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Author Topic: Wheat malt and lower efficiency  (Read 7900 times)

Offline chumley

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #15 on: July 30, 2015, 10:21:05 am »
Mosher said somewhere, read on a blog, that using a commercial coffee bur grinder works well for wheat. There isn't a husk, so no point being gentle. I've been wanting to try a food processor, but haven't found the motivation to run 4-6lbs through 8oz at a time.

I did this once.  Ran 6 lbs. through my VitaMix blender dry container until it was flour.  Added 4 lbs. of normal crushed 2-row, and rice hulls.  I got great efficiency, and the beer came out great.

It only took like an extra 10 minutes to crush this way.



Offline jeffy

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #16 on: July 30, 2015, 03:39:30 pm »
Thanks for the replies. I've wondered if it had to do with the wheat itself. It's Best Malz weizen malz.

What does a cereal mash involve for this process?

Sounds like I could just plan to do a decoction with wheat beers or just plan for 5% lower efficiency. But Reverse's description is a good one, kind of what I was looking for as to the reasons why wheat malt is a pain in the a$$ for hitting specific gravities...
I'm sure I could also crush finer too as .035" gap might not be small enough of a gap to crush it fine enough. It's a pain to mess with that though with a Barley Crusher...

I can not understand what a cereal mash would have to do with wehat malt, he must be thinking raw wheat. I do agree that wheat does seem to be harder than barley so gelatinization could be part of the issue, a decoction will definitely increase your efficiency regardless of wheat or barley IME. You also might just try a little longer mash or add 5% more ingredients.

Malt or no malt, doesn't matter. The gelatinization range doesn't change with malting.

You don't need to do a cereal mash; all you really need is to boil the wheat so it gels. However, it might make sense to go ahead and try to get whatever conversion you can out of the wheat before boiling and denaturing all those enzymes. It isn't necessary to add barley, since the wheat malt has enzymes, so perhaps cereal mash is the wrong term but the correct process.

Part of the reason to do a mash with some barley malt before boiling is so the cereal mash doesn't turn into a gloppy mixture that will stick your mash.
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Offline majorvices

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #17 on: July 30, 2015, 06:44:33 pm »
That kinda makes sense. I still say grinding finer works though.

Online dmtaylor

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #18 on: July 30, 2015, 07:12:46 pm »
That kinda makes sense. I still say grinding finer works though.

I feel we're being ignored.  Here, let me be more clear:

There's no need to dick around with mill gap settings.  If you don't crush the wheat properly, your efficiency will suffer.  If you don't crush the wheat properly, you aren't crushing anything hard enough.  Set the mill gap tighter, and crush everything tighter.  That includes barley malt, wheat malt, rye malt, oat malt, corn malt (where can I buy some of that!?), you name it.  Set the gap tighter, crush everything harder, and be done with it.

</obnoxiously ranty-sounding but helpful communication>
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Offline BrewHalla

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #19 on: July 30, 2015, 08:26:30 pm »
If you haven't tried this, in addition to the finer grind, try a rest at 120 for 20 minutes

Offline majorvices

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #20 on: July 31, 2015, 04:33:55 am »
I think the longer rest helps too, but of course a longer rest always improves efficiency even for all barley mashes.

The thing I have always noticed about wheat malt is it is a little smaller kernal than barley malt. Best is more plump than, say, Briess, but still smaller. So you don't get as many tiny pieces to work with.

I would be concerned that boiling that much of the garin bill would denature too much of the enzymes, at least in decoction you rest the decoct for several minutes at conversion temps. I guess if you did that it would be fine.

Offline beersk

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #21 on: July 31, 2015, 07:37:07 am »
That kinda makes sense. I still say grinding finer works though.

I feel we're being ignored.  Here, let me be more clear:

There's no need to dick around with mill gap settings.  If you don't crush the wheat properly, your efficiency will suffer.  If you don't crush the wheat properly, you aren't crushing anything hard enough.  Set the mill gap tighter, and crush everything tighter.  That includes barley malt, wheat malt, rye malt, oat malt, corn malt (where can I buy some of that!?), you name it.  Set the gap tighter, crush everything harder, and be done with it.

</obnoxiously ranty-sounding but helpful communication>
Nah, Dave, you're definitely not being ignored. I had my mill gap set at .032" for a while, but was starting to see some slower runoffs, and didn't care for that. So I widened it back to .035" and it's been fine since.

I think I will try decocting on my next hefe. Might be done brewing hefes for the year though. Maybe I'll do a winter hefe, for kicks. Decocting is always good to do in the winter when it's chilly inside.
Jesse

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #22 on: July 31, 2015, 12:50:49 pm »
:)

Decoction certainly can help.  I still do it once in a while, just for fun.  As long as you avoid the protein rest area around 122 F, you're fine.  Today's malts get damaged by ye olde protein rest, not good for head retention or body.  I often dough in around 100 F, then boost 'er up to 140s or even straight to 150s.  Mashout is optional.  Also I usually only boil for 10-15 minutes.  You'll get a sizable efficiency boost even from a short boil... so why boil longer.  In fact I should probably crush less to avoid efficiency from getting too high into the mid-90s, where I continue to theorize that excessively high efficiency has an adverse effect on malt flavor.  More experiments are needed.  But anyway, I digress a little bit.

Cheers.
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Offline mabrungard

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #23 on: July 31, 2015, 02:17:36 pm »
Could it be because the extract assumed for wheat and wheat malt is too high in the typical brewing program? I notice that Promash lists wheat and wheat malt at about 1.038 to 1.040 per pound per gallon and other malts are several points lower. My experience is that I could get about a 5% reduction in calculated efficiency when brewing with high wheat grists. That happens to be about the difference in the reported extract amounts between wheat and other grains.

Is it possible that those wheat grains are set too high for the way we typically brew? I'm thinking I should get in the database in my Promash grains and reset those values downward and then I won't have to alter my efficiency setting when moving from barley and wheat grists.
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Offline beersk

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #24 on: July 31, 2015, 02:46:36 pm »
Could it be because the extract assumed for wheat and wheat malt is too high in the typical brewing program? I notice that Promash lists wheat and wheat malt at about 1.038 to 1.040 per pound per gallon and other malts are several points lower. My experience is that I could get about a 5% reduction in calculated efficiency when brewing with high wheat grists. That happens to be about the difference in the reported extract amounts between wheat and other grains.

Is it possible that those wheat grains are set too high for the way we typically brew? I'm thinking I should get in the database in my Promash grains and reset those values downward and then I won't have to alter my efficiency setting when moving from barley and wheat grists.

That's not a bad call, Martin. I use Beersmith. I may go in and futz with the settings for wheat as well.
Jesse

Offline 69franx

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Re: Wheat malt and lower efficiency
« Reply #25 on: August 01, 2015, 10:47:01 pm »
That kinda makes sense. I still say grinding finer works though.

I feel we're being ignored.  Here, let me be more clear:

There's no need to dick around with mill gap settings.  If you don't crush the wheat properly, your efficiency will suffer.  If you don't crush the wheat properly, you aren't crushing anything hard enough.  Set the mill gap tighter, and crush everything tighter.  That includes barley malt, wheat malt, rye malt, oat malt, corn malt (where can I buy some of that!?), you name it.  Set the gap tighter, crush everything harder, and be done with it.

</obnoxiously ranty-sounding but helpful communication>
Nah, Dave, you're definitely not being ignored. I had my mill gap set at .032" for a while, but was starting to see some slower runoffs, and didn't care for that. So I widened it back to .035" and it's been fine since.

I think I will try decocting on my next hefe. Might be done brewing hefes for the year though. Maybe I'll do a winter hefe, for kicks. Decocting is always good to do in the winter when it's chilly inside.
Beersk, I am right there with you on my gap settings. Last several brews I had it set at 1.032 and very slow runnoffs, thinking about going back to 1.035 and seeing where that gets me. I have been happy with my efficiency at 1.032, just taking a little longer
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