Kit Beer with a bit of wheat

[RuddyCrazy]

G'day Guys,
Well for most the missus liking HB is the worst nightmare but for me the start has happened. Ok she went shopping and brought home a Real Ale Coopers kit . Now with 1/2 a kg of wheat which has done been put in a jar with a cut stocking over the top. Now to malt this grain it go into the plat hot house tray I made years ago and to say my missus can germinate anything well she is a beer loving horticulturist. So the wheat is going to be malted.

Ages ago a plant called ale cost was used in the middle ages to replace hops it does have a minty flour to the mouth so it will bring a new twist to my first BIAB using wheat.

I'm not sure what i do next though... I'd say with my 8 litre pot put the wheat grain in and 5 litres of water. Due say doing a 5kg boil what hops would be the best and as I now have 2 stocking legs left I may have to go BIAB for this first brew.

OK first adventure into adding wheat and a age old product so lets see how this brew goes.

Any advise will be great too


Cheers Bryan

[RuddyCrazy]

G'day Guys'
Well 2 days in the jar and the wheat has sprouted nicely so put the 1/2 kg onto 2 trays with a tad more water and put the trays by the window in my new shed for a few hours. Today I'll give em a bit of a toast to make the malt then get the rolling pin out to break the hulls. Then into a freshly boiled old stocking for my first partial BIAB. Sadly no hops to throw in so I'll put say a 1/3rd of the real ale tin in the boil and see how it turns out.

Cheers Bryan

P.S pic's of the malting to come later today

[emnpaul]

Are you planning on mashing that wheat with some malted barley?

[RuddyCrazy]

Well did the boil the boil today for an hour with the rolling pin crushed wheat put the wheat in a stocking also put about 15 leaves of the Ale Cost in a separate stocking, boiled for an hour also with a kg of malted barley the missus bought from the heath shop. Crash chilled the pot in the bath and after putting in the water to 23 litres I was surprised to see the SG @ 1032. Pitched the yeast @ 24 C so I guess we''ll see how it goes. The brew is now up in my my shed fridge so tomorrow I'll hook up the light circuit to keep the temps right.

Anyway only got 11 longnecks of my last lager left so they are now also up in the shed to get some warmth so they can carbonate and one of my lagers will be offered if that blasted No.6 doesn't come up.......

Cheers Bryan

[drsmurto]

You boiled grain?

You mash grain (mix with water and maintain a temp of 65-70 C for 1 hour), drain, then sparge (rinse grain with more water at 75-80 C). You then boil the resulting liquid.

Boiling grain will do nothing other than cause your beer to be cloudy and taste like an overstewed pot of tea.

Have a read of John Palmers 'How to brew' for an introduction into grain brewing. Google it - the previous version is free online.

I think you have confused the process (unless of course my sleep deprived addled brain has misunderstood your process?)

[bullfrog]

My understanding of the prior posts was that he wanted to extract tannins as a hop substitute.

I am also sleep-deprived and pre-coffee so may have well misunderstood.

[RuddyCrazy]

G'day Guy's,
Yea talking about lack of sleep, woke this morning with the thought " you idiot". Yep I did boil the wheat so yea it does look like this brew is going on the garden.

O'well only a can of coopers real ale down the drain and as far as the wheat well I got a 44 gal drum full of it. So it's back to drawing board and I'll put this down as a mistake and eh theres no use in trying to hide what a stupid git I was either.

One good thing did come out of yesterday though, as the boil was going the scent in the house was pretty strong and I thought oh shyte the missus will be home soon. 10 minutes later she walked in saying what a nice scent so gladly I was spared from the dog house.......


Cheers Bryan

[bullfrog]

Another quick thought, Bryan; a stocking probably isn't the best bet for a grain bag. You want the water to be able to get to all the grain and compacting it in a compression garment is going to hinder that pretty drastically.