Different Efficiency with Wheat?

Baron von BeeGee said:

Since I started crushing my own grains and went to my new coolertun I've been getting between 78-83% efficiency with barley-based recipes (I'm not sure which was the important factor). They might include 5-7% wheat.

However, with wheat-based recipes (50-60% wheat) I can't get beyond the low 70's on the same system? Does anybody else observe this phenomenon? I have had slow runoffs with wheat, but never a stuck my new tun. I test for conversion to make sure it is complete. Is wheat just inherently more difficult to lauter resulting in my lower efficiency, or should barley and wheat-based grists result in similar efficiencies?

I can live with 70% for wheat beers, but if I've got a problem with my process I'd like to correct it.

Click to expand...

Dude said:

I've read that you need to crush the wheat to almost a powder to get decent efficiency from it. It was in a BYO article from the head brewer at Boulevard, IIRC.

Click to expand...

Baron von BeeGee said:

One other thing while we're on the subject...does anybody pre-wet their wheat or steam it before grinding it? I've heard or read that this leaves some portion of the wheat intact which will help with lautering. I'm thinking I could use my espresso machine to steam batches of wheat prior to grinding if it's effective.

Click to expand...