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Your First Batch: The Shortest Honest Path

This site runs deep, and depth is a terrible place to start. Here is the shortest honest path from "I want to brew truly gluten-free beer" to a fermenting batch — six steps, each linking to the page that owns the details. Nothing on this page is new knowledge; it is the order to take it in.

One promise before the steps: this path involves no wheat, no barley, no rye, no oats, and no gluten-removed shortcuts — that is the whole point. And one warning: a 100% sorghum malt mash is not barley brewing with a different grain. The enzymes come from a bottle, the temperatures are hotter, and the stirring is not optional. The path below exists because the differences are learnable in one read each.

The six steps​

1. Check your equipment against the mash — before buying grain​

The mash this site teaches wants a recirculating single-vessel electric system (or equivalent temperature control and circulation). Equipment for the Process explains what capability actually matters and why — read it first, because it may change what you buy in step 2.

2. Source by class, not by brand name​

Sourcing the Ingredients tells you what to ask for: pale sorghum malt with a real gluten-free control, enzymes matched by class (product names churn), rice hulls, and the gluten-free wrinkles on yeast and nutrient. Get the gluten-free statements in writing — that habit starts on batch one.

3. Read the mash you are about to run — once, before brew day​

Your mash is MP1 at Homebrew Scale — the standard, translated to five gallons. Read the whole page once. The three things that decide success are on it: enzyme in the water before the grain, continuous stirring, and the 180°F mash-out. If you understand why those three matter, you understand the mash.

4. Brew the American Golden Lager​

Your first recipe — chosen deliberately. It runs MP1 exactly as written, its dry glucose-forward wort is the goal of the style rather than a compromise, and its print-ready run-sheet card takes you through brew day step by step. Use the clean-ale-strain route at 20.5°C for your first pass; it is the documented practice and it removes lagering from the list of things that can go wrong.

5. Write down more than feels necessary​

Products, lots, doses, temperatures, times, gravities, and what surprised you. The run-sheet card has a Record line at every step for exactly this reason. On batch one, the notes are for you. By batch three, they are how you find what changed.

6. Report what happened — especially the failures​

Nobody has published validated homebrew results for this process — which means your first batch is literally research. Research Ask #3 is waiting for it, and contact takes thirty seconds. A stuck lauter honestly described is worth more to the field than a medal.

When something goes wrong​

The most likely first-batch problems, and the pages that own them: a thick, gummy, or stuck mash (crush and rice hulls); a wort that will not convert (enzyme conversion); a beer that finishes thin (the mash-out and the sugar story). None of these mean you failed — they mean you found the part of the process that earns the attention.

After batch one​

Batch two is where the section opens up: the four documented mash methods to compare against the standard, the Oktoberfest when you want malt-forward, and Tavern Ale when you want the best beer Bard's ever made, from memory, waiting for someone to improve it.