Guess I need more rice hulls!

nostalgia · 08-05-2009, 07:10 PM

I'm doing an Irish red recipe that I found on here:

10.00 lb Vienna Malt
1.00 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L
0.25 lb Roasted Barley

Crushed it with my Monster Mill and added 3 big handfuls of rice hulls. Mash in, break up plenty of doughballs. An hour later, start the runnings. I usually whack the valve wide open - this time I went about halfway to get a good flow but run a little slower.

First runnings, no problem. Time to sparge with 4 gallons. Good running until about 3/4 of the way through when the flow stopped. I thought it might be my braid so I blew into the line to backflush it. No dice.

Turns out the grain bed had formed a layer of concrete on top and no water was running through! That's the first time I've seen that.

Looks like I did a good job of setting the grain bed

After breaking up the top a bit with a spoon things resumed flowing fine.

In good news, I FINALLY hit my 75% pre-boil dead on at 1.044.

-Joe

Gremlyn · 08-05-2009, 07:17 PM

A Vienna based Irish Red, sounds interesting. Let us know know that turns out.

Sounds like you might have had a little too fine of a crush, the 'concrete' was probably due to too much flour. When you stirred the sparge, did you get right down to the bottom and give it a scrape? I started doing this after I noticed a little build up on the bottom of my MLT.

nostalgia · 08-05-2009, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gremlyn1

Sounds like you might have had a little too fine of a crush, the 'concrete' was probably due to too much flour. When you stirred the sparge, did you get right down to the bottom and give it a scrape? I started doing this after I noticed a little build up on the bottom of my MLT.

Nah I just broke up the top a bit until I got a flow.

My rollers are set at 0.037 last I checked. I guess I'll have to open them up a bit for the next run.

-Joe

nostalgia · 08-05-2009, 10:04 PM

Here's what the first runnings and pre-boil samples looked like. Looks like I got a nice, deep red on it.

-Joe

nostalgia · 08-06-2009, 01:24 AM

Also, I was surprised by the 1.084 gravity of the first runnings. Then I remembered the conversion efficiency chart:

My mash thickness is 1.5qt/lb, so I guess I got close to 100% conversion efficiency. Nice!

So I'll definitely try a coarser crush next time, since it's definitely not holding my efficiency back.

-Joe

Scut_Monkey · 08-06-2009, 01:29 AM

I agree with what you said. If your conversion is 100% or very close to it then there is no reason to crush finer and you could dial it back a bit. I too am dealing with efficiency problems and will be trying a 5gallon round cooler next time for my MLT rather than my rectangular cooler. I have tried everything in the book and my efficiency is still lacking. So thought i would try this now.

nostalgia · 08-09-2009, 03:11 AM

I've got some serious lag time on this one.4 I pitched in my RWS and had no activity after 36 hours. I pitched the whole thing anyway and am just starting to see some activity now, 36 hours later.

Here's hoping it comes out good!

-Joe

maxbing · 08-09-2009, 10:30 AM

I had the exact same thing happen to me. I have done probably 10 batches with my current setup and haven't changed a thing. All the other times it ran through like the grain was not even there but this last time, nothing but a dribble. it was very strange. The only thing that I can think of is that the day that I brewed it was like 90% humidity and crushed grain seemed to want to clump up even before that water was added. It was very strange. I will do another batch or two before changing anything just to see if it was just a fluke.

nostalgia · 08-19-2009, 07:17 PM

I opened my gap up to 0.040 and still got almost 100% conversion efficiecny, 77% overall efficiency and no stuck runoff. Sounds like a winner to me!

-Joe

Gremlyn · 08-20-2009, 03:57 AM

Awesome, same recipe?