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Mixing barley and wheat

MikeinRH

Grandmaster Brewer
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OK - has anyone had any experience adding wheat to a malted barley all grain recipe? I was given some red wheat a few weeks ago and decided to add 8-ounces to a 10-gallon IPA to get some red color. I had an aggressive fermentation and a high gravity reading, but was totally shocked when I drained and opened the conical fermenter. A lot of yeast was still left on the sidewalls and had not found their way to the bottom. I got one full keg and 3 gallons in another. I gassed both of them and plan to let them sit for a month to hopefully get everything to settle out. I'm fairly certain mixing wheat and barley is not a good idea.
 
I almost always add white wheat to my all grain batches.  Helps with head retention and mouth feel.
 
I must be misunderstanding the statement.  Is not the mixing of wheat and barley the very essence of a hefeweizen? 
 
The posting was really dumb. I don't think my issue had anything to do with adding red wheat to the IPA. I have no experience with the new conical fermenter ... which is the real problem. On appearance, it looks very bad. Much different than a carboy. Like I said, I think I'm just going to wait it out and see if the end result is satisfactory.
 
My only issue with wheat has been the gluten and lack of hull gumming up the sparge.  I always forget to add rice hulls.  I've no experience with conicals.
 
For red color, you could try tiny amounts of roasted barley or chocolate malts, or melanoidin malt, depending on the style/recipe. 
 
I've tried red and white wheat in my hefe's and color is very close.  Wheat yeast...3068 in particular is crazy busy.  My last one had a 1.5 gallons of head space and it still required a blow-off. 

+1 one to rice hulls if using sparge screen.  I have a custom copper manifold with slits and just turned it upside down to prevent stuck sparge.  I've used a 60/40 of wheat/barley w/o rice hulls and no stuck sparge. 

Cheers, Mark
 
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