity, with the grain as a stated fraction of a sorghum grist, before anyone writes a recipe.
Where the record runs out, in one place
Each directory ends with the gaps it found, and the Coverage Map holds all of them in one line apiece. Two are shared by all four grains: no released malting-quality dataset for any of them, and no per-lot reporting practice; both are entered on Open Problems and covered by Ask 8, which takes malt data on any gluten-free grain. If you have brewed with any of these and kept records, that is the document the field is missing.