Decocting with Rice Hulls

I'm planning on decocting a Dunkelweizen. The grist is 70/30 wheat/Munich. With that much wheat I figure I should use rice hulls. But, do rice hulls have any place in a decoction? I'm curious if they'll add any astringency or if the decoction will break them down and render them pointless.

This doesn't really answer your question, but..... you can always just toss the rice hulls in after you draw the last decoction if you are worried about it.

billl said:

This doesn't really answer your question, but..... you can always just toss the rice hulls in after you draw the last decoction if you are worried about it.

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I was wondering about that too, but I figured I'd let the HBT community lead me in the right direction.

I pull my last decoction and throw them in, it gives then some time to absorb and sink while i'm doing the last boil.

Gotta jump in here for a sec. What exactly do rice hulls do anyway?
Thx.

just extra filter material.

"Gotta jump in here for a sec. What exactly do rice hulls do anyway?"

Barley has a husk that should stay intact while milling. Those husks keep the grain just clumping together like mud and allows the wort to drain out. Wheat has no husk. You can add a bit of wheat to barley and the barley hulls will still keep the mash draining ok. The larger percentage of wheat, the less it will filter down nicely. Enter rice hulls.

Would there be any need to adjust the amount of strike water to account for the water that the rice hulls will absorb? Or would the solution to that just be to sparge a little more?

FWIW I did a triple decoction of a 63% wheat hefeweizen with the rice hulls added from the beginning. I didn't notice any off flavors in the finished brew. My avatar is actually the lacing that beer left.

You would definitely need to account for absorbtion. They suck up a lot of liquid. What i do is soak them for like 20 minutes before hand, and stick to my normal calculations for mash in. I have never run into issues this way.

Ya, I saw another thread that mentioned pre-soaking them. That way they don't absorb as much wort.

+1 for pre soaking rice hulls. When you do this there is considerably less absorption of the wort when you pitch the hulls. I make sure they are good and wet before I pitch em. And I pitch em after my final decoction.

I just did my first decoction with a roggenbier. When adding my first decoction back to the mash, I missed my target temperature and needed to add extra hot water to the mash. When I pulled my last decoction, I threw in dry rice hulls to the mash to absorb that extra water. Seemed to work perfectly for me.

Ondori said:

You would definitely need to account for absorbtion. They suck up a lot of liquid. What i do is soak them for like 20 minutes before hand, and stick to my normal calculations for mash in. I have never run into issues this way.

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I would soak them as this brewer describes and then drop them in the last decotion near the end... just the wet husks not the additional water.

This way you loose little Wort.

..and you are really not adding all that much additional water and material to your mash so I would not worry about over thinking it...

I had rice hulls in my mash for my last batch, which was a double-decocted pilsner. I threw the rice hulls in right at dough-in, without even considering what effect they might have on the subsequent decoctions. In fact, it didn't even occur to me that it might be an issue until now.

It's still in primary right now, but I'll report back later on the taste effects, if there are any. Hopefully it will turn out fine like Ryush806 said.

"I would soak them as this brewer describes and then drop them in the last decotion near the end... just the wet husks not the additional water.

This way you loose little Wort."

You are going to lose the exact same amount of wort to absorption either way. Water and sugars move in and out of the grain quite rapidly. If they didn't you would never be able to sparge in the first place.

The only thing pre-wetting the hulls is going to do is keep your them from messing with your water volumes.

So is 1/2 lb really enough for 7lbs of wheat? From a few quick searches, that's the number I've seen thrown around. Doesn't seem like much to me, but then I've never used 'em before.

TAK said:

So is 1/2 lb really enough for 7lbs of wheat? From a few quick searches, that's the number I've seen thrown around. Doesn't seem like much to me, but then I've never used 'em before.

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Rice hulls are pretty darn light. 1/2 lb is a fairly large quantity.

Earlier today, I picked up the grains for my next brew. The guy at the lhbs said that the grains looked like they'd been milled a little too fine and asked if I wouldnt mind a free pound of rice hulls just in case. When I asked him if i needed to calculate the weight of the rice hulls when calcaulating my mash thickness, he said no, they wont absorb anything. He said to calculate my mash thickness in qt/lb as tho there were no rice hulls added.

Brewmex41 said:

Earlier today, I picked up the grains for my next brew. The guy at the lhbs said that the grains looked like they'd been milled a little too fine and asked if I wouldnt mind a free pound of rice hulls just in case. When I asked him if i needed to calculate the weight of the rice hulls when calcaulating my mash thickness, he said no, they wont absorb anything. He said to calculate my mash thickness in qt/lb as tho there were no rice hulls added.

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i think beersmith raises the water volume needed slightly but i often dump a random amount into the mash tun and don't worry about it. pre soaking the hulls makes no sense to me but lots of people are convinced they are somehow avoiding a loss of wort to the hulls.

If I do a BREW IN BAG would I need to add rice hulls , just started with grain brews but thinking of a wheat beer in near future. Thanks.

eastoak said:

i think beersmith raises the water volume needed slightly but i often dump a random amount into the mash tun and don't worry about it. pre soaking the hulls makes no sense to me but lots of people are convinced they are somehow avoiding a loss of wort to the hulls.

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Its not a loss of wort, its a loss of water VOLUME. If you have dry rice hulls, they will absorb water, just like the rest of your grains do. So your mash will be thicker than calculated if you don't pre-soak the hulls. The sugar content does not get affected directly.

No need for rice hulls if you BIAB, your aren't sparging so nothing to worry about.

NuclearRich said:

Its not a loss of wort, its a loss of water VOLUME. If you have dry rice hulls, they will absorb water, just like the rest of your grains do. So your mash will be thicker than calculated if you don't pre-soak the hulls. The sugar content does not get affected directly.

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less water, less wort. either way you are not talking about much volume at all. if you have a 10lb grain bill you'd use maybe 8 oz of hulls, i doubt that would soak up a even a cup of water.

eastoak said:

less water, less wort. either way you are not talking about much volume at all. if you have a 10lb grain bill you'd use maybe 8 oz of hulls, i doubt that would soak up a even a cup of water.

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less wort before its wort (hot liquor). To make up for that volume loss, you would have more sparge water (and then the same amount of wort), since a pre-boil volume/SG are more of an achievable target than mash thickness if you arent accounting for rice hulls. You dont lose sugars, just water.

How much water could the hulls absorb? I agree not much, but they do. I see most people using the same type of absorbtion math as with base malts, something like 1qt/lb.

I like to rinse the rice hulls out in a colander before adding them to the end of the mash. That hydrates them and removes a lot of residual particles from them...whatever that stuff is. Grain is at most 5% husk by weight so I calculate that for the huskless grain and then double it

has anyone ever tried using a large paint strainer to line the mash tun? "mash in a bag" i suppose. do it the same as always just line the cooler/kettle with a strainer. i've not tried this yet.

RonPopeil said:

has anyone ever tried using a large paint strainer to line the mash tun? "mash in a bag" i suppose. do it the same as always just line the cooler/kettle with a strainer. i've not tried this yet.

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BIAB or brew in a bag is pretty common these days, might even be a section on these forums.