Wheat Flour

[Swinging Beef]

Ive made a witbier I'm kinda keen on and was gonna re brew, but I thought I might substitute some of the grain bill for plain flour to lighten the finished colour.

Stuck mashes aside, will this work?

2kg Pils malt
1kg plainflour
2kg wheat malt

Should I consider treating it to a cereal mash first?

 

[Thirsty Boy]

It'll work - I'd do a betaglucan and protien rest on it first and it will be heaps less gummy. No need for the full cereal mash, but you might as well do it while you have it in the pot for the BG/P rest.

3 parts wheat flour to 1 part crushed Barley Malt
normal L:G
Add barley malt to water, stir in flour, add water to keep it loose if needed
Rest @ 40-45C for BG - 30min stirring every 5-10 mins
Raise to 55C for P rest and give it 30mins stirring occasionally

add to main mash and mash normally. It wont hurt to give it a full cereal mash/ decoction though if you feel you want to so you can use it for a step/raise addition or whatever.

You can probably count on getting about 10-15% more extract from wheat flour than you would from an equivalent weight of wheat malt.

 

[bcp]

You can probably count on getting about 10-15% more extract from wheat flour than you would from an equivalent weight of wheat malt.

So - apart from gummy mashes - what are the advantages of using grain?

 

[Swinging Beef]

Sounds like a plan.

Thirsty.. do you have any experience with doing this for witbier? What changes in character to the wort and finished beer should be expected?

 

[JestersDarts]

So - apart from gummy mashes - what are the advantages of using grain?

Fresh.
Crushed grainbed acts as filter.
You wont end up with a cake.

 

[mje1980]

Darren i used wheat flour in a wit i did a while ago. Straight in the mash no cereal mash. I dropped some points on Original gravity, so a cereal mash might help i have been told. Had no problems with gumming up the mash, though from memory it was 500g in a double batch so not a huge %age.

 

[Bribie G]

A guy who claimed to be an ex Coopers employee (he's only posted a few times) hinted last year on the forum that Coopers used to use good old plain flour in their ales - I wonder if they do this at the modern Regents Park brewery. I made a CSA with 250 of plain flour and it turned out very clean in flavour but hazy - settled out after a couple of months in the bottle. I'd be tempted to do a short cereal mash at 71 or thereabouts first, although a lot of guys just use wheat straight into the mash. (was discussed on a rye thread)

 

[Swinging Beef]

(was discussed on a rye thread)

I musta mista rye thread.

i reckon Ill give it a bash.
Witbier is awesome for summer and the last one was pretty cool, just not as 'white' as hoegaarden and tidje

 

[seemax]

Weetbix (Aldi no less!!) Wit ... brewed two now with good success!

The last I used Wyeast Bavarian Wheat (3056?) - really nice tart,citrus flavour and less spiciness, IMO I've found it far more quaffable than 3068 or WB06.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

So - apart from gummy mashes - what are the advantages of using grain?

None really - flours are much more "efficient" as a brewing raw material, they are just hard to use that's all.

Sounds like a plan.

Thirsty.. do you have any experience with doing this for witbier? What changes in character to the wort and finished beer should be expected?

Yeah, i've done one or two wits with wheat flour. But didnt particularly notice much difference to the wits I've done with grains. Mind you, I usually use raw wheat in my wits rather than wheat malt. So i'd be using something along the lines of 50% pale malt 10% wheat malt and 40% raw wheat or wheat flour. So a large enough proportion so that just heaving it in the mash was going to be asking for trouble.

I've used wheatbix too and they worked fine, but I like the flavor of the raw wheat the best, followed by the flour. Tarter, more "wheaty" if you know what I mean.

TB

 

[Bribie G]

I still have six bottles left of that CSA I made in June for the State - came about midfield but since then it's turned into a glorious drop (it never occurred to me to keep a CSA for more than a few weeks but these just got forgotten about). Cracked one now and it's fantastic - as you can see the starch haze has gone
Go the wheat