By now most of you will know about single hop beer, when a brewer makes up a series of beer using a single different hop variety each time. It is designed to accent the effects of that one hop, educating drinkers on how to distinguish between hops. I really like that concept.

Unfortunately it is not that easy to do it with malt because most beer require a few different varieties to build the flavour profile. Sure, you can have a beer made entirely of two-row base malt (many beer are), but it is a straight-forward grain. You might be able to make an entire Munich malt beer or some other specialized base malt, but it isn’t all that interesting. You can’t have a beer made only of dark crystal, or Belgian aromatic or black patent malt. It simply wouldn’t work out.

But what about wheat? Could you make a 100% wheat beer? What would it taste like? A couple of months ago I found myself musing about exactly that at the local homebrewers’ meeting. I was half serious as I had not long before won many pounds of rice hulls in a homebrewing competition, which are used to aid filtering during the sparging process. Not sure what to do with all those hulls, I was threatening to brew a 100% wheat beer (read below for the reason why this is normally problematic). As it turns out fellow homebrewer, friend, cyclist and all-around good guy Chad H. had recently done exactly that.

Long before it hits the glass, the first problem with a 100% wheat malt bill is a stuck mash. Wheat, unlike barley, has no husk, so there is nothing to create a sufficient filtering bed and the sparging process could go south quickly. One solution might be a whole whack of the aforementioned rice hulls to act as a surrogate for the barley husk. However, Chad didn’t have this issue as he has adopted the “brew-in-a-bag” system of brewing, where the grain sits in a bag in the mash kettle. To separate wort from grain all you have to do is lift the bag out, let the liquid drain out and you are done.

He recently dropped by a bottle of the beer to allow me to taste the results. It poured a cloudy light straw with a thin head. It was very hazy, which isn’t surprising as the proteins in wheat will cause more haze than barley. The aroma was soft and grainy with accents of honey, vanilla and banana. In the taste I detected a distinct soft wheat character upfront, which became sharper as the beer moves across the mouth. I got some root vegetable, tannin and a raw earthiness in the beer. The grain was sharp but the body remains soft. I also got nutmeg, vanilla and banana. And I think I picked up some hints of cut grass as well, but that could be my palate playing tricks on me. It finished quite dry.

Chad used a German Weizen yeast, which explains the banana and vanilla character. I think that was a good choice. A more neutral yeast would have produced a fairly boring beer. The yeast byproducts added a second dimension to the beer.

What are my observations? First, I was surprised how gentle and soft the beer was. While wheat is soft in mouthfeel it can also be rather harsh in flavour. But this beer wasn’t harsh which makes me second guess my assumptions about wheat. Second, wheat doesn’t offer the same kind of complexity as barley. Even basic two-row base malt will produce a more rounded flavour than the wheat did (which is why the decision to go with a weizen yeast was smart). It may explain one of the reasons why barley evolved as the grain of choice for brewers.

Third, we need to do more single-grain experiments like this one. We have all learned tons from the single-hop beer thing. Trying some variation of single malt beer could be equally beneficial. Maybe we can keep the same proportion of two-row (which is a very familiar taste) and alternate the specialty malt to highlight their effects. Just a thought.

At any rate, hats off to Chad for taking a stab at a 100% wheat beer. I am glad to have received an opportunity to try it.  I learned a thing or two – which is always a good thing.