Unmalted Wheat - Partial Mash Brewing

Posted this in Recipes without much luck. Thought I would try in this forum:


I'm a big fan of Boulevard Wheat. I posted what I learned about it from their lead brewer in another thread. Now I need some help figuring out how to get closer to the right malt combination based on what he told me...bearing in mind I'm a partial mash brewer.

Here's what he said:

"We use approx. 60% Pale malt, 19% unmalted wheat, and 21% malted wheat in our malt bill."

The Pale and malted wheat are easily accomplished with DME/LME (I prefer DME) even though I'll have to live with 35 percent barley rather than pure wheat malt. The question I have is to what extent I can meet the requirement for unmalted wheat by steeping?

Let's say I have this for the recipe:

4 lbs Pale DME
2 lbs Wheat DME

Can I steep say, 2 lbs (or 3 or whatever) of unmalted wheat to get the starches/flavoring required? Or should I just give up trying to use it and go straight extract?

I haven't played with this on Beersmith yet. i wanted to get your input first.

Original Gravity (Plato) 11.3 (1.045 SG)
Terminal Gravity (Plato) 2.7 (1.010 SG)

Thanks

You need a malt with diastatic power for unmalted wheat flakes and mash it at 150*f for at least 40 minutes to convert the starches to sugar. your dme/lme is void of enzymes responsible for the conversion.
Id suggest looking up partial mashing of mini mash when using that much unmalted wheat.

You need enzymes to convert starches to sugars... unmalted wheat doesn't have the enzymes necessary, therefore it needs to be mashed with some other malt.

Here's the easiest thing i can think of:

-40% wheat DME
-40% pale malt
-20% unmalted wheat

Mash the two row and the unmalted wheat together.

You will need to do a mini-mash with some pale malt to use raw aduncts. Unless you want cream-of-wheat in your beer, which is what flaked wheat in hot water will make.

Have you tried just using wheat DME? As you mentioned, wheat DME is usually around 35% barley. Back when I did extract brewing, I made some really good wheat beers with only wheat DME.

I really only use unmalted wheat in my wit beers. I suspect Boulevard uses unmalted wheat because it's a lot cheaper than malted wheat, not that it's necessarily better than using a larger percentage of wheat malt.

Thank you for the info.

In the recipe I'm trying now I used 1 lb of flaked wheat with a half-pound of Golden Light DME. (And yes, at the end of the steeping the bag looked like Cream of Wheat. lol.)

I'm going to play around with this a little bit and find out what ultimately works. The obvious and easiest answer is to just go Golden and Wheat DME.

From what you guys have conveyed I'm going to Beersmith this a little. My next attempt I believe I'll try steeping some unmalted wheat in some of the Pale DME then go from there. If that doesn't turn out quite right I'll go straight DME.

I also need to read more about brewing. I've done my share of partial mash - many many batches, but I've always followed directions (with occasional modifications for my own recipes) without really knowing the 'why'. I think I'd like to start learning the whys.

Thanks again.

Whoa whoa whoa. You need to back up several steps.

Some clarification and reiteration:

1) Unmalted grains need enzymes to convert the starches into sugars.
2) There are NO ENZYMES in DME. You cannot use DME to convert starches in unmalted grains.
3) To get some enzymes, you need some base malt... two-row, pale malt, pilsener, even munich will provide enzymes for you to be able to use the unmalted wheat.

Oops...Ok. Got it.

Thanks for coming back and clarifying that for me! From what you posted my ratio should be 2:1 on base malt:unmalted?

*EDIT*

I've done some more reading and checking around the forums and it makes perfect sense to me. Thanks kanzimonson for re-explaining. The light just went on and I get it. Looking forward to giving this a try.