Belgian Wit Beer, How to Mash with my equipment

[JosephN]

This is a "If you were in my shoes how would you mash this recipe?" thread.

I am brewing the Wittbrew from brewing classic Styles, if this helps some of you. I am going to alter it a little due to wanting a little higher ABV and a larger volume of beer in the end. So my recipes is as follows:

7.1# German Pilsner Malt (Avengard)
6.3# Flaked Wheat
.3# Munich Light 10L
.6# Rice Hulls

The Mash schedule is suggested to be as follows:

Mash at 122F for 15 minutes, then raise the temp over the next 15 minutes to 154F and hold until conversion is complete.

The equipment I have on hand is as follows.

5gal cooler (strictly used for a Hot Liquid Tank)
10Gal cooler (for single infusion mashing)
10gal Stainless steal kettle with lid
8gal stainless steal kettle with lid
2x burners
1x Temp sensor w/ external display (used with any container with a lid)



How I thought about doing this. I thought about just adding the appropriate amount of water into my kettle, heating it to about 125F then adding ALL my grain, using my temp sensor and kettle lid to help hold heat as well as watching the temp, I WILL HAVE TO CONTROL THE TEMP WITH THE PROPANE CONTROL VALVE, all the time stirring with my mashing spoon, I would start slowly raising the temp to 154F and at that time I will dump all of the grain and water into my 10gal cooler, WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN PREHEATING WITH BOILING WATER AS THAT I LOSE NO TEMP AT ALL, and then continue as normal.

If any of you have any better suggestions then let me know. I also don't know if the Flaked Wheat are highly modified like the pilsner malts, and if the protein rest is even needed. Either way I kind of want to give it a shot for added technical difficulty. It helps me learn.

 

[JosephN]

Any suggestions at all? I hope this is getting to you all.

 

[DurtyChemist]

Heat strike water about 10 degrees over the temp you want. Add boiling water to bring up to 154. 3 qts should be enough but Google mash step calculator and that should tell you.

 

[fnbrew]

I just brewed that using the very same process you suggest and it is one damn fine wit beer. I used whole white wheat though, don't think you need the rest for flake wheat .

 

[LLBeanJ]

Your process is as good as any. Good luck with the brew!

 

[IslandLizard]

I start step mashes in my (insulated) kettle, easier to increase the temp. It requires low heat and constant stirring and a bit of a loose mash (W/G 1.75-2.00) to prevent scorching. After 10-15 minutes at the last step temp, I dump it into my preheated cooler for the remainder of the mash duration. Lauter and batch sparge twice.

You may need more rice hulls with almost 50% raw wheat.

 

[dmtaylor]

Skip the protein rest, it will render your witbier crystal clear and remove some body and head retention, all wrong for a witbier. I did the protein rest and that's what happened to me.

 

[broadbill]

BCS has a step mash process for the wit? I've brewed that same recipe a bunch and never noticed. I don't think the flaked wheat needs that rest, as fnbrew said. Always have done single infusion with no problems. FWIW.

 

[broadbill]

Skip the protein rest, it will render your witbier crystal clear and remove some body and head retention, all wrong for a witbier. I did the protein rest and that's what happened to me.

That, and WLP400 floccs horribly.

 

[JosephN]

I start step mashes in my (insulated) kettle, easier to increase the temp. It requires low heat and constant stirring and a bit of a loose mash (W/G 1.75-2.00) to prevent scorching. After 10-15 minutes at the last step temp, I dump it into my preheated cooler for the remainder of the mash duration. Lauter and batch sparge twice.

You may need more rice hulls with almost 50% raw wheat.

What is an "insulted kettle"?

 

[griffi]

Brewed a similar witbier a couple weeks ago. 4lbs Pilsner, 5 lbs wheat malt, 1lb oats. No protein rest, mashed 60 min at 152. Hit my FG of 1.010 and now it's just resting until I keg it. Delicious sample, used the bitter orange peel and coriander. I had a bit of a slow/stuck mash so next time I'll get some rice hulls (I recirculated and direct fired my mash kettle to keep temps up). Used wlp400 so it's got plenty of that tartness. Hope yours turns out great too.

 

[dmtaylor]

I like WLP400 a lot and have used it even for non-witbiers. I've used it in blonde ales where I'd like to have some of that pear ester and slight "Belgiany" flavor for complexity. It's a good yeast.

 

[IslandLizard]

What is an "insulted kettle"?

It's a kettle that's not being used often enough.

 

[JosephN]

Skip the protein rest, it will render your witbier crystal clear and remove some body and head retention, all wrong for a witbier. I did the protein rest and that's what happened to me.

What kind of wheat did you use? It just seems like to me that using flaked wheat,instead of malted wheat, that it would need the protein rest. I'm just looking at the flaked wheat kind of like you would oatmeal. If you put flaked oats or oatmeal in water you get a thick creamy starch, and I think there might be too much "unaltered" proteins in the flaked wheat to not do a protein rest. It just seems like it would actually end up working out equal to using wheat malt. Does this make sense? Any thoughts?

 

[dmtaylor]

I believe I used wheat malt and torrified wheat. There should be little if any difference in protein content between the different types of wheat. There will be more starches in flaked and torrified wheat, but this doesn't matter because the enzymes from the other base malts will still convert the starches to sugars, regardless of whether a protein rest is employed. Bottom line, you don't need to do a protein rest, and I don't believe it's doing what you think it's doing. Apples vs. oranges kind of thing.

EDIT: I was wrong. No malted wheat was used in my recipe at all. It was 50% torrified wheat, and 4% oats, in addition to the pilsner malt.

 

[IslandLizard]

A Witbier traditionally is brewed with a large load (>50%) of (unmalted) wheat. Wheat flakes are often used as they are pre-gelatinized. The protein rest is optional.* If you want to make sure you get permanent haziness, you can add a slurry of 2 Tbs of wheat flour (all purpose flour) to your kettle at flameout. It will still settle out in the keg (or bottles) over a few weeks time, but never becomes crystal clear. For people who like the haziness in the glass, they usually roll the bottles before pouring.

The yeast is very important to brew a real Witbier. WY3944 and WLP400, WLP410 are Witbier yeasts. Most other brands also have a Wit yeast.

*I sometimes use Eric Warner's double decoction wheat mash for my Witbier creations. The mash alone takes 3.5 hours, but it's well worth the effort. And it's a good exercise in decoction mashing. It includes a 10' protein rest at 122F followed by a 10' rise to 127F. The main mash is then held at that temp (127F) for over an hour while the first decoction is performed. Never had any problems with head retention. Always thick, full and creamy. Makes a really nice beer!

 

[JosephN]

A Witbier traditionally is brewed with a large load (>50%) of (unmalted) wheat. Wheat flakes are often used as they are pre-gelatinized. The protein rest is optional.* If you want to make sure you get permanent haziness, you can add a slurry of 2 Tbs of wheat flour (all purpose flour) to your kettle at flameout. It will still settle out in the keg (or bottles) over a few weeks time, but never becomes crystal clear. For people who like the haziness in the glass, they usually roll the bottles before pouring.

The yeast is very important to brew a real Witbier. WY3944 and WLP400, WLP410 are Witbier yeasts. Most other brands also have a Wit yeast.

*I sometimes use Eric Warner's double decoction wheat mash for my Witbier creations. The mash alone takes 3.5 hours, but it's well worth the effort. And it's a good exercise in decoction mashing. It includes a 10' protein rest at 122F followed by a 10' rise to 127F. The main mash is then held at that temp (127F) for over an hour while the first decoction is performed. Never had any problems with head retention. Always thick, full and creamy. Makes a really nice beer!

Yeah I don't know about adding flower to the wort. I would rather use normal beer ingredients. In using WLP400. Also where is a good resource as to learn how to do a proper decoction? I sort of get it, but have never done one, and honestly wouldn't know where to start.

 

[IslandLizard]

Flour is milled grain (wheat) so it's a proper beer ingredient. Or sift some out after milling grain and use it later.

John Palmer has a few chapters on how the mash works, mashing, decoctions, and how to perform them. Lots of YouTube vids around too. People are proud of showing their "decoctions."

Eric Warner's wheat decoction is very interesting to study and do. Comes with a graph and all. I do 11 gallon batches of those so it's worth the time. It's quite a workout moving the thick mash around, stirring it while heating to and through the different sacch rests, and eventually boiling it for 20'. Then dumping it back into the mash tun where the thin portion has been resting, which takes it to it's next resting temp. etc.

 

[JosephN]

^^^ I may actually try that. I have all day Saturday to make one batch, when I would normally do two. So I'll have some time to use. I'll look it up this evening and see what I can find.

 

[IslandLizard]

^^^ I may actually try that. I have all day Saturday to make one batch, when I would normally do two. So I'll have some time to use. I'll look it up this evening and see what I can find.

Alright, that promises to be a fun brewing day!

The recipe I've used and the decoction graph are in my recipe link under my avatar. Feel free to change the ingredients however you want. I've used as much as 60% wheat and although the lautering was slow going, it never got stuck. Do use rice hulls (don't mill them).

The decoctions are done with the thick part of the mash, leaving most of the liquid in the tun. A large strainer or colander to scoop the grist out works best.

 

[dmtaylor]

Decoction ain't right for a witbier IMO. But, if you must, here's my method:

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=24627.msg328634#msg328634

 

[JosephN]

I look a YouTube video up from northern brewers and he made it look stupid easy. I think I'm gonna do it. I might end up mashing in my cooler and using one of my kettles for the thick mash. He explained it rather simple, which made a lot of sense.

 

[HausBrauerei_Harvey]

I brewed the BCS wit recipe 2 weeks ago with similar equipment. I did the rest at 122. I just mashed in real thick at 122, then used beersmith to calc the amount of boiling water needed to get to 156 for the second step. Somehow the mash still ended up off by like 8F, so I just forlaufed a bit, brought it to a boil on my burner then added it back to the mash (iterate a few times over 15 minutes) until I got to 156.

 

[JosephN]

I brewed the BCS wit recipe 2 weeks ago with similar equipment. I did the rest at 122. I just mashed in real thick at 122, then used beersmith to calc the amount of boiling water needed to get to 156 for the second step. Somehow the mash still ended up off by like 8F, so I just forlaufed a bit, brought it to a boil on my burner then added it back to the mash (iterate a few times over 15 minutes) until I got to 156.

Do you know what your thick mash ratio was? I usually mash at 1.5qt/lb. and I'm assuming you meant, vorlaufed? If this is the case would you not be worried that the enzymes got too hot and denatured them? That's what the guy was talking about in the video I watched today. He said that in a decoction that you would want to mash very thin and pull the grist only for boiling. This leaves most of the enzymes behind in the liquid. I would assume that pulling liquid from the mash to heat would cause the enzymes to denature. What do you know about this? It made sense to me, now weather that is actually solid truth I'm still not sure about. I was thinking about doing it your way, but I've always wanted to try this decoction method. Have you got a chance to sample yours yet?

 

[IslandLizard]

Decoction ain't right for a witbier IMO. But, if you must, here's my method:

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=24627.msg328634#msg328634

That's what I keep hearing. I don't know if it isn't right. It surely tastes right to me, and apparently to quite a few others too. I did win first prize with it in our State Guild Wheat Beer competition 2 years ago. One of the judges has had National BJCP ranking for years.

Your decoction method is for a German Lager, not a wheat beer. That's where Eric Warner's monograph comes in.

 

[HausBrauerei_Harvey]

Do you know what your thick mash ratio was? I usually mash at 1.5qt/lb. and I'm assuming you meant, vorlaufed? If this is the case would you not be worried that the enzymes got too hot and denatured them? That's what the guy was talking about in the video I watched today. He said that in a decoction that you would want to mash very thin and pull the grist only for boiling. This leaves most of the enzymes behind in the liquid. I would assume that pulling liquid from the mash to heat would cause the enzymes to denature. What do you know about this? It made sense to me, now weather that is actually solid truth I'm still not sure about. I was thinking about doing it your way, but I've always wanted to try this decoction method. Have you got a chance to sample yours yet?

Well you apparently know more than me about this it seems. I dont know if it hurts the vorlaufed wort to heat it, then add it back to the boil. I figured we boil the wort anyways so whats the problem? I'm only 2 weeks from brew-day now so I haven't sampled this beer yet to know if there are issues, but it took off like rocket and appears to have finished in about 5 days.

 

[JosephN]

^^^^ please let me know how it turns out. I don't know if I know more, I was just referencing what I have read or heard from others. I'm going to do the decoction method, but only before the mashout. I'm trying a 3 step mash on an "OPEN FLAME"... Normally I use my cooler but this will allow me to kind of spend time outside and just be one with this beer. That might sound corny but I'm sure you get my point. Let me know how it turns out.

 

[JosephN]

So far so good...

 

[JosephN]

So after hitting the protein rest, and ramping the mash up to 153F, and doing a short decoction with the thick mash to help bring it to mash out temps, and pitching the yeast, I've noticed that the wort is nearly crystal clear, more so than most other beers I've made. I'm considering boiling a few cups of water down with flour to help it get cloudy, or I can just let it go and see how it turns out.

 

[JosephN]

Well once the yeast started the beer/wort got super cloudy again. It was cloudy when I transferred from my boil kettle to the fermentor.

 

[EarthwormJim]

I bet it will clear again once it is packaged. I made this twice. Both times I rested at 113, 137 and 154. I read this BYO article. It suggested that the 113 rest would break up the glucans in the wheat and I was afraid of the mash sticking. The protein rest was suggested by the guy at my brew shop. Figured, following the article, if I went high on that step I could break down some of the longer protiens without killing the head retention.

Both times the beer was great. No problems with the sparge, I was batch sparging at the time. No problems with the head and (or but depending on your preferences) they were the clearest beers I have made. I never thought about it being the mash until I saw this thread.

I enjoy the beer being so clear even though it's not to style. I added some hops late so it isn't a traditional wit anyway. When I make it again I may shorten the lower rests or drop the 137 altogether to try and get it a little cloudier. I'll probably keep the 113 because I'm still afraid of the sparge sticking.

 

[millsbrew]

Don't put rice hulls in for a decoction. If you want to add to sparge, fine. Same goes for flaked malts as others mentioned. Use malted wheat in there for actual conversion. Flaked just gives proteins for head retention and mouth feel. Good luck.

 

[JosephN]

Don't put rice hulls in for a decoction. If you want to add to sparge, fine. Same goes for flaked malts as others mentioned. Use malted wheat in there for actual conversion. Flaked just gives proteins for head retention and mouth feel. Good luck.

I did add rice hulls to the mash before sparge, I didn't want to have any funky flavor from rice hulls, and Jamil's recipe called for flaked wheat and a 122f rest. Just following what Jamil suggested. Thanks for the input, I just thought I'd catch you up.