Mashing Raw Wheat

[gmac]

So if you grind the wheat to almost flour, what happens if you just used flour?  I expect that the reply will be horrible stuck mashes but what’s the difference?  Rice hulls would be an automatic but I use them whenever I’m using what regardless, just a handful for insurance mostly.

[system]

@gmac

So if you grind the wheat to almost flour, what happens if you just used flour?  I expect that the reply will be horrible stuck mashes but what’s the difference?  Rice hulls would be an automatic but I use them whenever I’m using what regardless, just a handful for insurance mostly.

You could use whole wheat flour, or you’d be missing the bran and the germ and whatever they contribute.  Make sure it is unbleached and not bromated.  Try it out and let us know  :)

[tschmidlin]

Graham Sanders of Craftbrewer Radio fame is a big proponent of using wheat flour in beers.  I don’t think he’s still podcasting, but you should be able to find some of them here:

http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podcasts/1373

If I remember right, he just subbed it right in for the wheat and didn’t worry about it.

[mdixon]

@hopfenundmalz

Raw wheat has a gelatanization temp that is lower than that of the mash temp you will use for the barley.  It will be converted in the mash.

Doing a cereal mash will give a better mouthfeel (according to Moaher0, and extraction by bursting the hard small starch granules making them available for conversion.  This is the same as for a decoction mash using all barley, which gives slightly higher extract.

Unfortunately that is not universally so, it actually depends upon the type of wheat. I did some research many moons ago when I was on a Belgian Wit making kick and found it varies so widely it’s best to gelatinize the wheat before mashing to be sure. I’m sure I’ve posted some of the documentation somewhere on the AHA forum, ahh yes
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=8193.15

Another potential issue is gelatinization temps are measured with flour in a lab and most of the time in our world we are talking about cracked wheat.

[hopfenundmalz]

Thanks for the link.  Looks like some reading to do when I am done with the Landlord attempt.

[mdixon]

One day I’ll go find all the sources I dug up about wheat starch gelatinization.

FWIW - Most of the homebrew literature says to just mash it and I believe that is incorrect since it doesn’t hold true for all wheat varieties.

[hopfenundmalz]

So I was lucky back when I was on my Wit kick years back.  ;D

In “Brewing With Wheat”, Stan H. talks about commercial examples and the mash schedules, which all turn out to be step mashes, and one or 2 were single infusion mashes.  That would work for a commercial brewery if they had a known source that was going to gelantanize below mash temps.  There is a chart on Kai’s page that shows temps for different grains, and I think this is from one of the German texts.

On the HBD Brews and Views, there was a discussion that said that grain starches will not all gelatanize even it boiled.  They must be pressure cooked.  That was news to me.  Look for the Corn Meal thread.
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi