Only 1g recovered from 4g strike for 12lb

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asterix404

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So this is about my 20th all grain batch and still I am surprised by interesting surprises. I mashed up the following:

6lb rye malt
3lb light munich
2lb light wheat
1lb CaraHells (essentially crystal 10)
3/4 lb (about 3qt rice hulls)

So in total 12g. I crushed the grain medium to coarse to prevent a stuck sparge. I used 4g so I got the 1.25qt per pound ratio and I only recovered about 1g of strike water. To compensate for this I am using 5g sparge water and I almost filled my 48qt colman cooler which leads me to believe that a lot of water was absorbed into the grain... much more than I expected.

Typically I get at least 2g normally, 2.5g from my strike and almost all of my sparge. Any idea what happened? Did I grind the grain much finer than I expected I did and it just took up all the water?

For reference I ground the barley at .9mm, the wheat at .75mm, and the rye at .70mm. This is actually the first time I have been able to measure the gap in the grain as I just bought a gap measurer today, that and the ruler are my 2 most prized (and cheapest) investments in the switch to all grain.

thanks!
 
Did you presoak your hulls? That's a lot of rice hulls. They will suck up a lot of you runnings. I always pre-soak them in hot water before adding them first to my MLT.
 
OH! Okay, no I didn't, thanks for the advice. I still got about 70% efficiency and with the 5g sparge it helped get a lot of the sugar. Next time I presoak!

Thanks again!
 
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