All unmalted wheat - extra amylase

[stronk]

Hi all. First post (though used to be a very active member of Real Beer forums 10 years ago).

So I'm new to all-grain, though have accomplished partial mash beers before. I wouldn't go near all-grain (lacking the equipment and time), but I have moved to the Middle East and have to learn how to brew with the local ingredients, with a little help from small and lightweight imports from the UK.

Obviously, since there is very little brewing out here (one micro and one macrobrewery, but both order ingredients from abroad), nobody is malting grain. I can get wheat and possibly barley (though the grade of the barley will be animal feed), but can't get modified grains.

I'm about to create a recipe for an all-unmalted-wheat beer. I imagine that if this is successful, it will turn out very dry and characterless, so rather than trying to hefeweizen it up with an interesting yeast, I'm going to treat it like a wit and spice it.

My plan so far is to use 100% unmalted wheat crushed very finely, plus about half a kilo of additional wheat husks for the mash. I have a tube of amylase that I persuaded a friend to bring me from the UK, which has a very uninformative label. It's 25g of white powder which is amylase cut with what I suspect is probably a majority by weight of dextrose. The label assumes I'm using it to clarify wine (God knows why I'd have starch in fermenting wine...), and just tells me to use a tsp per gallon for that purpose.

As you have probably clocked by now, my plan is to try to convert the starches in the unmalted wheat using only amylase from this tube.

Some immediate problems and questions occur to me. Hopefully someone can offer opinions on them. Thank you for helping a desperate and well-meaning expat. I've done my searching around. Nobody on 'tinternet seems to have done exactly this before, but there are a lot of issues raised in the past about unmalted wheat which I've taken on board.

1. Cereal mash – seems that I need to boil the wheat to achieve gelatinisation (whatever that is). Boiling crushed unmalted wheat (especially finely crushed for BIAB) seems like a bad idea to me? Boiling whole wheat and then using the soft cooked grains, uncrushed, in a mash also seems weird. Any opinions on a way forward for this?
2. Stuck sparge – I’ve got hold of some extra bags of wheat husks, but I’m hoping that the mashing process will reduce the likelihood of the flour just turning into a sticky mess. Is that the case? Lack of any protease is going to count against me, I’m guessing. Will a cereal mash and decoction help with this? My 'mash tun' is just a large brew pot on a gas stove, so I'm going to need to keep adding heat to maintain my mash temp anyway. Decoction should therefore be possible without deliberately doing a multi-step mash. Which leads me on to...
3. Decoction – any positive effect, or will this just denature what little amylase I have?
4. Total mash time – suspect this will have to be long (2 hours enough?) to guarantee that I’ve converted as much as is going to convert of the starch. Any negative effects from a long mash time, provided I keep a stable temperature within an acceptable conversion range? I've got hold of iodine and will be trying to get hold of pH testing strips to maximise my chances of the amylase doing its thing and me knowing about it.
5. Protein (or indeed any other) rest – utterly pointless, since I’ve only got one enzyme in there? Or are other enzymes going to appear out of unmalted wheat?
6. Flaked wheat – I can’t get this, but I’m assuming that you make ‘flaked’ anything by rolling the fresh soft grains before they are dried. If nothing else is done other than this, then by crushing very fine I will be achieving much the same effect, surely?
7. Mash temp - any ideas for a single mashing temperature (presumably steps are pointless, since I’ve only got amylase), from those with more experience than my zero experience?

Thank you!

 

[stronk]

OK, seems I need to pick a more interesting title for my first thread on here. I'm now able to answer some of my own questions.

1: yes, a cereal mash is needed. Should be done with the crushed grain. It'll kill off whatever enzymes happen to be in the unmalted grain, but that's unavoidable. I could try mashing without doing this, but there's no guarantee that for this particular type of wheat (unknown origin, type, season, etc.) the gelatinisation temperature will be low enough. In fact, there's no guarantee that 100 degrees will be high enough, but I don't have a pressure cooker.

2 and 3: decoction not needed, husks definitely needed.

4: total mash time will be at least 2 hours. Mash until iodine indicates it's done.

5: yes, rests are pointless.

6: irrelevant

7: probably 160 F.

My main worry now is that I might only have alpha amylase (tube is not with me at present, so I can't check). With just alpha, will I get any fermentable sugars at all? I've read that alpha only produces long-chain unfermentable sugars and these need further cutting by beta amylase. Will alpha do the further cutting eventually if left to its own devices, or is this not how enzymes work?

Seems that I'm on track for a very sweet, unfermentable 'beer'. Any thoughts, anyone?

 

[stronk]

Since nobody's taking the bait, I'm going to reply to myself again. At least this will answer some of the questions for someone who tries this again in future.

http://prof.dr.semih.otles.tripod.com/enzymesused/beverages1.htm

Above is a good simple explanation of the more important enzymes and the practice of adding additional enzymes. When brewing using additional enzymes, it's important to know that what you're adding is either naturally occurring in malt or does something very specific that you know you want to do. Previous threads on this kind of thing have mentioned 'beano', which is a mix of enzymes which does digest carbohydrates. However, it is more powerful than amylases typically found in malt and will tend to strip out far more of the unfermentable sugars, resulting in a very dry and characterless beer (fine for a low carb/light beer, if that's what you're after). Likewise amylases produced from bacteria, some of which are stable in temperatures up to boiling point and beyond (depending on the environment). These are used in labs and cleaning fluids. Probably not wise to use them in beer.

You have to be careful with proteases as well, because some will actually hydrolyse your other enzymes (which are proteins) and stop the conversion process.

In an ideal world, I'd use one of the many carbohydrase enzyme mixes found here: http://www.enzymedevelopment.com/enzymes/carbohydrases/

However, I have no access to the USA and cannot easily mail order to Jordan. Even if I could get to the US, it's unlikely that an enzyme supply company like the one above would fulfil a very small order for a homebrewer.

It looks like I'm just going to have to try a mini-mash to create an unhopped wort and then try to use this as a yeast starter. If it ferments down to a reasonable FG, then I'm all set.

 

[Devinv]

From what I've read, it would seem easier to grab some grain and let it germinate a tad and then stick it in the oven.
Other than that I am of no help

 

[stronk]

Thanks for the suggestion. I could do that, but it's a bit long-winded for the entire grain bill of a 5g batch. There are youtube videos which show how it's done with minimal equipment, in case anyone's interested in home malting. It would take at least a couple of weeks, which is fine for a one-off experiment, but not for regular batches.

By the way, just got a response from a UK homebrew shop manager to a question about which malt they carry has the highest diastatic power. Very worrying level of knowledge of homebrewing on display here!

Sorry you will not find Diastatic power in the UK as its not imported, and
no one makes any diastic malt/extract for the UK home brew trade any more.
We don't have any information, none of the malt manufactures give any
information on the diastatic properties of the malts in there details. This
seems to be something which is used in the USA and is not that important
when making the beer.

Well that's me told. Apparently diastatic power isn't really very important, and is only manufactured in the USA.

 

[stronk]

Update: tried a test mash using just amylase and this is simply not going to work. Some of this is down to the technique, though, so in theory it might work for others in future. For the record, this is what I tried:

Ingredients were:

- Peeled wheat - found in supermarkets in Jordan and around the Middle East. Designed for cooking (takes about 45 minutes to an hour to cook whole grains for eating). It has been separated from its husks.

- Wheat husks - can be found in the baking section. Just adding husks back in that have been taken out. Rice hulls can't be found in Jordan.

- Amylase - a small tube of the stuff, as described above (nothing to indicate whether it is alpha or beta amylase or a mixture; also admits to being cut with dextrose). Instructions were to use 1 tsp per 4.5 litres for 'removing starch haze from wine'. I used a quarter teaspoon for a 1 litre cereal mash, then a further quarter teaspoon for a 2-hour mash at around 150 F.

- Bottled water

I ground the wheat grains using a cheap coffee grinder (blades, not burrs; the kind of grinder that you grind in batches, not from a hopper through burrs into a grinds receptacle). Ground them very fine, as I was going to be using a BIAB method. The first worrying thing about this was that I didn't get anything even close to wheat flour. The ground mixture was very yellow in colour, as if these grains were either unripe when harvested or have been parboiled.

Heated around 1l of water (250g of grain) in a small pot to 125F and added grain (no bag) and a quarter tsp of amylase, then kept temperature constant at around 122F for 15 minutes. Raised temperature to 150F for 15 minutes. Raised temperature to boiling for 15 minutes (stirring frequently and adding a bit more water as the mixture thickened).

After the boiling stage, added grain to warm bottled water by tipping the mixture into a bag in a larger pot. Total mash volume approx 2.5l. Added a quarter tsp of amylase to this mixture once temperature was at approx 150 F. Kept temperature at 150 F for an hour, stirring occasionally. Raised temperature to 155 F for another hour.

Lifted bag out and allowed to drain. Iodine tests showing plenty of starch still present, but I had run out of time and patience by this point. Boiled wort for 1 hour with a few hops (added for antibacterial effect, not for flavour - this was going to be a yeast starter for a brew day today). Cooled with a sanitised ice pack (at this point, around 0.8l of wort remaining, so it cooled quickly). Poured into sanitised clear plastic bottle to take a look.

As you can see from the picture below, this is a very thick suspension, almost to the point of being a gel. Lots of grain and hop debris suspended. I would say there is an extensive protein structure throughout the liquid. Leaving it to settle predictably achieved nothing.

Problems likely caused by:

1. The wheat ingredient was not straight raw wheat.

2. There were no proteases (or other enzymes apart from amylase, but I think from the look of the resulting wort, the proteins were probably the major problem).

3. The thickness of the wort made it very difficult to filter. I tried pouring it through a filter in a funnel, but ended up having to knife a hole in the filter because it was completely blocked. The initial filter was the bag I used for mashing in, but this had holes in the bottom which were very likely too wide to properly filter the liquid. In a normal-sized mash, the grain bed would be a better filter, but with a very small amount of grain in a full-sized bag, the amount of grain debris making it through the bottom was much more significant.

So I just tipped the thick goop down the sink and chalked it up to experience.

I will be cutting down brewing to a few times a year, when I can get proper ingredients from abroad.

 

[Darthbrewder]

I know this is an old thread but I stumbled across this while searching for someone attempting something similar to what I am doing.
I'm no expert to be sure, but I believe that you may have denatured your enzymes when you raised the temp of your wort. From what I understand the amylase enzyme that you by in a bottle is derived from fungi. This particular type will denature fairly quickly above 100 degrees F. I believe if you ever revisit this you should try letting your wheat "stew" in a water and enzyme solution at or near room temp. For how long, I don't know. Testing the starch content periodically would tell you if it is working, obviously. Just my two cents for wag at is worth. Good luck!