Lookit what I got!
In case you aren’t a homebrewer, that there is spent grain. This is what’s left after you brew the beer (but before it ferments), and it’s often used as fertilizer, mulch or animal feed. But it’s just grains, full of fiber and totally good for you, so my pal Heather filled up a nice big bag for me to play with. What a doll!
I found this recipe and tried a couple batches. The first was the recipe as written (which includes peanut butter—not my favourite), and the second was my little take, sans peanut butter and nuts. And the winner is . . . definitely the recipe as written. Mine came out dense and I daresay even fudgy, but not the good kind like you want. Also, the peanut butter doesn’t shine, it just adds to the nuttiness of the grains, and though I could probably work out some butter in its place, I would make this with peanut butter again. I did replace the oil with butter because I think it makes things a little fluffier and I felt these ran the risk of being too dense. But these tasted like super-earthy oatmeal cookies. I used only whole wheat flour and it didn’t even taste like dirt!
And hey if you don’t have access to these, no worries! I would imagine this recipe would work well for any grain mixture you might prefer. I’m thinking of bulgur in particular, but I’m not big on grain cereals. Since these grains are wet when they go in the recipe, make sure yours are cooked (and wet) before you measure them and toss them in.
Let’s take a look!
Say what you want about the taste and calorie content, peanut butter is beautiful. Onto the dry ingredients.
At this point, I felt like it was time to spread these on a pinecone, and was a little skeptical about the recipe.
These are generous tablespoons smushed down just a little bit so they’ll have a nice cookie shape.
My MY aren’t you all so lovely.
Enjoy!
Nutty Spent Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from a recipe featured by Seven Bridges Cooperative.
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 tbsp melted butter
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1.5 cups spent grains (or alternatively, 1.5 cups of your favourite grain meal, prepared and still wet)
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nuts
Mix in the peanut butter, regular butter, sugar, milk and vanilla. Then add the flour, baking soda and salt. Once that’s all mixed, stir in the nuts and chips.
Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 425F for 8-10 minutes until the tops are just getting golden, but before the bottoms burn. Let sit on the pan for about five minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool. Serve with love.
Makes about 2 dozen cookies after batter sampling.
does your friend heather make a good homebrew? whee! i want to pick up homebrewing and make my own pumpkin ale.
those cookies look nom-nomish by the way.
Looks really good..and especially with the word “chocolate”
I love this idea… makes me think that I need to get a hold of some spent grain. Maybe Amanda has it right, and I need to brew some of my own beer… and THEN make cookies!
Amanda – I’m not really sure, I don’t like beer, no matter how much I try. But I’ve heard tell it’s very good.
Lo – Totally! I’m glad I have friends making it so I don’t have to to get the grains, haha.
what a creative use for whole grains! have you tried subbing almond butter for the peanut butter? i think the flavor is far superior, but it would still add that nuttiness that you’re looking for…
So! I love every recipe, and change to a recipe you have ever posted- you’re amazing. And, I have something equally amazing, or so I choose to think: CLIF BAR COOKIES!
I took your recipe and decided, because I was lazy and HAD granola, to use granola. And then I boiled it and prepared it like grain and waited a while for it to cool.
Well, I had the rest of the ingredients just sitting there waiting and then when I thought the granola was done, I threw it in. It wasn’t done, and so those yummy chocolate chips melted in.
Tasted the batter, thought it was decent, let it cool fully, added another serving of chocolate chips so that I could have the chippy bits in my cookies.
Oh, and I added almonds.
And, then I baked them in my temperamental gas oven- they turned into an almost muffin texture- and they tasted extraordinarily close to those scrumptious chocolate clif bars.
I’m a homebrewer and am so glad to no longer be throwing away my spent grains. A good friend back home in CA sent me this recipe, knowing I’ve really picked up the pace brewing here in Chicago. Both times I substituted brown sugar for white, most recently it was more half (brown) and half (white) though, using up what I had around the house. I found that the cookies were increasingly tastier as a function of the type of beer I brewed…i.e. a nice red ale uses grains more conducive to cookies than a lager. Thanks for the great recipe! They are quite popular everywhere my brews/baked goods have gone!!
AWESOME!!! My husband brews and I use the spent grains to make these! They are wonderful. Thanks for passing the recipe on.
Ms. Om Nom,
First off, big thanks for this recipe. I’m a homebrewer and have been using my spent grains to make batches of these wonders since finding this page. Question, however: How to fix the problem of hard/crunchy bits of grain in the cookies? Most of each cookie is soft and proper, but there’re always tough grains in each one. A matter of how fine to mill the grain, perhaps?
Again, you’ve done homebrewers a fine service with this one–top marks.
The recipe doesnt specify when the grains go in…im sure its not a huge deal but i put them before nuts and chips.
[...] Meanwhile I took some of his spent grain (grain that the sugar has been extracted from), and took on a little recipe of my own: Spent grain cookies. You may remember my last attempt at spent grain cookies, which ended in disaster, but this time I totally nailed it. Thanks Omnomicon for the great recipe! [...]
[...] chip cookies My wife found this recipe while I was doing a big RIS with 30# of grain. Link to recipe on omnomicon.com. These are *delicious*. I expected to be picking rice hulls out of my teeth, but they're actually [...]
[...] (nostalgia, maybe?) posted this spent grain cookie recipe the other day. http://www.omnomicon.com/spent-grain-cookies. I just made the batter up and yum, [...]
Just made these with spent grains from my bf’s brown ale. Holy Crap!! I didn’t have wheat flour, so I used pancake mix, and I don’t like nuts in baked goods, so I modified a little, but WOW. The brown ale had a similar taste to Moose Drool and works perfectly with the chocolate and peanut butter. Thanks for a great recipe!!
[...] a pick of them and a link http://www.omnomicon.com/spent-grain-cookies so you can get the recipe for spent grain cookies Spent Grain Cookies RSS feed for comments [...]
[...] a recipe for Spent Grain Cookies over at Omnomicon while browsing. Haven’t had a chance to try them out yet but they look very good! Nutty [...]
[...] http://www.omnomicon.com/spent-grain-cookies from → Uncategorized ← U.S. Brewers Back to Pre-Prohibition Levels LikeBe the first to like this post. No comments yet [...]
Yeah! No more “beer bread”! So glad to have something to make besides the twelve heavy loaves that come out of every brew batch. And the cookies are turning out way easier to give away, too.
No nuts for me, I replaced the oil and peanut butter with eggs (makes them a little fluffier, too).
[...] omnomicon.com cookie recipe [...]
This is AWESOME! Only problem is that I usually have 15-20 pounds of grain, so I’ll have to make a LOT of cookies! haha!
How many weight watcher points in one cookie?
My husband & son have recently started homebrewing and my husband has been making bread from the spent grain. He tried several recipes and after some tweaking have settled on one we really like. We were freezing the spent grain in portioned packages but it really fills up the freezer fast. He would run the defrosted grain through a food processor which is difficult but helps a little with the bigger pieces of hard grain. Now we dry the spent grain which we store in air tight containers on a shelf and it is easier to process. He then reconstitutes the finely ground spent grain with water before adding it to the recipe. We have had to adjust the measurements but are very pleased with the results. I’m glad to find other uses for the spent grain since we have so much of it. If these cookies turn out as good as they sound, I will have a new cookie to give away this Christmas.
My boyfriend and I made our first homebrew last night! It was exciting and a little daunting, but everything seemed to work out. Today we decided to use the spent malt to make these cookies, and now I cannot stop eating them. They are delicious and we love that the recipe doesn’t require eggs. Thank you for this post!
Oh and f.y.i. the recipe does not state when to add the spent malt. Might want to edit that in.
[...] Spent grain chocolate chip cookies [...]
[...] fingers in it, and commented that she wanted to try baking cookies with it. When I told her about baking with spent grains, she cackled with giddy excitement. I was also particularly impressed with her ability to pick [...]
Posting again with my second home brew.
**You still havent changed the recipe to state when the grains are put in!! Crucial info considering the post is about the spent grains.** Hope you fix that soon.
Still lovin the cookies though. Reply to TIm- put the grains in a food processor. Other than that your just ganna have do deal. Just think of it as yummy fibers that will help your body digest!
Just baked a batch of these after using the spent grains from an Oatmeal Stout we brewed last night. These cookies are objectively awesome. Mine turned out very fluffy…almost like a scone texture. I’ll definitely be doing this again!
[...] Yesterday was a Brew Day at our house. Today there’s a batch of Bourbon Barrel Porter happily fermenting in corner of my living room. There are also several dozen beer cookies resting happily in my kitchen. I’ve been aware of the concept of baking with the leftover grain from the brew process (called spent grain*) for some time now, but this was my first attempt at it. The cookies are soft and have sort of a nutty oatmeal taste about them. Definitely not your traditional chocolate chip cookies; they remind me more of a breakfast/energy bar. A delicious breakfast/energy bar, that is. Find the recipe here. [...]
I found in my gas oven, it was better to cook these for 7 minutes at 425, or dial back the heat a bit. I added some cinnamon and nutmeg, and did half butterscotch chips. Also, I did half all purpose rather than all whole wheat, and found I hand to add some more butter and milk to make the dough moist enough. Pretty tasty. Healthy tasting. Not really a cookie (I think the work folks would be disappointed by these) but more like a chewy biscuit. Husband just said mmm, though and had his third. So that’s my review.
[...] 1/3 cup of additional bread flour (probably could have added more).Spent Grain Cookies *taken from hereI followed the recipe as written, but I did not have any chocolate chips or nuts. Since the grains [...]
[...] Butter Chocolate Chip Spent Grain Cookies From Omnomicon [...]
Thanks! These were super delicious! I love how you can see the grains in the cookie itself!
[...] during the boil I remembered that I saw a recipe for peanut butter chocolate spent grain cookies on omnomicon.com, so I decided to try it and they came out great! Here is the [...]
Thank you! We’ve been using this recipe for awhile now and it’s always fantastic! Potential variation: sliced almonds rather than walnuts…delicious.
I just made this batch of cookies with leftover Carapils grains (I left out the nuts and added a few more chocolate chips cause my hubby doesn’t like nuts). Let me just say, these are very yummy!! They taste like a guilt-free cookie which is a plus during the holiday season. Thanks so much for this great recipe!!
[...] almost all day for it to rise and finally just threw it in the oven! I’m hoping to try these spent grain chocolate chip cookies next time. That’s all for now. The babies are both napping so I’m going to try to do [...]
These are amazing! I’ve baked a few batches with the left overs from hubby’s recent brew, and all have turned out perfectly. I added chopped dried apricots in place of the nuts for this final batch
Wonderful recipe, thank you
[...] Cookies [...]
[...] neither of which blew me away. The granola burned and flour smelled like a barn. Then I attempted these cookies with several modifications and was disappointed—they were crumbly and prickly with the [...]
I made a porter using chocolate grains so I thought it would be great for this recipe. I made a double batch but used 1/2 almond butter and 1/2 nutella instead of peanut butter. The batter was dark so I threw in milk chocolate and white chocolate chips…AWESOME!!! Thanks for the recipe!
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