So i plan to try to clone chimay red on Sunday, and both chimay and rochefort both supposedly use wheat starch. My question is what does that do for your beer? Improving head and retention possibly? Also, how do you use it? Do you just add it when mashing in or isit added straight to the kettle. I Searched forums and found a few threads on this topic on homebrew talk where people speculated on why it's used and how, but I couldn't find anything definitive. Have any of you used it before or know what it does and how it's used? Thank you!
I don't know how authoritative this site is, but it states that Chimay uses wheat flour for head retention. The words 'wheat starch' are a translation error.
Here is an excerpt from Vollständige Braukunde, oder wissenschaftlich-praktische Darstellung der Bierbrauerei in ihrem ganzen Umfange und nach den neuesten Verbesserungen from 1831 page 343: Belgian beers and the Belgian art of brewing. Belgian beer brewing differs considerably from that which is common in Germany. The main deviation consists of the fact, that not only malt, but also flour from unmalted grains, often predominantly, is used. Also the beer is made not only from barley, but rather always with the addition of wheat and often with the addition of buckwheat, rye, oats. In fact they have beers, which are made without any malt at all, and is made from buckwheat and oats, or from barley, buckwheat and wheat. Regardless of this the Belgian beers are good, famous at least inside the country, some travel 20-40 hours, and the lambic nowadays often travels to America. Of course partly these beers do not have the clarity, which in most of Germany is held to be the foremost requirement for a good beer, and the so called white belgian beers are not like the beers called by this name in Germany, see through and vineous, instead they are white, that is to say milky from the starch flour particles contained therein. Also the wort for these beers is not cooked for long, by which the starch flour isn't entirely converted to sugar, to which the partial use of raw grains instead of malt contributes. In Brüssel they even make white beer, from the wort of yellow beers, which they fill into barrels unboiled and leave to ferment without hops. It is white, pleasant tasting, good smelling, sweet and very intoxicating. It would seem as if the use of flour was associated with Belgian brewing in the first half of the 1800s, and that the use of this flour was associated with less clear beers with plenty of unconverted starch remaining in the beer.
the use of wheat starch also contributes to the creamy mouthfeel you get from some beers like Rochefort 10.
