What are you doing with homebrew today?

[Sandy Feet]

I missed gravity badly. I have never used this much wheat before. I had a feeling in the back of my head that I would have issues with the wheat, but I didn't do anything about it. I might actually have something in the Weiss category with the lower gravity. This is my first Hefe, and I learned something, session beer or not. I'm going to have a beer in a bit. My wort only cooled to 80 degrees, so I have it in a refrigerator at 64. I'll pitch when I get back.

 

[Brew Cat]

I missed gravity badly. I have never used this much wheat before. I had a feeling in the back of my head that I would have issues with the wheat, but I didn't do anything about it. I might actually have something in the Weiss category with the lower gravity. This is my first Hefe, and I learned something, session beer or not. I'm going to have a beer in a bit. My wort only cooled to 80 degrees, so I have it in a refrigerator at 64. I'll pitch when I get back.

did you use the single infusion? maybe your volume


I don't usually notice a difference from my calculations on a wheat beer
my Schops had 85% wheat

 

[Brew Cat]

chilling my Biere de Garde

 

[Sandy Feet]

I used the same amount of water I always use. Boil off was fairly typical from what I normally get.

 

[Dave Y]

rice hulls + beta glucanase helps ease the pain of brewing with lots of wheat or rye. I use an all in one to mash / boil, so I have a few concerns with wheat beer.
- scorching. these brews leave congealed residue that sinks to the bottom far worse than other mash bills. This gets scorched on the burner element and can cause an overtemp fault.
- stuck mash. It JUST. WON'T. DRAIN.
- very poor flow through the grains.

The last one can be a batch killer. I'm forgetting the order, I'm sure, but I did ok with my first hefeweizen all grain and I think I had 2 or 3 under my belt when the local club had a roggenbier at the sampling table. I put together a mash bill at about 55% rye, and went to it.

It was a bad brew day, I got terrible extraction, visibly bad recirculation flow & I missed target by a bunch. I went with it anyway but in retrospect, enough went wrong I should have never even t/f to the fermenter. After it was done fermenting I asked myself out loud "why did you put this in the fermenter dumbàss?" That beer SUCKED and I pitched it.

It would be about 18 months until I tried again - about November '25 IIRC. In the intervening time I brewed a bunch of beer with rye up to 30% and between rice hulls, beta glucanase and paying close attention to the kettle temp and power settings, I got better at getting good recirculation and flow through the grains so my extraction was better, efficiency improved, etc.

 

[Brew Cat]

sandy feat does BIAB I believe so no stuck mash there
I've never noticed any scorching
a good rolling boil stirs it up enough
an electric kettle may be prone to scorching because of the heating element placement
I brew a lot of wheat beer BIAB and have never had the problems you mention
55% is not that much I just brewed a Schops 85% wheat and got 80% extraction

I used the same amount of water I always use. Boil off was fairly typical from what I normally get.

did you squeeze the bag? need to really squeeze it and also do a dunk sparge and squeeze it again
did get your volume out of the mash or did you have top up

 

[Brew Cat]

rice hulls + beta glucanase helps ease the pain of brewing with lots of wheat or rye. I use an all in one to mash / boil, so I have a few concerns with wheat beer.
- scorching. these brews leave congealed residue that sinks to the bottom far worse than other mash bills. This gets scorched on the burner element and can cause an overtemp fault.
- stuck mash. It JUST. WON'T. DRAIN.
- very poor flow through the grains.

The last one can be a batch killer. I'm forgetting the order, I'm sure, but I did ok with my first hefeweizen all grain and I think I had 2 or 3 under my belt when the local club had a roggenbier at the sampling table. I put together a mash bill at about 55% rye, and went to it.

It was a bad brew day, I got terrible extraction, visibly bad recirculation flow & I missed target by a bunch. I went with it anyway but in retrospect, enough went wrong I should have never even t/f to the fermenter. After it was done fermenting I asked myself out loud "why did you put this in the fermenter dumbàss?" That beer SUCKED and I pitched it.

It would be about 18 months until I tried again - about November '25 IIRC. In the intervening time I brewed a bunch of beer with rye up to 30% and between rice hulls, beta glucanase and paying close attention to the kettle temp and power settings, I got better at getting good recirculation and flow through the grains so my extraction was better, efficiency improved, etc.

I only did 2 brews in my electric all in one but still did BIAB
but those weren't wheats
still had issues so went back to gas

 

[Dave Y]

I only did 2 brews in my electric all in one but still did BIAB
but those weren't wheats
still had issues so went back to gas

stuck or thick (poor circulating) mash is platform agnostic; it doesn't care what equipment you're using.
As a wheat beer brewer, you may not be interested in a stuck mash, but a stuck mash is definitely interested in you.

how bad did you miss the gravity?

 

[Brew Cat]

https://byo.com/articles/brewing-with-wheat/

here is an article on why you need to step mash or decoct wheat beer

I've had stuck mashes before I started BIAB
I don't recirculate
I step mash with infusion or decoct so stirring often enough so I don't have recirculation issues
I consistently get 80% or more ectraction

 

[Megary]

I BIAB, single infusion, no sparge and use Wheat all the time. Never had any gravity issues. I mash with Wheat just like any other grain.
Wheat can be a bit harder to grind though. Might have just been a milling issue??

 

[Brew Cat]

stuck or thick (poor circulating) mash is platform agnostic; it doesn't care what equipment you're using.
As a wheat beer brewer, you may not be interested in a stuck mash, but a stuck mash is definitely interested in you.

how bad did you miss the gravity?

I had to figure out what platform agnostic meant and I disagree


when I had wheat stuck sparges it was fly sparging
I needed to slow the sparge down or use a wider mash tun which I did
recirculating would be similar
not a problem with BIAB
I would suggest you don't recirculate and just stir once or twice during the mash
your missing a whole lot of beer styles if you cant brew with wheat

 

[Sandy Feet]

stuck or thick (poor circulating) mash is platform agnostic; it doesn't care what equipment you're using.
As a wheat beer brewer, you may not be interested in a stuck mash, but a stuck mash is definitely interested in you.

how bad did you miss the gravity?

Calculator said 1.054. I hit 1.048. If things work out, it is more sessionable, no problem. It just isn't what I expected. I don't get stuck with BIAB, but I had a feeling it might clump and affect efficiency.
As to the above, I do know how to squeeze a bag lol.
Like I said, it is an experiment. I have issues with flaked grains converting too. I learned how to compensate for that. The wheat, or that much of it was an unknown previous to today. I do use a couple of pounds of wheat in a Saison. I've never used 5 1/2 lbs.

 

[Sunfire96]

Calculator said 1.054. I hit 1.048. If things work out, it is more sessionable, no problem. It just isn't what I expected. I don't get stuck with BIAB, but I had a feeling it might clump and affect efficiency.
As to the above, I do know how to squeeze a bag lol.
Like I said, it is an experiment. I have issues with flaked grains converting too. I learned how to compensate for that. The wheat, or that much of it was an unknown previous to today. I do use a couple of pounds of wheat in a Saison. I've never used 5 1/2 lbs.

6 points seems within standard deviation of trying something new, to me. I figured you were 20 points lower or something like that.

 

[Brew Cat]

Calculator said 1.054. I hit 1.048. If things work out, it is more sessionable, no problem. It just isn't what I expected. I don't get stuck with BIAB, but I had a feeling it might clump and affect efficiency.
As to the above, I do know how to squeeze a bag lol.
Like I said, it is an experiment. I have issues with flaked grains converting too. I learned how to compensate for that. The wheat, or that much of it was an unknown previous to today. I do use a couple of pounds of wheat in a Saison. I've never used 5 1/2 lbs.

I always check the preboil gravity and adjust then
boil harder or slower for a small increment
or add water or DME if really off

do you do full volume or sparge

 

[Sandy Feet]

Full volume. I try to run an easy, rolling boil.

 

[Sandy Feet]

6 points seems within standard deviation of trying something new, to me. I figured you were 20 points lower or something like that.

6 points is a lot, but I do agree. I had it in my head what I could deal with, and I am at the lower end of that which is fine for an experiment.

 

[Brew Cat]

Full volume. I try to run an easy, rolling boil.

normally I do as well but if your pre boil gravity is low you can kick it up a notch to boil off an additional quart or so
Ill check my volume at 30 minutes to see if I'm on track
I feel that lowering the final volume a quart or even adding a quart of water doesn't really change the balance much if at all

 

[Sandy Feet]

normally I do as well but if your pre boil gravity is low you can kick it up a notch to boil off an additional quart or so
Ill check my volume at 30 minutes to see if I'm on track
I feel that lowering the final volume a quart or even adding a quart of water doesn't really change the balance much if at all

It probably wouldn't have been a bad idea to do that. I normally don't take pre boil gravity readings.

 

[Sandy Feet]

I did mash at 149, so we shall see what happens later. I am going to run this a little low temperature wise until the krausen starts to fall.

 

[Donoroto]

Bottling my beer today. Using a recently bought counter flow filler. So it’ll probably be a slow process. The beer seems to be holding up without oxidation. This seems to be the hardest part of the whole process for me.
View attachment 34539

Perhaps slow, but when I try, it is also very messy, with liquid everywhere. And assembling the contraption (I use it so infrequently I don’t have a dedicated hose setup) takes a while too.