What Wheat For Wit?

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For my last wit, i bought a couple of kg of wheat grain from the health food shop, to go with the pils and a kg of malted wheat. It turned out really nice but at $4kg for the unmalted is rather expensive. where can u buy 10 or 20kg of unmalted wheat ?

cheers

Woolworths sell 10 kgs bags of Wheat. Look on the bottom shelves in the bird seed section. This however, is only a 'feed wheat' quality mainly used to feed chickens etc.
If you go to a large Produce Store you will probably be able to buy 'Hard Wheat'. This is the stuff that most Pigeon Fanciers use to feed their homing pigeons and also the same wheat we use to make A Grade Flour. That's what you want in your mash. If you can't get that, go to Woolies.

Rolled wheat is good. It's the 'Hard Wheat". You need to soak it overnight with cold water with some Glad Wrap covering it and then immediately prior to preparing your mash, place the rolled wheat and water in a saucepan on the stove and slowly bring up to a temerature of about 70 degrees to gelatinize it and then dump it straight into your mash.
If you are using Raw Wheat, I suggest that you run it through your mill (your mill will love it) and carry out the same process as described above.

Regards,
Lindsay.
 
....bring up to a temerature of about 70 degrees to gelatinize it and then dump it straight into your mash.

Regards,
Lindsay.

Lindsay, would your mash not do exactly the same thing, or is 67c too cool?

cheers Ross
 
Ross,

This information was given to me by Wes Smith for both rolled oats and flaked barley. I might explain here that 'rolled' and 'flaked' are the same horse different jocky. I am therefore assuming that treatemnt of the flaked wheat would be the same.

I may get bashed up here!!!

Regards,
Lindsay.
 
Lindsay,

I thought that the wheat (or whatever grain) is steam-gelatinised before being rolled or flaked.

However, if that info comes from Wes, it's gold, Baby!
My lhbs has taught me that Wes's info is not opinion; it's hard-won knowledge, and should not be ignored...and we laugh when people question the validity of his comments. :lol:

At the very least, it's a hydration step, and it all helps.

Seth out :p
 
Think of the difference when you start to make your porridge to the finished product. I know we're not boiling our grains but there is a huge difference.
Wes also told me to run the 'rolled' grains through the malt mill at least a couple of times to smash tem up.

Regards,
Lindsay.
 
Les, i finally got my Wit done yesterday arvo, i'm getting the yeast ready now.! Thanks again for the Wit II.

My take on the unmalted wheats is that the "flaked" is pre steamed, gelatinised so it should be right to go straight into the mash. But the raw, cracked wheat would need to be pre cooked to gelatinise.

i spent the morning yesterday searching for flaked wheat to no avail. i needed 1.5kg for my recipe, but instead went with 1kg of Bourghoul and used the rest plain flour.
i had a little bit of trouble with the sparge, but that was trying without rice hulls. added the rice hulls and all was quick and easy.
i was pretty worried about the flour turning to glue at the bottom of my mash tun, but all seemed fine.

used some chamomile late too.!
 
:lol: Tabouleh Wit.

FWIW Kong If you're lucky enough you can come across a Middle Eastern grocer who stocks their bourghul in 4 grades.

Best one to get is the coarse milled bourghul I've found it seems to behave best in the mash.

You can also get fine milled which seems to get a bit more gluggy for some reason. There's also coarse and fine milled wholemeal bourghul which would prove interesting in some more rustic dark beers. I've used some in a Scottish Ale but to tell you the truth couldn't really detect it due to the fact I'd used some rauchmalz which basically masks everything. :lol:

At around $1.50 a kg it makes a great, cheap ready to mash solution.

Warren -
 
Les,

i spent the morning yesterday searching for flaked wheat to no avail. i needed 1.5kg for my recipe, but

Most decent Health Food Shops will have flaked wheat, flaked rice, flaked barley and flaked oats.

Lindsay.
 
Most decent Health Food Shops will have flaked wheat, flaked rice, flaked barley and flaked oats.

Lindsay.

none of them had flaked wheat..
except for the organic co-op in manly which was closed when i was doing my search.
so i went with the burglar :p and i'll grab the flaked wheat for my next one.

warren.. bourghoul was $4.50 for 500g..
 
Well I transferred wort from no chill cube to fermenter yest arvo. I left maybe 2-3lt of crap in the cube & ended up with a fermenter volume of 15lt. I guess my Urn/Kettle litre markings must be off a bit since I thought I had 20lt post boil.

OG 1.050 in fermenter. I thought about topping off to 20lt with tap water but decided to leave it since it was my 1st ag & didnt want to risk spoiling it. :unsure:

Will probably end up being my best brew to date & only have 10lt to keg after racking losses etc.

Pitched 2lt starter trub @ ~24deg which was higher than i would have liked. Overnight with the fridge at 15 deg fermenter was down to 18-20 this morning & fermentation firing away.


Anyway enough dribble from me.... for now :lol:
 
Wheat and barley selected for brewing are different grades to those selected for bread making and other food preparations.
Wheat for brewing is selected for low Nitrogen and is carefully treated by the maltster to restrict protein degradation, this emphasise the wheat aromas in the finished beer.
Top quality brewing grade wheat both malted and torrefied should be readily available through your LHB so why not choose the best?

Saying any old wheat product is ok is as true as saying you should use baking yeast.

MHB
 
With regard to the pre-gelatinisation....

How would you be able to 'roll' wheat if it wasn't pre-gelatinised? Wouldn't it just crack/crush and turn to flour?

(not that I would question for a second Wessmith's advice)
 
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