1st all grain wheat brew

This weekend will be my first all grain brew using wheat as 50% of the grain bill. Any tips or suggestions for brewing with wheat.

Use rice hulls! Half a pound to a pound should be fine.

This will help with a stuck sparge or suction in the mash (after sparge you notice the grain bed isnt touching the sides of the mash tun). The rice hulls add some structure to the mash that is missing because wheat malt is huskless.

Thanks, I'll definitely do that. I actually have some rice hulls leftover from a previous brew.

Like Dex, I'm also going to be brewing my first wheat beer. I also plan on using rice hulls. My question is, since wheat does not have husks, does that change the absorption rate? or do the rice hulls make up for that?

My absorption rate is usually 30% when my mash ratio is a 1.25 q / 1 lbs grain. (easily adjustable). I'm just curious that if 50% of my grain bill is wheat, is going to have a huge effect? Should I sparge less?

Its not a huge deal. Just curious.

DexWeaver said:

This weekend will be my first all grain brew using wheat as 50% of the grain bill. Any tips or suggestions for brewing with wheat.

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What's your recipe? Wheat smells awesome in the mash.

I wouldn't worry about mash absorption. Mash a bit thinner if you want and just sparge until you have your volume. The rice hulls will help you achieve a nice runoff during the sparge.

If you are batch sparging I would just do it like you would any other beer.

I'm kind of shooting for a double wheat. Here's the recipe.

7 lbs Red Wheat
5 lbs 2-Row
1 lb Flaked Barley
1 lb Golden Naked Oats
1 lb Rice Hulls

1 oz Hallertauer at 60 min
1 oz Spalter at 15 min

Wyeast 1010 American Wheat yeast

Yum.

You will get some more absorption, I know I did. I'd bump it up to 1.5qt/lb. at least. The rice hulls will help though.

funkswing said:

I wouldn't worry about mash absorption. Mash a bit thinner if you want and just sparge until you have your volume. The rice hulls will help you achieve a nice runoff during the sparge.

If you are batch sparging I would just do it like you would any other beer.

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+1

If you're batch sparging, don't worry about it.

If you're fly sparging, rice hulls can help prevent alot of frustration. Soak rice hulls in water and add them at the end.

Also, a glucan rest can help increase your extract, and make runoff a little easier, but is not necessarily necessary.

Keeping the temp up helps to keep the runoff fluid and prevents the grainbed from gelling up. I pretty much always mashout when using a lot of wheat/oats, mostly for the higher runoff temp. Think warm vs cold syrup.

I never use ricehulls with my wheat beers (typically 65% or so wheat) and never have any problem running off or batch sparging. But I use a bazooka screen in my mash tun so I don't know if that is what makes it work so well. That said, if you do use rice hulls I think 1lb is an insane amount. Don't know if you've used them before but 1lb is a pretty large volume of hulls. I typically only use a few handfuls.


Rev.

Rev2010 said:

I never use ricehulls with my wheat beers (typically 65% or so wheat) and never have any problem running off or batch sparging. But I use a bazooka screen in my mash tun so I don't know if that is what makes it work so well. That said, if you do use rice hulls I think 1lb is an insane amount. Don't know if you've used them before but 1lb is a pretty large volume of hulls. I typically only use a few handfuls.


Rev.

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Yeah, 1 lb is prolly way too much. I never use rice hulls either, but I do tend to get a suction in the mash tun resulting in the grain bed compacting and ends up with a gap between the mash tun wall and grain bed. Never had a stuck mash, but using a couple of handfuls of rice hulls is only going to help!

Thanks for the tips everyone! I will probably only throw in a handful or two of the rice hulls to help out, I just have a pound of them left from a previous brew so that's why I put 1 lb on the recipe. I can't wait to see how this brew turns out.

Dex, I'm gonna give this adjunct mash a shot with my old brew kettle. My wheat, flaked wheat, and a little bit of 6-row.

If you have Mosher's book, Radical Brewing, its on page 139 and again on 205. Lots of great info. He says that you're not going to get what you want out of the wheat texture-wise, with out boiling it.



Kind of tough to see. Green is the adjunct line. Red is your normal mash with pils or 2-row or whatever. Blue indicates your sparge.

Its not necessary, but I just thought I'd share. Its fun to experiment, ya know?

I bottled my Blue Moon clone last night and can say there was probably a half gallon of gelatinous wheat goo in the bottom of the bottling bucket. It's definitely key to have a good filtration system in your sparge to get these coagulated proteins from finding their way into your beer. Also, be careful with grain bills that have a lot of wheat, in general.