Hard red spring wheat berries

I scored a couple pounds of hard red spring wheat berries. I plan on attempting the malting process with these. Has anyone brewed with this grain in the past, any positive results?

Not high in tannins, that comes from the hulls, which wheat does not have. It will be higher in protien, and therefore give you a haze to your beer (like a good wheat beer should have). All malted wheat will either come from hard red spring or hard white spring wheat, both the same except the colour. As far as malting goes, unless you are getting it for almost nothing, professionally malted wheat is fairly inexpensive, and a lot less hassle than doing it yourself.

If you can find a chart that shows the gelatenizing temps for cereal grain, I think wheat gels in normal mashing temps, so as long as you have enough base malt enzymes, you really don't need to do a malt process with this, or at most do a cereal mash, instead of taking the time to do a full malting step, which will take at least 10 days.

Is this the same thing as red wheat, or something completely different?

Thanks for the reply. I have a few pounds of the stuff very cheap so I will experiment with the red wheat berries and see what works best. I agree the malting process is prob a whole lot of work but I'm going to try that also, just for experimentation purposes. I will most definitely post back my results. Thanks again

Let us know how this works out. Next fall I hope to have something near 200 bushels of this stuff. At 60 pounds per bushel, that could make a lot of beer.

Teromous said:

Is this the same thing as red wheat, or something completely different?

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Same thing. The wheat seeds are technically called berries.

Oh ok. I've made an American style wheat beer before with red wheat and it turned out very nice.

So it's day three, I've been working on malting the wheat berries and they are starting to bud. I'll continue to update on the progress and let y'all know how things turn out.

I malted red winter a couple of times. Still haven't tested the extract though. The two most critical things with malting are

keeping and even temperature and moisture - you want it cool - going for even chitting

using MOVING air at LOW temperature (120F or lower) - this is before you do the kiln and are deciding on pale/munich,whatever

Baking sheet in the oven is labor intensive at best.

I am planning on using some of these, unmalted, in my next beer. The only reason I am adding these is for some cloudiness and flavor.

I live on a farm and make many beers with hard red spring wheat. I use a corona mill to grind it and dump it in the mash for my wits and wheat beers. My roller mill (an MM3) has a hard time with it, and I don't want to wreck the mill. No problems with conversion and it will clear like any other grain if given enough time. I even dump a pound or so in other recipes for great head retention. You don't need to malt it to use it, but if you like challenges go ahead!

onthekeg, you can get conversion even without malting? I was under the impression that you could only get sugars from a modified grain. Oh well either way I appreciate the reply. I only decided to try to malt a small amount of the wheat. I have more so I will compare the differences of malted and unmalted wheats. Thats if my attempt at malting even works.

◦Barley 140-150° F (60-65° C)
◦Wheat 136-147° F (58-64° C)
◦Rye 135-158° F (57-70° C(
◦Oats 127-138° F (53-59° C)
◦Corn (Maize)-143-165°F (62-74° C)
◦Rice 154-172° F (68-78° C)

The wheat gelatinizes in the mash temperature range, so it has the starches available for conversion without malting, but does not have enough of its own enzymes to get the job done. As long as there are additional enzymes from another source (base malt, enzyme additions, etc) the raw wheat will convert. It just won't do it all by itself. And there has to be enough enzymes to convert both the base malt and have leftovers to convert the raw wheat.

Rave,
as said above, if you are 50/50 with base malt there won't be any issues with conversion.

Alright very useful info from all. Thanks

Alright guys I wanted to post an update. The malting prices went ok, a bit labor extensive especially if it's not needed. I brewed an American wheat today that turned out nice, used 50% of the wheat in the grain bill. All went smooth got an 1.058 OG. It's bubbling away as we speak. In a few days I'm going to brew the same recipe using the raw wheat
Berries to see what the differences are between raw and malted wheat. If anyone has questions regarding my process to far let me know. Also I have a poll going on a label in another thread if anyone has time to go over and vote please.

Rave,
Any update on the process?
I have got a farmer friend with a crop of hard red spring wheat, so even though this doesn't seem like the best wheat to use it would be free.
I'd be really interested in how they turned out and a comparison between the malted and un-malted.

Thanks

physics said:

Rave,
Any update on the process?
I have got a farmer friend with a crop of hard red spring wheat, so even though this doesn't seem like the best wheat to use it would be free.
I'd be really interested in how they turned out and a comparison between the malted and un-malted.

Thanks

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Physics,

I apologize for not posting an update earlier. I actually had to take my notes out to reply to this. So I have to say that I made two seperate batches of a wheat ale. One with the wheat that I malted myself, and the second with the wheat berries just as they were. Everything else with the recipies were the same. I got very similar results with both recipies except that I had better conversion with the malted wheat, there was a slight color difference and the taste was a bit more malty with the malted wheat. The raw wheat berries produced a lighter taste and color. With that being said the difference was very small. Taking labor into account, I decided that using the unmalted wheat berries was the best route for me. You definitely need to use it with additional base malts so that you have enough enzymes for conversion power. I actually use a very small percentage of the wheat berries in mostly all my batches, to help with head retention and I find it works pretty good. The malting process was not difficult, but it does require added attention. Also, eventhough the malting process is possible at home, quality control can definitely be a tough to monitor. Either way you can decide which route to take.