For the longest time I never did a full-on Wheat of any kind...never even tasted one. The first Wheat I tried was a Raspberry Wheat...what a chore...mashing was ok, everything else went wrong, tipping things over, foaming bottles & so on. The second batch was identical, same problems, plus a slow sparge, with addition of exploding bottles.
3rd batch was a straight 50/50 Wheat/Maris Otter & the sparge was a train wreck, I kinda winged it by ladeling what was left of the mash into a huge grain bag & sparging with it sitting in a strainer over my mash tun, MAN did that turn out some sweet wheat ale. I was using a copper slotted manifold in the bottom of a 5 gallon gott cylindrical cooler.Today (my 4th batch) was another 50/50 attempt, new equipment SAME RESULT uuugh make it stop!! This time I tried a 60 QT (?) Igloo box cooler, nice & big. I also went & bought pvc to make a slotted manifold out of since someone suggested trying this. I also added rice hulls. After 2 hours I gave up & stirred up the mash and did whatever else i could to squeeze close to 7 gallons of wort out of that mess. I even transferred half of it to the
5 gallon gott cooler.A couple hours on the internet provided exactly the same things i'm doing..except it works great for everyone else.
Also, I do a step mash with this schedule:
122F/30min-158F/30-45min-165-170F/10min-mash out & sparge at 170F. I do a 1quart liquor-to-1 pound grist ratio to dough in & add anywhere from 4-8 more quarts of boiling water to step up the temp & thin out the mash.Judging (read: Guessing) from the color & taste of the wort, I got a decent extraction, but not what it should be.
Has anyone had something similar happen? Any suggestions on how to rectify this problem? I am now a wheat beer lover & would really like to keep doing wheats, but this is infuriating!!!! I have a bad habit of throwing things when I get frustrated...needless to say there were many flying objects over my backyard today. Any help (or a therapist) anyone can suggest would be great!!! Thanks.
Kent