All Grain Belgian Witbier

[AGGF_Brewing]

8.5lbs Pale Millet Malt
2lbs Pale Buckwheat Malt
2 ounces light Crystal Millet Malt

20g US Golding Hops @ 60 mins
1 ounce Fresh Orange Zest @ 2 mins
7 grams Cracked Coriander @ 2 mins
1 gram Dried Chamomile Flowers @ 2 mins
4 Cracked Peppercorns @ 2 mins

Yeast: Safale T-58

17 Liter Batch (sort of)

My Mash Regiment (modified from Andrew Lavery's "Gluten Free Malting" 2006)
- Heat 9 liters of water to 109°F and mix in ground malt. (It should be 7 buck the buckwheat soaked up so much water that I had to add more to make it work)
- Rest the water at 104°F for 25 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes
- Infuse the mash with 3 liters of boiling water
- Rest the water at 131°F for 30 minutes
- Decant 3 liters of clear liquid from the top of the mash, and place in the fridge.
- Infuse mash with 2 liters of boiling water.
- Heat mash to 163°F and hold for 60 minutes to achieve conversion
- Cool mash back to 156°F. Add decanted liquid to achieve temp of 149°F and hold for 90 minutes.

Mashing went smoothly. I mashed out at 168°F
As for lautering, I bought a Jaybird 15inch false bottom and a new pot for a lauter tun. I set it all up, lined the bottom with 1/2lb of rice hulls, poured in my mash, mixed in about 1/4lb more rice hulls and waited 10 minutes for the grain bed to settle. It initially went somewhat smoothly and then slowed down drastically. I waited and I still had a ridiculously slow and frustrating time lautering. I even cracked my grain a fair amount coarser this time hoping to prevent this problem. I collected about 14 liters of wort instead of my targeted 18. (I'm debating running either copper piping or bazooka screens with slits in them under the false bottom instead of the dip tube and seeing if this works out better. Any thoughts?)
Gravity of these runnings was about 1.058

I boiled for 90 minutes. Then chilled, and added 1.5 liters of water to achieve 1.050 gravity. Pitched the rehydrated yeast (I still can't get it to make that cream that I see in all the videos), and into the carboy it went. I tasted the liquid before it went in and it had this pretty bitter aftertaste, so I was worried that it wouldn't come out well.

After 3 days in the carboy, the bubbling slowed down so I took a sample out to test the gravity and taste. It tastes AMAZING. Wonderfully light but with a nice malt sweetness and the orange and spice not overpowering but definitely in the background. I can't wait to taste this in another month or so after i bottle and condition in.

 

[glutarded-chris]

My first two partial mashes I followed Andrew Lavery's schedule pretty closely. I built a mash tun with a CPVC manifold and used rice hulls. The one with all millet lautered just fine and had good flow the entire time. The Buckwheat got hopelessly stuck and had to scoop into mesh bag to collect wart.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f164/partial-mash-test-millet-versus-buckwheat-430639/

I really like the head retention that the buckwheat brings so now I always use 20 to 25% buckwheat in my partial mashes.

I now cerial mash all pale buckwheat first and I use a homemade voile bag for the final wart collection so that it if gets stuck, I just pull the bag and push. That works great for partial mash because I only use 8 lb of grain max. Those that are doing true GF all grain are in the 15 to 20 lb range which means you have to have your system dialed in and cannot just pull the bag.

Interested to hear how it comes out!

 

[AGGF_Brewing]

That is a great idea to cereal mash the buckwheat and add it back! I'm definitely going to try that.

An updated: I tasted it and the orange flavor wasn't fully there anymore and the spice character wasn't either. So I zested an orange and cracked about 5 peppercorns and threw it all into the fermentor.

 

[EVILEMRE]

I just made a millet buckwheat brown ale. I used about 2.6 pounds of buckwheat pale malt in it. I knew it would be a problem. Had a seriously stuck sparge. In the end it looked like beach sand in the bottom of my lauter tun. Will cereal mash next time, or just give up on buckwheat.

 

[AGGF_Brewing]

Ha! Mine looked the same way. I agree about giving up on buckwheat, but it imparts such a nice head and I have a huge pet peeve about that. I might malt some to make a munich malt and then just use it sparingly in recipes. I read that amaranth has a similar flavor to oats so I may try using some of that for the next time I make this beer.

UPDATE: I just bottled this using honey as my priming sugar. Really excited to try this one when its ready! I went with the cap 12 ounce bottles for this one. Even though the flip bottles are really convenient, I missed the nostalgia of cracking off the cap.

I also used GrogTag to make labels for this! Heres a picture of the label.

 

[glutarded-chris]

I would not give up on Buckwheat! Just learn to work with it. 1.5 lb is all that is needed in a 5 gallon batch to give good head retention. You have to cerial mash it first and then have a long final enzyme rest as it seems to have stubborn starch. I now use a 90 minute final rest.

 

[AGGF_Brewing]

I'm definitely going to try that on my next batch. Sounds like a nice solution. I usually do my final rests at 90 minutes, I just haven't tried cereal mashing the buckwheat. Thanks Chris!