For a lambic you want soft red wheat, for a wit you want soft white wheat. Hard wheats are not ideal for brewing as they contain far too much protein.
They will work, but they are tougher to work with, give a lower yield, and are not traditionally what is used. Any raw wheat will require a rigorous mash involving a protein rest such as a turbid or cereal (decoctions are not traditionally used with styles featuring raw wheat), if you aren't doing those then you need to be using flaked/torrified. The high levels of proteins are avoided more for the difficulty they cause in sparging, and they are harder making it more difficult to mill. Most excess proteins left over in the wort will flake out in the 3+ hour boils you will be doing on lambics anyway, so stability isn't the issue.I disagree, I have made respectable lambics with both white and hard red wheat from a place like whole foods, Ive even used their flaked wheat in saisons with no stability issues, their maybe higher levels of protein in this type of wheat vs what you would buy as wheat made for malting, but it will all get eaten by the bugs in the end, and for "clean beers" protein rests help, continental malt of old in europe was extremely hard, mealy and loaded with protein and was why more rigorous brewing techniques like decoctions etc evolved
They will work, but they are tougher to work with, give a lower yield, and are not traditionally what is used. Any raw wheat will require a rigorous mash involving a protein rest such as a turbid or cereal (decoctions are not traditionally used with styles featuring raw wheat), if you aren't doing those then you need to be using flaked/torrified. The high levels of proteins are avoided more for the difficulty they cause in sparging, and they are harder making it more difficult to mill. Most excess proteins left over in the wort will flake out in the 3+ hour boils you will be doing on lambics anyway, so stability isn't the issue.
If you are using any form of raw wheat you are doing better than most brewers, but the soft ones are what you should use given the choice.
I'm not talking about protein levels being lowered due to modern growing methods, I'm talking about specific cultivars of wheat. Modern growing methods actually favor higher protein levels as the majority of the wheat grown is for bread and the more gluten the better.my reference to high protein mealy continental malt was to emphasize the fact that good beer has been made from malt with high protein contents, even though they have gotten significantly better, I would shy away from saying that they were not traditionally used however, as until recently there wasnt much in the way of testing on brewing grains and lambics etc have been around for a very long time, I would guess that much of the wheat/barley used in their production even around the turn of the last century could have had fairly high protein contents as they were typically farm run breweries, and whatever they grew when to both food and beer
I have never found a source that has indicated that. Decoction mashing is almost exclusively a German technique and all German wheat beers use malted wheat. Witbiers are a pretty tough style to get solid information on, Radical Brewing and Brewing with Wheat are the only sources I have found with reliable information on them. Mosher recommends a cereal mash and Hieronymus discusses turbid mashes being the most traditional.When you mention that decoctions are not traditionally employed when using a raw wheat, that seems odd to me, as I thought that decoctions were used quite often on witbiers
I'm not talking about protein levels being lowered due to modern growing methods, I'm talking about specific cultivars of wheat. Modern growing methods actually favor higher protein levels as the majority of the wheat grown is for bread and the more gluten the better.
Soft wheats and hard wheats are different varieties of wheat, hard wheats are higher in protein and specifically gluten (about 80% of the proteins). Soft wheats are grown mostly for pastry flours, but coincidentally work better for brewing as well.
I have never found a source that has indicated that. Decoction mashing is almost exclusively a German technique and all German wheat beers use malted wheat. Witbiers are a pretty tough style to get solid information on, Radical Brewing and Brewing with Wheat are the only sources I have found with reliable information on them. Mosher recommends a cereal mash and Hieronymus discusses turbid mashes being the most traditional.
If you wanted to try one, a decoction mash would probably improve extract yield over an infusion or turbid mash but less so than a cereal mash. I would keep your decoction boils as short as possible though, you don't really want any of the color or flavor development that are typical of decocted wort.
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