Help me with these temps, please

[centralpabrewer]

I am planning to brew a Belgian Wit using unmalted wheat and real oatmeal. I know I need to do a cereal mash with these grains/adjuncts. Below is the Wit Guy White Ale recipe from Radical Brewing that I want to try. To complicate this, i have been using the 85% minimal sparge method that the MadFermentationist described in a recent issue of BYO. I am having trouble figuring out my volumes and temps.

Here is my grainbill
1 lbs Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 1 8.9 %
3 lbs Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 26.7 %
3 lbs Wheat, Unmalted (3.0 SRM) Grain 3 26.7 %
2 lbs Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 4 17.8 %
1 lbs Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 5 8.9 %
1 lbs Oatmeal (3.0 SRM) Grain 6 8.9 %
4.0 oz Acid Malt (3.0 SRM) Grain 7 2.2 %

To make a long story short...My plan is to do the following:
Cereal mash a total grain weight of 6lbs (6row, unmalted wheat and oatmeal). While that finishes the boiling step, start a protein rest at 122F of the remaining grains (4.25lbs) using 6.25gal of water for 15 minutes. At this volume, when I add the cereal mash slurry, which should be about 2.5gal total, it should bring my mash temp up to 155F. Main mash would then be 45 mins, mashout at 170F, stir in 1lbs rice hulls. Drain Mash tun and sparge with remaining 1Gal of water.

Does this make sense, and would there be any issues with do a protein rest that thin (4.75qt/lb)?

 

[doug293cz]

... To complicate this, i have been using the 85% minimal sparge method that the MadFermentationist described in a recent issue of BYO.

...

Do you have a link for this article? I'd like to know what the 85% minimal sparge method is.

Edit: Nevermind, I found it. It's a method that will give lauter efficiency between no-sparge and single batch sparge, with pretty much all the work and equipment requirements of a batch sparge. I would recommend either no-sparge if you want simplicity and minimal equipment, or batch sparge if you are looking for an efficiency bump. This 85% sparge doesn't have anything obvious to recommend it over the better known alternatives.

Brew on

 

[dmtaylor]

Protein rest is evil. Skip it. You can Google "protein rest", "dmtaylo", and "detrimental" to view previous rants by myself and others on the topic.

 

[Lefou]

Protein rest is evil. Skip it. You can Google "protein rest", "dmtaylo", and "detrimental" to view previous rants by myself and others on the topic.

I'll expand a little bit.

You're doing a Belgian-style wit.
A protein rest would potentially reduce protein hazing, but reduced hazing isn't really important in a witbier - it's naturally cloudy, like a German hefeweizen. Your cereal mash is important, though, because you need to get a good conversion on the unmalted wheat and oatmeal. Thinning the cereal mash out slightly, but not too much, will help speed your conversion.