Summer Wheat All Grain Advice

Not much of a reason to do flameout and 1 min.

 

I just made a pale wheat ale using a bit for bittering at 60min (something like 0.5 oz Magnum or Willamette), then 1oz Cascade at 10min and 1oz Citra at flameout. Worked very well for me, it's nice and hoppy (but not too much) and smells crazy good. Easy drinking and perfect for the heat.

 

Are you planning on malting that barley yourself? ...because you're not going to get any sugars out if it otherwise.

You should also use about .5lbs of rice hulls in your mash.

Also, what yeast are you going to use? What temperature are you fermenting at?

One more thing, Apollo uses noble hops...so using non-noble hops is going give it a pretty non-Apollo flavor.

 

Barley doesn't need to be malted to extract fermentable sugars from it, but it does need to have its starches gelatinized (e.g. flaked grains or by cereal mashing) before enzymes from grains with diastatic power can convert the gelatinized starches to fermentable sugars.

 

Right, yes, malt it or cereal mash it. I was just trying to make sure he wasn't going to try to mash with raw barley.

 

OP, why the flaked barley in the recipe?

Sixpoint claims Apollo is a bavarian weizen, which if traditional would be 30-50% pilsner malt and 70-50% malted wheat (potentially some chocolate, unmalted wheat, melanoidin or munich in there if specialty malts used). Sixpoint brews beer that tend to blur style guidelines, so I can't really comment what I'd expect to be in there.

From what I remember from a can I had a year back, Apollo may be sour mashed, fermented with some lactic acid bacteria or dosed with lactic acid as its pretty tart, and may have a decent amount of late hopping with citrusy hops. From what I remember, there isn't a classic weizen yeast character to the beer, so I might go with something cleaner, maybe German Ale WY1007.

So in short, off the cuff:
5% Flaked/Torrified wheat
50% German Malted Wheat
45% Pilsner Malt
Short sour mash, dose with lactic acid or pitch lacto early and then finish with German Ale Yeast WY1007 or Weizen Ale Yeast Blend (3056) [3056 is a fruit bomb, so might be what you want]

As far as hops go, really up to you. Saphir hops are German hops with a good deal of citrus character, although if you really want citrusy/funky hops I'd go with a bunch of late New Zealand Pacific Hallertau (Pacifica) hops as they remind me a lot of Apollos hop profile.

Cigar City and Sixpoint seem to respond to homebrewers, so it might be worth contacting them instead of asking us for clone attempts.

 

Unmalted ('raw') Barley normally has a gelatinization temp a few degrees lower than malted barley. So a cereal mash isn't necessary.

 

Citation please. Everything I've read states that you have to treat unmalted barley in some way, before mashing with other grains.

 

Here are just a couple...

http://www.byo.com/mashing/item/442-cereal-mashing-techniques

http://books.google.com/books?id=zV...Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=flaked barley raw&f=false

I don't have time to find them now, but there are also charts out there showing the gelatinization temps of various grains.

 

I appreciate the info. Here is my counter:

http://www.pivarstvo.info/forum/files/32005mashing_unmalted_109.pdf

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/questions-around-brewing-unmalted-barley-330627/

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/brewing-beer-without-malt-aka-maltless-brewing-316742/

You can use some unmalted barley/wheat in your mash, but you have to have some sort of enzyme addition for it to work properly. This would include adding bacteria or some amount of malted grain.

 

Of course you need diastatic enzymes from malted grain (or somewhere) to convert the starches in the raw barley. This is different from a cereal mash. And OP's recipe has the enzymes needed (in the wheat malt). Even if you did an (uneccessary) cereal mash, you'd need a source of enzymes.

 

Perhaps my misunderstanding is that I thought the wheat wouldn't be able to compensate for the lack of enzymes in the barley. Upon further review, that may not be the case.

As always, I appreciate your input.

 

As a quick, gross check, you can always figure out the averaged diastatic power of the mash (degrees linter) and if its over 35 Lintner (some are listed in windsor kolbach), you should get conversion. This will at least tell you if you're way off base.

One other thing, flaked or torrified grains have all been pre-gelatinized, and thus don't require a cereal mash for accessibility. Granted, some unmalted grains (wheat, oats, barley) have gelatinization temps at or below mash temp, so again wouldn't require a cereal mash for gelatinization, whereas others like corn or rice may.

 

I believe my misunderstanding came from my attribution of barley ratios in a Bavarian Wheat I brewed a couple weeks ago. I understood the ratio to be greater for pilsner malt to aid the wheat malt in conversion, when in in fact the ratio was greater so as to help with sparging.

I must admit that ignorance seems to persist no matter how much knowledge I think I've gained.

 

Welcome to homebrewing ... I encounter the same thing day in and day out, even more so at work (Scientist).

 

I've added late hops additions on wheat beers, and I like them. Not a lot, mind you, but something at about 1oz at the three minute mark, if memory serves. Willamette is good for this (tho many hops could also be good for this too). I think I'm using serebrianka on the next batch (gotta check my notes), but it will also get a small bittering charge, an ounce around ten, and an ounce at or near flameout. Tasty!

I have found that a little extra generosity with the hopnicity is never a bad thing.