Preventing stuck sparge

I'm planning a brew tomorrow which will have 60% wheat and 8% oats. My LHBS doesn't have any rice hulls, or apparantly anything else that might help with a good runoff and prevent a stuck sparge. Does anyone know of anything else that might help in this dept. Thanks.

a poor crush is the only thing that comes to mind(on the wheat)

Wouldn't a finer crush be more likely to cause a stuck sparge?

sorry meant a coarse sparge

oooFishy said:

Wouldn't a finer crush be more likely to cause a stuck sparge?

Click to expand...

Yes, the grain hulls act as a filter, and if they are crushed too much, they won't be able to compact into an effective filter bed. Tell your LHBS they suck for not having rice hulls.

I can't think of anything nor have I read of anything that would help. With that amount of wheat some problems may arise.

Whaaaaaat........, no malt grains?

I am really going to show my ignorance here, but I got stuck when doing my mash this last weekend and blew air the opposite way into the mash tun to push the grain back out, then collected a small sample of wort into a small bucket in case some of the grain came back and once it was clear again I placed it back into the brew pot.

Not sure if this was a good thing to do, but seemed like a great idea at the time and worked great.

Blowing back on the tube definitely works but rice hulls are so much easier!

NO RICE HULLS AT YOUR LHBS???!!?!! ..

That is a normal procedure to put it back in the tun and is called vorlauf (to recirculate). I think you should read all you can about mashing from How to Brew - By John Palmer and read Bobby's how to brew page too (on this forum), it's very good.

WBC said:

That is a normal procedure to put it back in the tun and is called vorlauf (to recirculate). I think you should read all you can about mashing from How to Brew - By John Palmer and read Bobby's how to brew page too (on this forum), it's very good.

Click to expand...

Yep, I actually purchased the book, so I wouldn't have to use my laptop to read it. I know the recirculating part (vorlauf ) was a process, I was referring to the part of placing my mouth on the end of the tubing and blowing air backwards to get the stuck grains out of the line and start the sparging process again.

I do plan to bone up on different methods of mashing and sparging before the next batch though. :rockin: