strahmhv

Recipes 

Hey everyone, I'm a farmer here in southern California, and I just bagged about 50lbs of grain from out last harvest. I've been brewing for about 6 months and will be starting my first all-grain batch this week as soon as the maltmill arrives.

My question is how important is the grain variety? What is 2-row, 4-row etc.?

All of our wheat fields are Durham variety, which is used for pasta rather bread. Is this usable for beer brewing?

If this is too complex a subject to explain here, i'll gladly read up on it if someone can direct me to a good resource.

McKBrew

Recipes 

2 row and 6 row are types of malted barley. You could brew with a certain percentage of wheat, but all grain needs to be malted prior to brewing.

Refer to www.howtobrew.com for the free online first edition. It has a pretty decent explanation of how grain becomes beer.

Yuri_Rage

Recipes 

Raw (unmalted) wheat can add some character to a brew, but it cannot be used alone or as a major portion of the grain bill. Durum wheat was mentioned in the last issue of BYO magazine. According to the article (page 52, Jul/Aug 2008), it's very high in protein, which is generally not desirable in a brewing grain. Also, raw wheat is more difficult to crush properly than malted barley and should be gelatinized using a cereal mash technique prior to using it in the main mash.

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nathan

Recipes 

You can make some nice bread or pasta with it, though!

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beer.

Bob

Recipes 

Raw wheat is a bitch. It's like milling little rubber BBs. It's often used in traditional Belgian Witbier.

Cheers,

Bob

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david_42

Recipes 

Durham wheat is probably the worst grain choice for brewing. It is hard and high in protein. Even for barley, there are high-protein feed strains and low-protein malting barleys.

If you really like wheat beers, it might be worth while to learn the malting process. But, plan on very hazy beers.

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brewt00l

Recipes 

http://www.byo.com/feature/284.html
http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12.html