Weizen & Low Efficiency - Process to Correct?

[Duster72]

This is kind of related to the guy with 40% efficiency, but I thought this question deserved its own thread.

Last night I made a Weizen. Planned on my usual 66% efficiency. I am using a Pol HERMS clone.



6 lbs Pilsner, 6 lbs Weyermann Pale Wheat; Jamil's recipe - single infusion mash at 152 recirculated for duration of mash, ramped up to 168 to mash out.



OG should have been 1.054 ended up at 1.045. I knew efficiency was bad going into kettle, so I boiled an extra half hour. In retrospect, I should have boiled an extra hour. Anyway, I know how to correct that problem, I was just in a hurry, and to be honest, I figured I had gotten the sugar out of the pils and not the wheat, so they proportion of sugars was wrong anyway.

My question is how to correct this next time. Here's what I am picking up from reading.

1) The wheat needs to be crushed finer than regular grain. I could tighten up my mill, but would rather not, just because it's difficult to get it straight in my experience.

2) Just plan on low efficiency when using wheat?

3) Do a step mash using the schedule in Stan H's Brewing With Wheat. I understand how to do a step mash and know the temperatures to use per the book. My question is whether or not a protein rest, ferulic acid rest, et al, will improve efficiency.

I am not interested in doing a decoction, but can easily do a step mash using my herms coil.


Any thoughts? I think I am going to reuse the yeast to do a Dunkel next.

 

[EBloom97]

I don't see why wheat needs to be crushed more finely than barley. It's huskless after all, so if anything it could stand to be less well crushed.

I think a protein rest is mostly going to give you a less hazy final product, and an acid rest will help prevent tannin extraction. Neither will help your efficiency as far as I know.

What kind of sparge did you do, what temperature, etc.?

 

[Duster72]

Batch sparged with two equal sparges. I ramped up my temp to 168 before taking the first runnings and sparged with the 168 water. I stirred the grain bed really good when I added my first round of sparge water and let both sparges recirc for 5-10 minutes before running it off.

Is there a generally accepted process for sparging on a HERMS system w/ 1 pump? This is basically my batch sparging system I used with great success before building the HERMS system. I have 20 brews on this system and my efficiency is pretty well locked in at 65-66%. I used to get more like 72-74% when I was just adding hot water, stirring, letting it sit, and running it off. I didn't really care about the efficiency though, because it was consistent, which is all I really care about - consistency. That's why this batch is such a problem - not consistent with the rest of my brews.

 

[Beernik]

I think the conclusion some of us came to with our poor efficiency is that wheat is smaller than barley and if they are run through the mill at the same time, the wheat doesn't fully crush.

 

[homebrewer_99]

I think the conclusion some of us came to with our poor efficiency is that wheat is smaller than barley and if they are run through the mill at the same time, the wheat doesn't fully crush.

I agree. I crush them seperately.

Assuming your wort has been chilled and stirred a lot then there would be no reason to think it was not mixed well. If it was then I would add a pound of wheat DME into the wort to bring it up to your anticipated OG.

 

[Mateo]

I made nothing but hefeweizen for about 3 years and I always had to reset my rollers to mill the wheat. Much smaller.