Mashing with wheat

I'm making my first wheat AG beer this weekend(or whenever my stuff gets here). I couldn't find a definite answer on whether a 50% malted wheat/50% barley bill needs a protein rest.

I'm getting conflicting info. Beer Captured doesn't have one, but Joy of Homebrewing recipes seem overly-complex and all have multi-step mashes. Can I get away with a single-step 151F 60 minute mash?

You can do a single infusion. A 20 minute protein rest would help breakdown some of the larger proteins in the wheat and *may* help lautering, but a single infusion will do nicely. If you're doing 50/50 wheat/barley I would add a 1/2lb of rice hulls.

Thanks, Baron. I was planning on adding some rice hulls anyway. Doing a multiple-step mash seems like a PITA in a cooler MLT.

grnich said:

Thanks, Baron. I was planning on adding some rice hulls anyway. Doing a multiple-step mash seems like a PITA in a cooler MLT.

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It's not too bad, actually, but it is time consuming. The easiest route is to infuse with boiling water (slowly so as not to denature your mash) for each step up. The medium route (at least according to me) is to pull decoctions. The most difficult route, at least in terms of having to fabricate something, would be steam injection (though this should be relatively simple to operate once fabricated).

Here is a Hefeweizen discussion and why you might want to consider step mashing, but I would definitely start out with a single infusion and go from there as you see fit:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=7713&highlight=Weihenstephan

I do the multi step mashes in my cooler MLT and they work great... If I am not using rice hulls, I will sometimes replace some pale malt with some 6-row, more husks...

Pol

Baron von BeeGee said:

Here is a Hefeweizen discussion and why you might want to consider step mashing, but I would definitely start out with a single infusion and go from there as you see fit:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=7713&highlight=Weihenstephan

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Wow, that's a lot of info to absorb. I'll try a single-step first to see how it turns out. My standards are probably lower than yours

grnich said:

Wow, that's a lot of info to absorb. I'll try a single-step first to see how it turns out. My standards are probably lower than yours

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I doubt it I just like experimenting.