Malted vs unmalted wheat for whiskey

[CharlesB]

Hi to all,

I was wondering if anyone here ever tried to make an all wheat whiskey. I know they exist and I’ve had a few... but can’t find much info on them.

Malted wheat is not the easiest grain to find. So I was wondering if it would do a huge difference in taste to use unmalted. We work with a single farmer and he doesn’t have any malting capacity.

Thank you very much!

Charles Boileau

 

[Northern Waters]

We have done several batches of this and, although we have only release a couple barrels so far, has been my favorite.  We used 85% red wheat and 15% malted wheat, both sourced from Briess.

Best of luck!

[Hudson bay distillers]

http://westernmalt.webs.com/brochure.htm     check these guys out charles . good outfit to deal with by the bag or by the ton . if iwas you i would run a test batch one with malted wheat and one with raw wheat converted with enzymes , to see if the extra expense of malting changes anything to the taste your looking for . last mountain distillers in lumbsden sask has a incredible wheat whisky but im not sure of there grain bill , great western brewery in saskatoon sask uses malted wheat for a all grain beer , and im guessing there both getting it from western malt . i guess it all depends on where you are located lol .

tim 

[CharlesB]

Thanks guys! This confirms that we’re on the right track! We really want to work as close a possible to the source of our products. So we’ll probably end up using some local malted barley (if need be). 

Cheers!!

[bluestar]

We just ran some 80% malted red wheat. Definitely a sweeter, fuller flavor than unmalted wheat. We'll see what kind of whiskey it is in a year or two.

[Hudson bay distillers]

say blue star are you talking 80 percent of your mash bill is malted wheat and 20 percent un malted . or are you talking 80 percent abv off a malted wheat batch .

tim 

[CharlesB]

17 hours ago, Hudson bay distillers said:

say blue star are you talking 80 percent of your mash bill is malted wheat and 20 percent un malted . or are you talking 80 percent abv off a malted wheat batch .

tim 

Good question!!

[mendodistilling]

I think bluestar meant that 20% red wheat is unmalted, and 80% of the red wheat is malted.