Emmer Beer/Unmalted Wheat/ Mash time question

[ndrice]

I was recently reading about old German beer styles and came across something called "Emmerbier."

Emmer wheat, also called Farro, is a precursor form of modern wheat that was used thousands of years ago. This is a nice write up of it:
http://www.germanbeerinstitute.com/Emmerbier.html

After doing some digging around on this forum and online, I've decided to make my own version of an Emmerbier:

Malt
5.00 lbs Briess Red Malt Wheat
5.00 lbs Unmalted Emmer Wheat
1.00 lbs Briess Caracrystal Wheat
2.00 lbs Briess Vienna Malt
2.00 ozs Midnight Wheat Malt

Hops
1.00 ozs Tettnang 60 mins
1.00 ozs Hallertauer Hersbrucker 5 mins

I think I've got most of my questions answered so far just via research. I think between a 15 minute protein rest at 122, a decoction, and a sacch rest at 150 I'll have sufficiently gelatinized the Emmer so the starch is available for conversion.

The one thing I can't seem to find any info on is mash time. With this much unmalted wheat I think this could end up being pretty gloppy, but I also want to make sure I allow for enough time for conversion to happen. It seems like 60 minutes might not be enough, but 120 might be too long? Does anyone have any insight or thoughts on what a good mash time for this might be?

Also, I'd love to chuck the Vienna malt out of the recipe and make this a 100% wheat beer, but does anyone know if the malted red wheat alone would have enough enzymatic potential to convert that much unmalted wheat?

I'm looking forward to brewing this. The Emmer I ordered online has this phenomenal nutty grainy taste that I haven't encountered before. I'm hoping it comes through well in the beer.

 

[masscarriers]

This might be more of a thought than a true insight, but your two questions seems to be closely linked in fact. Removing the vienna malt of the recipe would reduce the total diastatic power of your mash and thus would need a longer mash time to complete conversion. Unless someone really more knowledgeable than me gives its input, I'd do it the hard way by keeping it at least an hour and a half and performing iodine tests every now and then to ensure a complete conversion.