Wheat Beer from Extract

I have a few recipes from books that call for a 100% Wheat Extract. Upon going to the local brewstore, I was told that no one has made a 100% Wheat Extract for about 10 years, and most Wheat Extracts are now about 60% Wheat. How would you guys recommend going about making a wheat beer? What extracts would you use?

If I'm not mistaken (and I often am), even German wheat beers are normally about half barley.

Yes, but no lower than 55% wheat,

If the recipe calls for barley malts and wheat malts, just do the appropriate conversion to use 55/45...

Example: Recipe calls for 4lbs. Light Malt and 2lbs. Wheat Malt 100%.

Use 3.66lb. of 55/45 Wheat/Barley mix. (i.e. 2lb. / .55 = 3.66lb of 55/45 mix to get 2lb. of 100% wheat). The remaining 1.66lb. is then 100% barley, so you add 2.33lb. of light malt to get to your 4lb.

Voila: 4lb. light malt, 2lb. wheat malt. You just need to use 2.33lb light malt and 3.66lb of wheat/barley mix to get there. Still the same 6lb. of malt in the original recipe and in the appropriate proportion!

In other words, I wouldn't recommend simply replacement of the 100% wheat in the recipe with a wheat barley mix. Then you are, in essense, changing the proportion in that recipe. If you were to just use 4lb. light malt and 2 lb. of wheat/barley mix you would essentially have 4.9lb light malt and 1.1lb. wheat malt (100%) which isn't the 4/2 proportion in the original recipe.

EDIT: If you are brewing a straight up wheat beer though; use of the 55/45 or a 65/35 mix as suggested above will work just fine.

Get the highest wheat percentage you can find (probably 55-65%) and brew. Even Ireks stopped making their 100% wheat long ago.

so your saying if i want an all wheat beer id have to mash my own?

eriklupust said:

so your saying if i want an all wheat beer id have to mash my own?

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Yep, and good luck with that...you'd have the stuck sparge from hell to deal with. Even in AG most people limit the wheat to no more than 60% of the grist and use rice hulls liberally to assist with the sparge. Wheat extract is perfect for a wheat beer and is within the same range of wheat to barley that commercial brewers use.

When they say "100% Wheat Extract," they mean to only use wheat extract (which comes in the mixes specified above, usually 60/40 or 50/50). They don't mean that the extract itself is 100% wheat.

Nice post CAlexander i was also curious about this as well.

Thanks guys, that helps a lot. In my case I just used 6 lbs of 55% wheat extract, so I'm sure it will work fine. Very interesting to know.

Connor