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I've used malted wheat instead of torrified wheat by mistake in making an ale

How ill this effect the final product?

Cheers

2 Answers 2

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Torrefied wheat can sometimes be drier, and create a good head without haziness in the beer. But if you are only using a few hundred grams / 4-8oz and not brewed the recipe before then relax, your beer will still be fine. If you have brewed it before, you might find the beer doesn't taste as crisp/dry as before.

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The flavor will be very slightly different. Probably not enough to notice unless you did a side by side with the same beer made with torrified.

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  • I have found torrified wheat to be a good substitute for malted wheat when I am trying to increase head retention. A beer (say pale ale) with a little torrified wheat seems to clear better than one with the same amount of traditional malted wheat. And its subtler flavor keeps the intended beer from picking up much wheat taste. I've worked on this with side by sides. If course I am talking about <5% of the total grist when it comes to head retention experiments.
    – brewchez
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 12:13
  • Here's some interesting info about wheat from my upcoming book "Experimental Homebrewing"....Yet we should question our traditional wisdom. It turns out that wheat doesn’t have significantly higher protein levels compared to barley, but due to solubility factors it leeches more protein into the wort. According to a recent study from Leuven, Belgium, wheat can provide some improved foam stability, but only for brews with highly modified malts, only at a relatively high gravity, and only when gassed with Nitrogen instead of CO2.
    – Denny Conn
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 14:43
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    More....Even better, wheat is supposed to create cloudy beers, right? Well it turns out that the effect of wheat protein haze is more pronounced at lower overall levels of wheat in the mash. In other words, a beer brewed with 20% wheat will be hazier than a beer brewed with 40% wheat. According to the researchers this is believed to be due to the more aggressive breakdown of the large protein strands in the 20% wheat beer. This leads to smaller particles that are less likely to settle out.
    – Denny Conn
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 14:43

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