Thanks for finding “Brewing with Wheat,” a website designed to make an upcoming book from Brewers Publications better. This only works with your help.
I’m the author. My name is Stan Hieronymus. I previously wrote “Brew Like a Monk” for Brewers Publications and I think that book was a little better because I asked both professional and amateur brewers what questions they’d like to see answered in the book. So let’s give that a whirl again.
This is downright easy. Just click on one (or more) of these links and add your comment.
Beligan White/Wit beers
Judging Wits
Hefeweizen and Weizen beers
Judging Hefeweizen
American Wheat Beers
Judging American Wheats
Berliner Weisse, Gose and more
Judging Berliner Weisse and Gose
Thanks in advance for the help.
Awesome. I assume that this will be in the vein of the trio of books on Belgian beers they have already published? Do you know if any other books like these are in the works?
I don’t have much personal experience brewing with wheat. When it comes to brewers recreating dead or dying styles, I wonder how we can ever tell if we’re getting it right. If it hasn’t been continuously brewed, there’s no reference point, and if there are few examples, they may be idiosyncratic and won’t provide a full picture of the style. All styles evolve over time with changes in taste, ingredients, and brewers – I wonder if rare styles “mutate” more quickly.
Stan,
I have a much more basic question than any you pose. It’s simple: why brew with wheat? The easy answer seems to be “Because it’s traditional,” but why is there a tradition? Another easy answer: for big fluffy head, and that one seems true (until you pour a Berliner Weisse). But I’ve had “hefeweizen” made at brewpubs that had no wheat malt, just barley malt or rye malt, but fermented with the weizen yeast, and if I’d not been told, I don’t think I would have noticed a difference. Wheat gives the proteins that make witbier cloudy…but I’ve seen a lot of pretty bright witbier lately.
I had an all wheat malt IPA once in Oregon, and it tasted like…IPA. The brewer made a big deal of talking about how difficult it was, and how he had to add lots of rice hulls so the mash wouldn’t get stuck in lauter, and I just nodded, and thought, why’d you bother?
What’s wheat do, Stan?
I would love to see some discussion about the difference between white and red wheat, especially regarding protein content and the differences between them. Including info about torrified and flaked wheat would be nice too
I like using 100% wheat in several ‘experimental’ beers. I enjoy the malty graininess wheat contributes and look for hop varieties that complement. Recently I started a batch called Gratzer, an almost extinct 100% wheat beer that is smoked with a portion toasted to almost amber level and use of noble/polish hops. Very smokey and hoppy beer. I also have done 100% wheat malt mashes to extract a portion of wheat wort for use in extract wits.
The common theme I have found with wheat – It can be a rough sparge unless you do this:
Gluten/Gum rest for 30 minutes, then raise to your normal 148-165 sugar conversions. Malted wheat seems to tone the protein levels down more than commonly accepted, as I’ve found out by mashing in the higher protein temp range and actually loosing head. With the lower gum rest, starting the sparge then adding 1/2inch deep grid channels on top of the grain bed seems to work quite well. Adding #1 of rice becomes optional.
When I skipped the lower temp rest (98-108F range) I had to use rice hulls.
100% wheat also doesn’t seem to hold on to as much water as barley. I was expecting 2 gallons of mash retention and got just 1, ended up with extra wort. The Dough in/gluten rest really does increase efficiency. I’ve heard wheat doesn’t extract well/convert well – but out of several batches this doesn’t hold true.
I believe strains of yeast will bring about slightly different flavor profiles from wheat than barley. Adjusting the hops to compensate, I believe these differences can shine through and make wheat more than just a head enhancer.
Another observation with wheat – keeping the protein levels up a little bit and having a nice rolling almost violent boil tend to make clearer beers. The extra protein crashing around makes for solid break material.
There is definately a place to explore in the use of wheat. You can treat it like any other grain in the mash, but I believe tweaking your process with wheat in mind, the brewer can find wheat does have significant properties beyond a standard malt rendering sugar to brew with.
Looking forward to this book, really enjoy using wheat… (and Rye
I am in the planning stage to make my first full mash wheat beer. In my examination of books in my library there was only a thorough discussion of mashing for wheat beers in the “Classic beer Styles Series – German Wheat Beer”. Other books had only scetchy discussions on none at all. The Classic beer Style book highly stressed the use of decoction during the mash. Since this is not commonly done by most brewers, and is difficult, I believe a discussion of mash procedures without a decoction would be helpful. Also, from my understanding the mash procedures are critical to the quality of the finished beer.
I have always been curious about the elusive “wheat wines” that people talk about and haven’t found too much information about. What would this be catagorized as and what would be the “typical” break-down of a brew like this be?
Some information about other wheat relatives like spelt and triticale would be interesting.
To James Golovich’s comments I agree completely. Also information on the differences between European and American wheat.
I would like to see a discussion on differences between brewing with white wheat, flaked wheat, and torrified wheat. I brew two belgian’s, a lambic and a wit. When asking my local supplier on difference between white wheat and flaked, the response I got was use the white wheat in a lambic, flaked wheat in the wit. I am very interested in this book and can’t wait to see it.
Hi Stan,
I believe that you should include discussion on dark & caramel malts. These are important for historical reasons.
I look forward to the book.
I’d like to see information on the specialty malts. Carmel wheat and chocolate wheat come to mind. Is any malter producing other specialty malts with wheat? If expanded to include rye and oats, there too are some specialty malts.
I’m a fan of wheat wines and would like to see some pages devoted to this. What variations are people making? My wheat wines are 100% wheat using either American or English type yeasts. I’ve made both pale and dark versions (preferring the pale). I’m sure other are using Belgian and German yeasts. Highly hopped versions and more restrained interpretations.
What signature or secret spices are people using in their witbiers?
What about lagers? I know that Millstream used to make a wheat based lager. Are there any wheat lager traditions in Europe?
Glad I found this very interesting blog. I haven’t had a chance to digest the entire discussion but what can be better than a in depth discussion on the use of Wheat in brewing.
I am very interested in scratch, lacto, Brett, wheat and standard ales…and pre-modern industrial brewing, (big bag methods…low tech, low science, low gizmo/gadet, outdoor, home grown brewing.
I’ve been in the process of developing a culture for growing spelt, Rye, Wheat, Oats, 2&6 Row Barley, Amaranth, oats and corn for home malting. It took several years to find a decent 2 row, This year’s experimental crop of Conlon, (available to Johnnie’s Seed) was very successful.
I have a home malting method down. I refined it using Robust 6 row with decent success. Unfortunately, we had too much rain in the Philadelphia area to plant wheat this spring.
With regard to using unmalted wheat for brewing. Your best bet is to pay through the nose at your brewery store unless you grow it yourself. It is insanely difficult to find any information about brewing wheat varieties. Wheat and barley are incredibly controlled. The seed if often proprietary and the grain giant’s don’t want people like you and me telling people how easy it is to grow, harvest, malt, (Wheat is difficult to malt) and brew with.
There are many different types of wheat but the basic difference is Winter-(low Gluten for pastry flower.)and Spring (high gluten) and Durham wheat…hard low gluten wheat for pasta. I’ve never read anything anywhere about which to use. If you doing unmalted gelatinized, (cooked) wheat…like for a wit I think you just have to experiment but I would start with the low protein Winter Wheat.
Trying to find and buy non-rancid wheat berries is very difficult unless you buy 25lbs, 40lbs and 50lbs bags of seed. This is expensive but the seed is top quality and cheaper than you can buy in a health food store. Johnnies Seeds and Fedco Seeds are a good source. Please write to your favorite seed company and ask them to start carrying open pollinated organic grain seed for malting, milling, brewing and baking.
Home-malting barley, is easy once you’ve messed with it a couple of tries. Corn, Amaranth is as simple as soaking keeping damp until you see the rootlets then dry. Oats are highly risky due to a fungus that likes wet oats. Wheat has the endosperm on the outside of the husk making them difficult but not impossible to malt at home. Frankly, who needs to malt oats or wheat at home. Frankly, I doubt anyone in the 19th C. malted wheat, spelt or Rye… they simply used more 6 row barley for the extra A/B Amylase enzymes and added fiber bulk for clearing the wort. I can’t think of one brewing style that isn’t built on malted barley as the primary grist.
Anyway, if American home brewing culture is going to mature it needs to dig deep agrarian roots. Who wants to spend big bucks to grow a German beer with German malt and hops…might as well just buy German Beer and forget about home brewing. I hate spending top dollar for European malt and hops when I can grow and malt it myself. Why should home brewing community react to the insanity of modern hyper-industrialization of farming and the centralized of control of the colluded grain markets. Gardening isn’t about growing the biggest tomatoes and home brewing isn’t about winning a ribbon