Malted vs Unmalted wheat

Oldsock said:

Traditionally unmalted wheat was used in a turbid mash that converted some of the starches and left others gelatinized to create a complex wort to sustain the long mixed-fermentation. Malted wheat would not work, its starches are too easily converted and would yield easily fermentable sugars.

If you are planning to do a single infusion mash, there really won't be much of a difference between malted and unmalted wheat. Their flavors aren't exactly the same, but with the complex character of the fermentation it is probably not noticeable.

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brewbobaggins said:

In Wild Brews, Jeff Sparrow simplifies a turbid mash for the Lambic homebrewer scale by simply taking 10% of the grist (just 2-row and rice hulls) and along with all of the unmalted wheat and doing a rest at 145°F for 30 minutes then bringing it to a boil for 30 minutes (somewhere in pages 143-148, I do believe). That way the wheat can gelatinize. After that, you just pour that boiled mixture into the mash and mash around 158°F like normal.

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Oldsock said:

I've done the "WYeast mash" from Wild Brews a couple of times, with pretty mediocre results. It's really just a cereal mash, I don't see any advantage to it over a standard infusion mash with something like flaked wheat that is already gelated. I've had much better results with the full turbid. It really isn't that hard or long, espeically when you consider the time going into aging a sour beer.

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