Making your own dark wheat?

In the past, I've had success making my own mild malt, brown malt and victory malt just from using regular 2-row or pilsner as a base a cooking it. I am on the hunt for some nice dunkleweizen brews and have a lot of wheat malt. Sometimes I will be using specialty grains to get the darkness required, but I thought perhaps I should try to make my own dark wheat malt. Seems dark wheat malt you can buy is only between 7-9L (with the exception of midnight or roasted wheat at 400+L) What about something in between? Something along the lines of carawheat which I believe is 45-50L or perhaps near the 25L range also.

Anyone ever give this a shot or have any idea how this can be done? Thanks.

I can't address you specific questions but just offer some food for thought...

Earlier this week I had a few of Peak Organic Brewing Company's Winter Session Ale. I liked it enough to have more than three and less than five in one session.

It's not a traditional wheat, strong hop presence (bittering, flavor and aroma) balanced against a toasty wheat backbone. It rings in at 60+ IBUs and uses citra hops.

Probably a different style than your looking for but definitely thought provoking...

Here's the link:
http://www.peakbrewing.com/category/our-brews/

Thanks for that info. I might shoot them an email to see if they use some type of dark wheat malt.

And, yes, that beer sounds very interesting.

Mk010101 said:

Thanks for that info. I might shoot them an email to see if they use some type of dark wheat malt.

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If you do get in touch with them let us know what you find out. Thanks!

One sentence reply from peak brewing was: "Ever heard of midnight wheat?"

I do have another email out to a brewer who has done various kinds of crystal, roasted and toasted malts with barley. I asked him if he had done something similar for wheat malts and am waiting his reply. I will post here when I get it.

That's lame. I understand that they are busy but they should at least fake interest. I was just listening to the Sunday session where the interviewed Fal Allen of Anderson valley and he specifically commented on how much they enjoy getting questions and feedback from the public.

Anyway this calls for some experimentation.

seatbelt123 said:

That's lame. I understand that they are busy but they should at least fake interest. I was just listening to the Sunday session where the interviewed Fal Allen of Anderson valley and he specifically commented on how much they enjoy getting questions and feedback from the public.

Anyway this calls for some experimentation.

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Yes, definitely going to do some experimentation this spring/summer on this. I have a sack of red wheat malt and will try to make so crystal wheat, or something along those lines. Here is an email I received from Jason who did the roasting of the barley malts:

http://barleypopmaker.info/2009/12/08/home-roasting-your-malts/

I have not done wheat. But if you are going to use malted wheat, I would start with the same process and taste the grain. If it tastes good, it should make good beer. If it tastes burned (not roasted, but more charred) it will give the beer an acrid flavor that is not too pleasant. That would just be my opinion and where I would start.

Thanks, and I'd be interested to know how that turns out for you.

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If you or anyone else does try this experiment, please post your results on this thread. Thanks!

There used to be a thread floating around the top of one of the sections about roasting your own grain. I've done it before (I made a brown ale starting with 2 row and roasting different portions at different temperatures and times to make all the specialty grains). The advice about the burned grain is very true. If the grain gets too hot it starts to burn and char and you will get a terrible acrid flavor. I tried to make black malt and it got too hot and too dry and resulted in an acrid off flavor.

If you are just trying to make the wheat malt darker, spray it with a little water and toss it in the oven. The darker you want, the hotter the temperature. Check every few minutes to make sure it doesn't get too dark. If it starts to dry out and smoke spray it with some more water.

If you are trying to make a crystal wheat or carawheat, you need to mash the wheat malt by soaking the grains and baking them at 150F first to develop the sugars in the grain then you can bump up the heat to caramelize the sugars and roast the grains.

you could make your batch out of wheat LME - that always end up darker than expected.

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An update from Jason:

I thought you may be slightly interested in this, I am doing some experimentation with my nut roaster and thought I'd pick up a little white wheat to try. Turns out you get a real nice maillard reaction with wheat. I am letting it mellow for a week or two, but here is a pic for you. i did this in a nut roaster on medium heat until the grain started to crackle. The grain before roasting is in the upper left corner.

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Did you track moisture, time, and temperature?

This is interesting.

agreed. I have a weizenbock recipe on the horizon and would like to turn some of my 50lb sack of wheat malt into dark wheat malt

Have you made beer with this yet?