Is my crush too fine?

For my last 2 10 gallon brews, I tightened up the spacing on my barley crusher by about 1/8th of a turn. I am mashing in a coleman X-treme 70 quart cooler with a PVC manifold with hack saw slots every 1/4". Since I tightened my crush, I have gone from 75%ish to 85%+ efficiency, but my batch sparges have gotten really slow. Two brews ago, I added 2# of corn that I had laying around and I wanted to get rid of it. I chalked up the slow sparge to the corn. My last brew I had a mix mash of grain that was getting old and wanted to get rid of. About half was year old 2 row, and the rest was 6 row and older caramel. This was very slow sparging as well. Basically, my initial runnoff took 20 minutes, and my batch sparge took 30 minutes after a 10 minute stir and rest. Total sparge time was an hour for both batches. The left over grains were very solidly packed, kind of like tile grout with barley hulls.

My question is, are my slow sparges a result of my finer crush? I really like the efficiency that I am getting, but if my sparges are this slow, I will start fly sparging.

It sounds like you might be crushing a bit excessively, but a picture would be worth a thousand words here (if you have one to post, please do). Do you have a lot of flour? Are the hulls pulverized or mostly just split with the contents spilling out?

rice hulls

It sounds a bit like a crush that is almost too fine, but as long as the run off doesn't stop, I would think it is okay (and +1 on the rice hulls).

I can't speak to batch sparging time since I fly sparge and spend 45 minutes on a 5 gallon batch.

Do you take the manifold apart to clean it? I found a ball of corn grits in mine last time I cleaned...... Only I hadn't used any corn in the most recent batch

Second vote for rice hulls. Cheap as hell and works great.

Do you do a mash out? What's your sparge temp?

I crush as fine as I can (down to .015 gap) and have never had a problem sparging with my manifold, even with a 50% raw wheat bill. I used 1/4 lb of rice hulls last time, but it went so well, I'm going without them next mash.

mr x said:

I crush as fine as I can (down to .015 gap)

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Seriously?? Got any pictures of your crush at that kind of setting? Do you get anything but flour? What kind of manifold are you using?

I set my barley crusher down to .035 from .039 a while back and got my first stuck sparge, with no weird adjuncts in the mash... granted that was with a stainless braid which was a bit too short and I've since increased the length of it significantly, but still... I don't see how I could POSSIBLY survive a crush that was less than HALF that gap...

I vote for widening your rollers, rather than adding rice hulls. It sounds like you are crushing too finely. Adding rice hulls is working backwards since they cost something, they require you to use more strike water, and they decrease efficiency. Just open up your mill a bit more and see how you do. A lot of brewers get efficiency in the mid-80s without crushing that finely.


TL

Funkenjaeger said:

Seriously?? Got any pictures of your crush at that kind of setting? Do you get anything but flour? What kind of manifold are you using?

I set my barley crusher down to .035 from .039 a while back and got my first stuck sparge, with no weird adjuncts in the mash... granted that was with a stainless braid which was a bit too short and I've since increased the length of it significantly, but still... I don't see how I could POSSIBLY survive a crush that was less than HALF that gap...

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http://i13.tinypic.com/4ztlo4g.jpg

Lots of grain particles in there. Flour too. Using a ss slotted manifold.

mr x said:

http://i13.tinypic.com/4ztlo4g.jpg

Lots of grain particles in there. Flour too. Using a ss slotted manifold.

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Definitely pretty finely crushed. To me, some of those grain particles don't look like they could have possibly gone through a gap as narrow as 0.015... but of course it's hard to tell from the picture. How did you set your gap - are you using feeler gauges? (ie - are you sure it's actually that tight?)

For that pic, the gap was actually closer to .011". I used metric feeler gauges by mistake. It is that tight.

I would open the gap a bit. And try mashing 75 to 90 min to help incease your
efficiency.

I'm impressed Mr X. That is one seriously tight crush.

Looks like it would make great bread. Hmmmmm that might be an idea.

shafferpilot said:

I'm impressed Mr X. That is one seriously tight crush.

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It turned out one very very tasty beer.

I second the suggestion of widening the gap on you mill. You don't need a super fast run-off, but with batch sparging it should not be the time setting factor. Make sure you already start heating the wort when you sparge. This way you can hide a lot of the sparging time in the time it takes to bring the wort to a boil.

As mentioned above adding rice hulls is counter productive. Not only may it actually negate the cost savings of a higher efficiency, but you are also adding more husk material to a mash that already has a lot of shredded husks. This will increase the tannins that are extracted though it may not be sufficient for raising them above the taste threshold.

Another option is to condition the malt with moisture. I do this quite often these days. It allows me to crush fairly fine w/o shredding the husks. The ru-off times are not really affected since high percentage of flower actually counteracts the benefit of preserving the husks. The increased efficiency helps me to brew big AG beers (up to 19*P / 1.076 OG) in a 5 gal cooler. For such beers I account for a very long and slow run-off.

This is not wet milling. Using a spritz bottle I evenly moisten the grain until it looses it dry texture and before it actually feels wet. I'll have to take pictures next time I brew to show how different crushes with or without malt conditioning look.

Kai

Kaiser said:

This is not wet milling. Using a spritz bottle I evenly moisten the grain until it looses it dry texture and before it actually feels wet. I'll have to take pictures next time I brew to show how different crushes with or without malt conditioning look.

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I'd be very interested in seeing this. Some kind of how-to or at least short article with pictures would be awesome. I heard you mention this method in another thread a while back and it seems very interesting and makes sense.

I may sacrifice a couple pounds of grain and try experimenting with it myself tonight, but I'd love to see some more solid info from you, since you've obviously got experience. Guess if I don't screw it up too bad then I can still use the grain for brewing this weekend, in which case I won't be losing anything by trying it

Funkenjaeger said:

I may sacrifice a couple pounds of grain and try experimenting with it myself tonight, but I'd love to see some more solid info from you, since you've obviously got experience. Guess if I don't screw it up too bad then I can still use the grain for brewing this weekend, in which case I won't be losing anything by trying it

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Be careful. If you overdo it, the malt flour starts clumping on the rollers and you have a big mess. I'm speaking from experience .

Kai

Interesting idea, I'll try it sometime.