Milling Black Patent Barley

I had a disastrously stuck sparge last weekend on a coffee porter that called for a couple pounds of black patent. My partner milled it, and used the same setting as the lighter malt, but the black patent was pulverized into a fine powder. I realize I should have recognized right away when I saw how fine it was, but we had no time to replace it, so we proceeded anyway. The powdery crush coagulated into a sludge in the bottom of the mash tun and there was no unlclogging it to be done. We ended up bailing out the mash through strainers to salvage the beer.

I realize that the darker roast made the barley more fragile and brittle causing it to fragment finer. Do you guys set your mill wider for dark roast? And why have I never heard of this being an issue before?

Crap, a couple of pounds is a lot. I've never adjusted my rollers for individual grains. But I never use more than a few ounces of black patent in a recipe.

sounds like you might be grinding a little fine. You might try adding some rice hulls if you don't want to change your grind. I never adjust my grinder either and make stout a few times a year without any problems.

Sorry to hear about the stuckness! Hope it turns out OK!

+1 on the rice hulls. I just brewed a stout with 5% chocolate wheat and 10% flaked oats(of which 1/3 was accidentally ground) and I had my first stuck sparge!

Let us know how it turns out!

You know, we had rice hulls, we just didn't use them. Anyway, the problem was compounded by the fact that it was a 25lb grainbill and the target OG was over 1.100. We only ended up hitting 1.700 but that should make for a nice strong porter anyway.

1.700? That would be thicker than molasses, I think.

I suspect you meant 1.070?

I was going to say that he really likes his beer sweet and alcoholic at 1.700 Like I like my women! Ba-dum-dum

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