stuck mash

I have completed many many all grains.

I was on my third one Saturday & my mash got stuck.

I was making a porter.

I put in 2 lbs of oatmeal. I believe this is why it stuck.

I went to the point of transfering my grains to a bucket with 50 holes at the bottom of it. It got stuck there to. After many hours I gathered enough work and it worked. It has fermented out and seem's fine.

Has anyone else had this problem & should I have toasted the oatmeal or something?

150F was my mash out temperature

noobrich said:

I have completed many many all grains. I was on my third one Saturday & my mash got stuck.

Click to expand...

This doesn't make sense to me.
Oats are quite gummy, some brewers do a beta-glucan rest at around 95-110F for about 15-20min, this breaks the glucans in the oats down and makes lautering easier. Another factor is mash out temperature, you want to reach about 168-174F, this will stop the enzymes from breaking the mash down further and make lautering easier.
It seems as though you are using a false bottom. When you first open the spigot to drain the wort you want to open it slowly so that the grains don't compact and get stuck.

Two pounds of oatmeal in how large a grain bill? The compounds (soluble fiber) in oatmeal that contribute to the mouthfeel can produce a gelatinous mess in excess. If the oatmeal was more than 10% of the bill, I suspect that was the problem.

I have my recipe at home but it was a huge batch.

From memory it was something like

30 lb pale
3/4 lb chocolate
3/4 black patent
2 lb oatmeal.
I retreived somewhere around 60 litres at 55 original gravity.

So to answer your question I was less than 10 percent.

I have never experienced a stuck mash like this before.

Yeah by the way i did try to raise the temperature of the grains with boiling water to above 150 f probably 160 F & that would not flush it out either.

Richard