Tips for mashing wheat?

Greetings all. The last few recipes I've done using high percentages of wheat have had very poor efficiency. I've been getting close to 100% conversion efficiency on my AG brews, so I know my temps and procedures are sound. Some folks have said this is common with wheats, so I'm looking for tips on anything that might need to be done differently when doing this type of recipe.

I've been using 3 gallons of bottled spring water and the rest tap water that's sat overnight in my mashes. I do not know my water chemistry, but it's city water and not unusually hard or high in iron.

My most recent brew was Bee Cave Brewery's Kolsch where I got 54% efficiency.

5.25gals into the fermenter at 1.041. First runnings were 1.069 and pre-boil 1.029.

7# 2 row Pils Malt
2.5 # Wheat Malt

Mashed at 151F at 1.5qt/lb.

Any advice is welcome! Thanks,

-Joe

Beta-glucan rest around 110F for high percentage of wheat or rye. Should help efficiency as it will be less gummy and easier to lauter.



Also debranching enzymes run at this temp so it will make it easier for the amylase enzymes to do there thing.

Denny, thanks for posting that.
I have done my cereal mashes at 130 for 30 minutes and storing in a pot in the oven while I heated my water, . I must have read it wrong and stuck in my brain with the wrong information.

Might it also be something as simple as the crush on the wheat? I set my crush a little finer when running my wheat and have great efficiency (80-85%) with no BG rest. I will have to do that rest and compare. I do add rice hulls and do batch sparge.

Interesting. I really don't want to screw around with the crush on my mill if I can help it, since I'm getting 100% conversion efficiency with other grains. Maybe I'll try running the wheat more than once.

I'll also look into the rest. Thanks for the suggestions!

-Joe

nostalgia said:

Interesting. I really don't want to screw around with the crush on my mill if I can help it, since I'm getting 100% conversion efficiency with other grains. Maybe I'll try running the wheat more than once.

I'll also look into the rest. Thanks for the suggestions!

-Joe

Click to expand...

That is what I do. I run the wheat through the mill by itself, then run it again with the other grains

Update: did a recipe yesterday that was about 30% wheat malt. Ran the grains twice and got 100% conversion efficiency.

I did get a stuck sparge from too much flour, but I think that's because my base grains were pre-mixed with the wheat, so I had to run everything twice. Breaking up the top of the grain bed with a spoon was enough to get everything running again.

Thanks for the tip!

-Joe