Bajomo & Young 1993–94: 100% Raw Sorghum + Commercial Enzymes
These are external papers. The records of authority are Bajomo, M.F. & Young, T.W., The properties, composition and fermentabilities of worts made from 100% raw sorghum and commercial enzymes, J. Inst. Brewing 99(2) (1993), doi:10.1002/j.2050-0416.1993.tb01158.x, and Fermentation of worts made from 100% raw sorghum and enzymes, J. Inst. Brewing 100:79–84 (1994), doi:10.1002/j.2050-0416.1994.tb00810.x. The figures on this page come from the published abstracts; this page adds the brewing-side reading and reproduces no tables.
What the 1993 paper reports (making the wort)
Per its abstract: an 85-minute mashing program on 100% raw sorghum, using a heat-stable α-amylase with proteolytic enzymes, produced wort with a hot water extract of 295 (JIB hot-water-extract basis) and free amino nitrogen around 40 mg/L at minimal protease dosing. Pushing protease harder raised FAN to 84.5–95 mg/L, which the authors judged commercially unacceptable. Adding an amyloglucosidase (Amylo 300L) shifted the fermentable fraction dramatically — DP1–DP3 sugars rising from 22% to over 90% of total carbohydrate. In fermentation trials, worts holding at least 40 mg/L FAN attenuated fully; the yeast consumed roughly 35 mg/L FAN and 45 mg/L ammonium, where a barley-malt wort comparison consumed 104 mg/L FAN and 37 mg/L of ammonium.
What the 1994 paper reports (fermenting it)
Per its abstract: the raw-sorghum-plus-enzymes worts fermented successfully at 51 mg/L FAN — well below the level held essential for barley-malt wort — with fermentation parameters (gravity, pH, FAN and ammonium uptake) tracking yeast growth normally and a five-fold yeast crop over pitching. Against commercial beers, the resulting beers ran lower in ethyl acetate and higher in 2- and 3-methylbutanol — recognizably beer, with a measurably different ester/fusel balance.
What these numbers mean for brewing
- External enzymes can own conversion outright. No malt, no native enzymes, full attenuation — three decades before this site wrote "external enzymes own conversion" as doctrine, the principle was demonstrated at the bench. This is the literature foundation under the raw-grain row of Mash Methods Compared.
- The glucoamylase lever is old news, deliberately. The 22% → 90% fermentable shift from adding an amyloglucosidase is the same lever The Sugar Bible teaches: the finishing enzyme decides the wort's character, and it decided it in 1993 exactly the way it decides it in a modern glucoamylase-finished mash.
- Sorghum ferments lean, and yeast adapts — within limits. Full attenuation at 40–51 mg/L FAN, versus a 104 mg/L consumption norm on barley wort, is the early version of a pattern this site measures today: sorghum wort runs roughly half of barley's FAN, and fermentation succeeds when nutrition is treated as a design input rather than assumed.
- And the gap the papers don't close is the site's whole point. These beers were made without malt — which is why the ester/fusel profile drifted and why "recognizably beer" is the ceiling of the claim. What raw grain plus enzymes cannot supply is what malt exists for: flavor, body, color, and identity. This site's process keeps the enzyme system these papers validated and puts sorghum malt in front of it.
Honest limits
Abstract-level extraction: laboratory scale, one research program, and enzyme products of the early 1990s — product names and formulations from these papers should not be read as recommendations (this site's working products are on Mash Protocol 1, chosen through separate commercial trials). The FAN figures are wort- and yeast-specific findings, not universal thresholds. And the JIB hot-water-extract basis differs from modern congress-extract reporting — compare directions, not decimals.