rice hulls in wheat beer

Im going to make my first AG wheat beer in a couple of days and forgot to order rice hulls. The recipe is 60% wheat... do you think im going to have big problems with stuck sparges without the rice hulls?

Depends on a few different things:

1. What's your manifold style? I used an 18" long 1" diameter water heater supply hose stainless braid -- couldn't get a stuck sparge if I tried. When I used the 1/2" diameter 12" long sing supply braid, it clogged all the time.

2. What's your crush look like? If it's flour, then it'll be more likely to get stuck. If the husks are all in tact from the barley portion, then you will have a better filter bed and less likely to stick. You can condition your malt if you mill it yourself (read Malt Conditioning in the wiki)

3. Watch your sparge speed. Slower will be less likely to stick -- especially when setting the grain bed.

I just did a honey wheat with a nice fine dusty/floury crush and no rice hulls today -- 4 lbs pale malt, 5 lbs wheat malt -- and no stuck sparges. If I still had that tiny braid I wouldn't have even bothered trying as the tiny braid ALWAYS got stuck!

If your milling your own grain, look into conditioning your grains. Several recent threads on the subject and it really does improve the crush to the point of not needing rice hulls.

I brewed an American Wheat with 5 lbs 2 row and 4 lbs wheat malt. I crush in a barley crusher at factory setting (.30 diameter i think). I normally recirculate for heat mgmt but for this one I had to go old school. when vorlaufing before taking runnings I ended up with a lot of cream of wheat mush first but after the vorlauf i got great results. I did condition my 2 row and didn't use rice hulls. I also had to do a double decoction to do hit my temps. I wouldn't say I had a stuck mash however my MLT false bottom did clog up once or twice.

sambogi76 said:

. . . do you think im going to have big problems with stuck sparges without the rice hulls?

Click to expand...

Probably not, but why chance it? Throwing in a couple of handfulls can't hurt.