Did i mess up my hard water? lol

[bracconiere]

So i had left over whole wheat berries from the feed store, was poking around the hard water thread....thought damn i could just do a cereal mash and use the left over alpha amylase i have to convert...

so recipe for a 5 gal batch was..

6.25lb's whole wheat berries
6 pounds whole barley
4 pounds sucrose....hoping to get 1.102 and 13.x% alcohol

i just threw it in 150f water, and only got 1.010 coming out the mash tun, at mash temp granted, but still...thought i'd do a iodine test on it...

The iodine is clear though, lol

so now i have two options....

1) Dump it, wouldn't have used the crap anyway...

2) Realize i think i have to get the starch to gel for the iodine test to work and turn blue, dump the mash tun contents back into the brew pot and bring to a boil...prove it, trying before and after adding more alpha amylase to the tun...

does malting lower the gelling temp of grains like barley and wheat? maybe my alpha has been sitting in the fridge too long, like 5 years....

 

[RPh_Guy]

You didn't mill the grain?

 

[bracconiere]

You didn't mill the grain?

actually i did, my china harbor 1/2" drill set-up just needed to be run on a higher speed to get through it....

I dumped the mash tun back into the boil kettle and put the whole thing in the oven at 190f....waiting to see if that thickens it up, give it another iodine test, if it turns blue...in this case a good thing put it back in the mash tun, and add more alpha amylase...

edit: lol, tried googling, found this...in case anyone wonders why i'm still here...this site is google and brewing!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/gelatinization-of-unmalted-barley.528485/

and my mash is only up to 170f or so, and the iodine test turns blue now! Yea! so now i just need to get it to go back to clear! My kegs are getting bothered being lonely..Until i can fill them with a proper drink, maybe hard lemonaid will get them by!

 

[bracconiere]

so my prison wine is going 'alrigjht' after a bake in the oven i got the starch to gel....still didn't get good conversion but i think that was my no sparge attempt....you can see my fancy fermenter is on par for a trash bag they'd use also....but i'm still betting on some good hooch out of this! dope it up with some more sugar and might get TWO gallons of 65%! lol, why waste the nutes!

 

[bracconiere]

and this is for all the i want to save money people that get cussed out on this forum!

 

[bracconiere]

damn, woke up hung over. checked my gravity...ended up with ~8 gals of 1.058, so about 74% effec....not too bad...added baker's yeast to it, and will add gluco...

 

[IslandLizard]

You are a brave man! How long before they let you out? Or are you training, just in case?

There are several things at play.

You already discovered gelatinization of the grain starches is essential.
For that grist mix, 150F should be enough to reach starch gelatinization...
Not sure why that didn't work so well. Maybe needs much, much more time.

Did you read Palmer's chapter How the Mash Works? Good reading.

Because the wheat (berries) are small, they should be crushed on a much narrower gap than barley, or they drop through mostly uncrushed. 0.026" here for wheat, rye, oats vs. 0.034" for barley. That helps generally with quicker hydration and mash efficiency.

To call it a cereal mash, you need to add diastatic malt, and enough of it to convert the whole batch, including the raw non-diastatic adjuncts. For that the average DP of the whole batch should be above 35 °Lintner, and it may be slow moving at that minimal level, so better use a little extra.
Cereal mashing helps a lot with the breakdown of the beta glucans and starch matrix, so the starches are more readily exposed and quicker to hydrate.

Your Alpha may indeed be getting a little old for the job.

And you made "wheat" wine!