left field brewer
Well-Known Member
I am brewing with only 6lbs of grain and adding fruit to the boil later. I step mash in my boil kettle and then want to batch sparge in a converted cooler. I have two coolers; one is 28qt w/o drain hole, and one is 38qt w/ drain. I want to use the 38 qt just for the ease of the drain and less chance for liquid to get into the body of the cooler. I was going to replace the drain with a bottling bucket spigot for now and a bulkhead later.Anyways, I read that a minimum grain bed depth should be about 4", and with only 6lbs in a 38qt cooler thats obviously not going to be 4". So my question is can I just add a couple pounds of rice hulls with the grains to bring it up to proper depth for this and future recipes, or should I just drill the 28 and hope for the best? Will the hulls contribute anything to the beer(+ or -)?