# Raw Wheat Specifications Needed?



## jusman (3/11/08)

I am a fairly new AG brewer who loves Belgium Wits. I today put my first AG Wit on using 49% Pils, 44% raw wheat, 5% rolled oats & 2% acidulated malt. In this wit I also soaked the raw wheat & oats in 63 degree water for 5 minutes before I added the Pils & acid malt with the rest of the water (possibly pregelatinising). I mashed for 90 minutes at 67 degrees after this step.

I used a total of 3.8kg of grain (this is just about my limit due to pot sizes) and ended up with 26Lt of wort in the boil (possibly a little too much). I stopped sparging when I was getting 1.006 on my hydro (using John Palmer's book for temp correction).

The SG of the 26Lt to begin was 1.037. I ended up boiling for 90 min & after cooling & de-trubbing the wort I ended up with 15Lt & OG 1.040. I was a little unhappy with this low OG reading with so little wort. My last 2 AG beers I made with this much grain (using 100% pils grain though) I ended up with 18Lt of OG 1048. This suggests you get a whole lot less in terms of fermentable sugars from raw wheat.

My problem is I have no idea what the specifications for the raw wheat is in terms of mashing so Brewsmith has no real idea of what I should expect to get (OG) because the specifications are more than likely incorrect.

The only place I have found raw wheat is from a local health food shop. I used organic un-crushed raw wheat in this instance and plan to use crushed kibble wheat (which I'm told is just raw crushed wheat) in my next attempt. I really want to stick to raw wheat because this is what should be used for the style of beer.

Has anyone out there got any idea of specs for raw wheat (Yield Potential, Dry Yield Fine Grain, Diastatic Power if any,colour & anything else). Because the wheat is purchased from a health food shop, these specs are not mentioned on the packaging & I really have looked everywhere to find them without any success. Other than a protein rest possibly for 20mins at 50 degrees or using torrified wheat which is darker than raw wheat, can anyone else who has mastered the Belgium Wit offer me any suggestions in terms of getting better than 52% efficiencies using raw wheat?

Cheers!


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## wessmith (3/11/08)

Jusman, ask for Kialla brand raw wheat in the calico bag. It will have a full analysis tag sewn into the bag. The extract potential of raw wheat is just a little higher than malted wheat but you need to get a finer crush of the raw wheat than your other ingredients. 3.8kg is not enough to get to a 5% ABV final beer - you would need at least 4.5kg assuming around 75% efficiency.

Wes


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## jusman (3/11/08)

wessmith said:


> Jusman, ask for Kialla brand raw wheat in the calico bag. It will have a full analysis tag sewn into the bag. The extract potential of raw wheat is just a little higher than malted wheat but you need to get a finer crush of the raw wheat than your other ingredients. 3.8kg is not enough to get to a 5% ABV final beer - you would need at least 4.5kg assuming around 75% efficiency.
> 
> Wes
> 
> ...


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## Stuster (3/11/08)

wessmith said:


> The extract potential of raw wheat is just a little higher than malted wheat






jusman said:


> I suppose my real concern is that any raw wheat may add a lot less sugar content



jusman, what wes means is that raw wheat will add a little more sugar content than malted wheat.

As he also says, you really need to grind it up fine. There's no husk on wheat, so there's no issue with turning it nearly into flour.

It sounds like one of the readings along the way was not right (probably the one going into the kettle). I always found it very hard to get a good reading using those tables. It's just hard to get the temperature reading and the hydrometer reading right at the same time. I've found a refractometer makes my day run that bit smoother and it's probably something to think about after you've got all other essential AG gear together and got over the shock of buying it all.


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## jusman (3/11/08)

Stuster said:


> jusman, what wes means is that raw wheat will add a little more sugar content than malted wheat.
> 
> As he also says, you really need to grind it up fine. There's no husk on wheat, so there's no issue with turning it nearly into flour.
> 
> ...


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## wessmith (3/11/08)

Thanks Stuster. I would go for the higher protein raw wheat - after all you want a cloudy beer!. My current bag of Kialla is 18% protein and worked very well. I usually go for equal thirds of pils malt, wheat malt and raw wheat with about 2% of acidulated.

Wes


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## jusman (21/11/08)

wessmith said:


> Thanks Stuster. I would go for the higher protein raw wheat - after all you want a cloudy beer!. My current bag of Kialla is 18% protein and worked very well. I usually go for equal thirds of pils malt, wheat malt and raw wheat with about 2% of acidulated.
> 
> Wes



Thanks Wes & Stuster for your expertise in this thread. I thought I'd tell you how my latest Hoegaarden (brewed today) went because it worked like a treat, better than I expected. Wes, I did source the Kialla brand of raw wheat. Unfortunately I could not purchase the 5 kg calico bag due to lack of stock from Kialla. Instead, I paid the same price for 3 * 500g bags of the stuff from my local H.F.S.

I did notice that this wheat was only 12.1% protein though. You must have got a really good batch with 18%. Listening to the Jamil show & reading a thread in this forum & also reading John Palmer's book, I tried a cereal mash with this Wit. Don't know if it was the kialla wheat or the cereal mash, or both, but my efficiency went from 52.1% (in my first attempt 2 weeks ago) to 77.2% (today). If my FG finishes at 1.012 like it should, this should give me 18.5L of 4.8%ABV, which I'll be more than happy with.

I did grind the raw wheat this time into powder as advised by Stuster & Jamil from the Jamil Show. This resulted in the slowest most painful sparge ever, but it was worth it! I think this sparge of 26Lt went for almost 2 hours. Another thing that may have helped my efficiency was my base malt being 50 / 50 BB Galaxy Pils & Weyermann Prem Pils Malt.

Was the longest day of brewing I have ever experienced thus far in my limited time of brewing, but hopefully the end result will make this beer taste that little bit more special.

And guys, in one of my last replies, I stated that the SG into the boiler of my first Wit was 1.039 of 26Lt from 3.85kg of grain, I stuffed up. I re-checked Beersmith, it was 1.031. I should've picked up on this at the start of the boil for this beer. My pre-boil SG on the Wit I made today was 1.040 with the same volume of boil & only 100g more grain. Big difference. I will eventually buy a refractometer, I have so much other equip I need to buy first. I will have to rely on my wine bottle cooler to quickly cool the hydrometer sample for now. This does work effectively, just takes time.

Thanks

Jusman!


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## muckanic (24/11/08)

As far as I am aware, breweries avoid high protein (aka hard) wheat. This is partly because of the difficult grind, and partly because of the stuck sparge/protein haze potential. Health-food shops are hardly value, although I guess pre-cracked wheat could be attractive to some folks. Flakes are another possibility, and flour can even be made to work if you know what you are doing. You ought to be able to get a 25 kg bag of soft (aka feed) wheat from a rural supplies or pet-food place for less than $1/kg. I find I have to run feed wheat three times through my roller mill, on successively finer crushes.

A prolonged protein rest (in conjunction with appropriately enzymatic malt) is practically essential when using high proportions of raw wheat. This not only makes sparging easier, but improves extract yield. Some pro wit brewers also employ an idiosyncratic type of decoction mash.


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## hazard (8/1/09)

I am planning on a partial wit, using flaked wheat. Reading the above stuff leads me to 2 questions:
1. Does flaked wheat need to be milled or ground any further?
2. is a simple infusion mash sufficient or does it need something more complex?

Local health food store sells this stuff in 500g bags so its easy to buy, and I don't have a mill so do not want to get raw wheat that needs milling.

Regards, hazard


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## wyatt_girth (8/1/09)

muckanic said:


> As far as I am aware, breweries avoid high protein (aka hard) wheat. .........
> 
> ..........You ought to be able to get a 25 kg bag of soft (aka feed) wheat from a rural supplies or pet-food place for less than $1/kg.




Feed wheat is often 'bread wheat' that has been downgraded to feed for any of a number of reasons including low protein eg <10%, high screenings % by weight (broken grain, small grain, small foreign seeds etc.), high levels of defects (green, sprouted, fungal stained), high number of weed seeds or other grains or oilseeds. 

I don't know how these feed grain parcels are sold, as in whether they are screened and made suitable for your use, but I would certainly check them out if you can before buying any large quantity.


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## muckanic (13/1/09)

wyatt_girth said:


> Feed wheat is often 'bread wheat' that has been downgraded to feed for any of a number of reasons including low protein eg <10%, high screenings % by weight (broken grain, small grain, small foreign seeds etc.), high levels of defects (green, sprouted, fungal stained), high number of weed seeds or other grains or oilseeds.



Yeah, I take the point that "feed" doesn't necessarily mean "soft", but it often does and it's cheap enough to take a punt. Last lot I bought didn't look like it had any odd-looking material in there. It would be nice if bulk sources of cake-making wheat berries existed, but AFAIAA it all goes to the flour mills.


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