Coopers Wheat Malt, what wheat does in your beer

Coopers Wheat Malt is a liquid malt extract made with wheat in it as well as barley, and it goes into the fermenter exactly the way any other extract does, so there is no extra equipment and no extra step involved in using it. What changes is what comes out the other end, and it is worth knowing what wheat is actually doing before you decide whether you want it in a particular batch.

The two things wheat is good at

Wheat carries more protein than barley does, and protein is what holds a head on a beer, so a beer with some wheat in it keeps its head sitting there instead of collapsing back into the glass a minute after you have poured it. That is the reason wheat gets used in beers that are not wheat beers at all, and it is the single most common reason somebody reaches for a tin of this.

The second thing is mouthfeel. Wheat gives a softer, rounder body and a gentler flavour than barley malt on its own, which is why a wheat beer tastes light without tasting thin. It also leaves a haze behind rather than dropping bright, and in this style that haze is the point rather than a fault, so do not go chasing it out.

Where it earns its place

• A wheat beer or a hefeweizen, where wheat is most of the character and the yeast supplies the banana and clove on top of it.
• A pale ale that keeps pouring with a head that will not stay, which is the fix almost nobody thinks of.
• A summer beer you want light and easy without it ending up watery.
• Anything you are photographing, honestly, because the head is most of what a beer looks like.

How much of it

As the base of a wheat beer it does the bulk of the work, and as a head retention fix in something else it is a small part of your total fermentables rather than a replacement for them. The numbers for the batch size you are brewing are on the tin, so work from those rather than from a figure somebody quoted you, because extract weights move around between products and a guess here changes your gravity.

Storing what you do not use

Liquid extract is sticky and it will pick up whatever is in the air, so once a tin is open, get the rest of it into a clean sealed jar and put it in the fridge rather than leaving it in the cupboard. It keeps perfectly well like that and you will have it for the next batch instead of throwing half of it out.

If you are standing in front of the shelf trying to work out whether wheat is what your beer is missing, come in and describe the problem to us. Somebody asking that question for the first time gets the same answer as somebody on their fortieth batch, and quite a lot of the time the answer turns out to be head retention rather than anything to do with the recipe.

Shop related products

• Coopers Light Malt Extract 1.5kg. The plain barley version, and the one to build a pale beer on.
• Coopers Amber Malt Extract 1.5kg. More colour and more caramel in the malt.
• Coopers Light Dry Malt 500g. The powdered version, easier to weigh out in small amounts.
• Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 1kg. Body and head retention in a blend, if you would rather not measure malt.

Did you know we stock Coopers Wheat Malt 1.5kg in the shop. It is one of the lines that carries our supplier's branding so it does not go up on the website, and the same goes for the premium spray dried wheat malt extract in 500g, the Thomas Coopers Preacher's Hefe Wheat tin if you want a whole beer built around it, and Gladfield medium crystal malted grain. The shelf holds more than the site does, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on it.

The part of the range that is online sits in the homebrew collection and the gear is under beer supplies. If you want to work out a recipe before you come in, Brewhilder is our homebrew helper and it will talk you through it.

Read next

• Coopers Light Dry Malt 500g, what it does in your beer
• Beer ingredients explained: malt, hops, yeast and water
• How to pair homemade wheat beer with an Aussie brunch

Cheers, Candeece. I will admit I judge a beer by whether the head is still there halfway down the glass, which is not a sophisticated position and I am not planning to upgrade it.