Using unmalted wheat for a witbier: need milling?

[sboisen]

I made a witbier today, using a recipe from North Corner Brewing in Bellingham WA that called for unmalted wheat.

This is my first experience with unmalted wheat, which is very hard. I temporarily messed up the milling machine at the LHBS by putting this hard kerneled wheat in it (after which the owner graciously pointed out the sign on the wall that said what not to put in the grinder).

So i came home with my adjunct grains (the recipe uses dry malt extract), and per usual, brought the water up to 150-160 and then added the grains in a bag for steeping: in this case, the unmalted wheat, pilsner malt, and flaked wheat and oats. I tried crushing the unmalted wheat further with a rolling pin first, but didn't really have any success.

Usually the wort picks up quite a bit of color from the adjunct grains: but this got very little color at all. It is a witbier, after all, but that got me thinking: should i have somehow milled the unmalted wheat? I don't know how i would (normally i do all the milling at the LHBS), but the more i read online, the more i wondered if i had massively messed up by just using the unmalted wheat as is.

Any thoughts? Is this batch likely to turn out bad because i didn't mill the unmalted wheat? If so, what should have i done instead? Can i blame the recipe for not telling me what to do?

 

[Qhrumphf]

When it comes to adjunct grains (wheat included) I go for flaked just to make my life easier.

 

[sboisen]

The recipe does include flaked wheat and oat. But my main question is how to properly use the unmalted wheat (since I'm following a recipe).


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[Pilgarlic]

Crush it. I'm not sure why it would "mess up" the LHBS mill, though it is very hard. Steel is a good bit harder.

Even crushed, you wouldn't expect any color from unmalted wheat.

Your extract yield (OG) will suffer a bit and you may be disappointed in a lack of cloudiness that would have been contributed by the unmalted wheat had it been crushed.

I'm assuming the unmalted was a small percentage of your grain bill.

 

[sboisen]

"mess up" wasn't very precise, was it? :-/ It's a belt-driven mill, and the unmalted wheat literally stopped it. The owner had to turn it by hand to clear out all the grains (and it was clearly difficult).

The unmalted wheat was 1 lb, compared to 6 lbs of dry malt extract, 8 oz pilsner malt, 8 oz flaked wheat, and 4 oz flaked oats. So yes, a modest amount of the grain bill. I'm just trying to figure out what i should have done instead. The OG was a few points higher than expected, so that didn't seem to suffer.

When you say "crush it": how? I tried putting in a ziplock and pressing it out with a rolling pin, which seemed to do no good at all. Would a coffee grinder or blender work?




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[Pilgarlic]

"Crush" as a verb is a term we use synonymously with "mill" to describe what we do when we crush or mill the grain kernels in preparation for mashing or steeping. When I said "crush" them, I meant that.

I'm assuming from your post that you're content to continue to do extract/steeping grains or extract/partial mash brews and that you're happy to continue to crush your specialty grains at your LHBS. In that event, you don't need to own a mill.

I've never tried a blender or a coffee grinder, but my guess is that a coffee grinder would do the job fine. It will probably produce a very fine grind. No problem. Some Belgian brewers actually use wheat flour.

 

[sboisen]

Yes, I'm planning for now to stick with extract rather than all-grain. I'm just feeling stumped because
- I wasn't able to mill the unmalted wheat at my LHBS
- my attempt to crush it with a rolling pin didn't work
- I wasn't sure about the right approach was to using it (so I wound up using it uncrushed, but doubted whether that was effective)

So I guess next time around I'll have to either substitute flaked wheat for the hard kernel wheat, or figure out some other way to crush it.



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[jpsmithny]

Try a mortar and pestle if you really want to crush it though it may only crack the hull a bit.

It was traditionally done with a stone mill back in the day.