Hi all. First post (though used to be a very active member of Real Beer forums 10 years ago).
So I'm new to all-grain, though have accomplished partial mash beers before. I wouldn't go near all-grain (lacking the equipment and time), but I have moved to the Middle East and have to learn how to brew with the local ingredients, with a little help from small and lightweight imports from the UK.
Obviously, since there is very little brewing out here (one micro and one macrobrewery, but both order ingredients from abroad), nobody is malting grain. I can get wheat and possibly barley (though the grade of the barley will be animal feed), but can't get modified grains.
I'm about to create a recipe for an all-unmalted-wheat beer. I imagine that if this is successful, it will turn out very dry and characterless, so rather than trying to hefeweizen it up with an interesting yeast, I'm going to treat it like a wit and spice it.
My plan so far is to use 100% unmalted wheat crushed very finely, plus about half a kilo of additional wheat husks for the mash. I have a tube of amylase that I persuaded a friend to bring me from the UK, which has a very uninformative label. It's 25g of white powder which is amylase cut with what I suspect is probably a majority by weight of dextrose. The label assumes I'm using it to clarify wine (God knows why I'd have starch in fermenting wine...), and just tells me to use a tsp per gallon for that purpose.
As you have probably clocked by now, my plan is to try to convert the starches in the unmalted wheat using only amylase from this tube.
Some immediate problems and questions occur to me. Hopefully someone can offer opinions on them. Thank you for helping a desperate and well-meaning expat. I've done my searching around. Nobody on 'tinternet seems to have done exactly this before, but there are a lot of issues raised in the past about unmalted wheat which I've taken on board.
Thank you!
So I'm new to all-grain, though have accomplished partial mash beers before. I wouldn't go near all-grain (lacking the equipment and time), but I have moved to the Middle East and have to learn how to brew with the local ingredients, with a little help from small and lightweight imports from the UK.
Obviously, since there is very little brewing out here (one micro and one macrobrewery, but both order ingredients from abroad), nobody is malting grain. I can get wheat and possibly barley (though the grade of the barley will be animal feed), but can't get modified grains.
I'm about to create a recipe for an all-unmalted-wheat beer. I imagine that if this is successful, it will turn out very dry and characterless, so rather than trying to hefeweizen it up with an interesting yeast, I'm going to treat it like a wit and spice it.
My plan so far is to use 100% unmalted wheat crushed very finely, plus about half a kilo of additional wheat husks for the mash. I have a tube of amylase that I persuaded a friend to bring me from the UK, which has a very uninformative label. It's 25g of white powder which is amylase cut with what I suspect is probably a majority by weight of dextrose. The label assumes I'm using it to clarify wine (God knows why I'd have starch in fermenting wine...), and just tells me to use a tsp per gallon for that purpose.
As you have probably clocked by now, my plan is to try to convert the starches in the unmalted wheat using only amylase from this tube.
Some immediate problems and questions occur to me. Hopefully someone can offer opinions on them. Thank you for helping a desperate and well-meaning expat. I've done my searching around. Nobody on 'tinternet seems to have done exactly this before, but there are a lot of issues raised in the past about unmalted wheat which I've taken on board.
- Cereal mash – seems that I need to boil the wheat to achieve gelatinisation (whatever that is). Boiling crushed unmalted wheat (especially finely crushed for BIAB) seems like a bad idea to me? Boiling whole wheat and then using the soft cooked grains, uncrushed, in a mash also seems weird. Any opinions on a way forward for this?
- Stuck sparge – I’ve got hold of some extra bags of wheat husks, but I’m hoping that the mashing process will reduce the likelihood of the flour just turning into a sticky mess. Is that the case? Lack of any protease is going to count against me, I’m guessing. Will a cereal mash and decoction help with this? My 'mash tun' is just a large brew pot on a gas stove, so I'm going to need to keep adding heat to maintain my mash temp anyway. Decoction should therefore be possible without deliberately doing a multi-step mash. Which leads me on to...
- Decoction – any positive effect, or will this just denature what little amylase I have?
- Total mash time – suspect this will have to be long (2 hours enough?) to guarantee that I’ve converted as much as is going to convert of the starch. Any negative effects from a long mash time, provided I keep a stable temperature within an acceptable conversion range? I've got hold of iodine and will be trying to get hold of pH testing strips to maximise my chances of the amylase doing its thing and me knowing about it.
- Protein (or indeed any other) rest – utterly pointless, since I’ve only got one enzyme in there? Or are other enzymes going to appear out of unmalted wheat?
- Flaked wheat – I can’t get this, but I’m assuming that you make ‘flaked’ anything by rolling the fresh soft grains before they are dried. If nothing else is done other than this, then by crushing very fine I will be achieving much the same effect, surely?
- Mash temp - any ideas for a single mashing temperature (presumably steps are pointless, since I’ve only got amylase), from those with more experience than my zero experience?
Thank you!