A shining example, followed by a horrible warning ...

Just thought I ought to share my most recent home-brewing lesson, in case it can be of assistance to anyone besides me. I've developed this stout recipe that is just stunningly scrumptious. It's got four pounds of flaked barley in it, though, along with a pound and a half of roasted (huskless) barley and only six pounds of other malt (five of 2-row base, one of C10, in case you're curious). As you can imagine, lautering that paste is a nightmare. On my first batch, I missed out on some of the good stuff because I didn't realize it needed to lauter overnight. This time, though, I thought I had the answer: A pound of rice hulls.

Ugh. The rice hulls strained my sparging capacity so I mixed the stuff fairly thick. This seems to have prevented much enzyme action from taking place, because my efficiency was totally in the toilet, like around 50 percent! And it lautered like a streak of lightning. I know, in retrospect, that I should have slammed on the brakes, but it didn't occur to me until later ...

Realizing I was in for trouble, I put all the DME I had into the wort, about two pounds. Even so I ended up with about 1.035 as initial gravity. That was bad. My last batch started at about 1.070 and FINISHED at about 1.035!

What I'm learning from this is, first off -- mashout at 170 to stop the enzymes and batch sparge this one! Two runnings, one for six hours and a second all night. Secondly, I'm realizing that I used way too much rice hulls. And that rice hulls are not my friend, not in this recipe at least.

Oh well, this will probably make a great light mixer for my way-too-dense Nut-Brown-that-turned-into-a-Porter! Maybe the two of them together will be a tasty beer! Meanwhile, I still have six -- uh, make that five -- bottles of the good stout left ...

Lol, sorry to hear it!

Thanks for sharing.

The stout sounds delicious. I'm curious though, why does the lautering take so long. Being only on my 3rd AG batch I have no idea.

Wouldn't mashing for such a long time make your mash sour?

BugleBrew said:

The stout sounds delicious. I'm curious though, why does the lautering take so long. Being only on my 3rd AG batch I have no idea.

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Flaked barley and other types of adjuncts can really cause a thick, gooey mash that is very slow to drain.

I use rice hulls for all my batches, but I fly sparge so it helps my efficiency.

I use a lot of rice hulls if I have a high ratio of flaked barley, rye malt, flaked oats...etc.

Sounds like a larger tun might help with your capacity issue.

mysteryberto said:

Wouldn't mashing for such a long time make your mash sour?

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It would if I didn't mash out at 170. This stops all the enzyme action cold and all that's left is the draining and rinsing part. Of course, the wort is vulnerable to wild yeast during this time, so it has to be kept covered. Although since the wort goes from this stage into a boil kettle for an hour's journey, any wild yeast would have to have a heckuva 24-hour romp to affect the flavor at all.

cheers!

--Finn

Finn said:

It would if I didn't mash out at 170. This stops all the enzyme action cold and all that's left is the draining and rinsing part. Of course, the wort is vulnerable to wild yeast during this time, so it has to be kept covered. Although since the wort goes from this stage into a boil kettle for an hour's journey, any wild yeast would have to have a heckuva 24-hour romp to affect the flavor at all.

cheers!

--Finn

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I'd be more concerned about a bacterial infection rather than a yeast infection. I work with E. coli in my lab, and our fastest strain splits every 20-30 minutes. In about 6-8 hours we have billions upon billions of cells in culture. I don't even want to day dream about the damage something like this could do to pre-boiled wort. I'm sure it'd give one helluva off flavor.

Matovichi said:

I'd be more concerned about a bacterial infection rather than a yeast infection. I work with E. coli in my lab, and our fastest strain splits every 20-30 minutes. In about 6-8 hours we have billions upon billions of cells in culture. I don't even want to day dream about the damage something like this could do to pre-boiled wort. I'm sure it'd give one helluva off flavor.

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Oh, it's not pre-boiled -- it goes into the boil kettle the next day. But yes, I do try to keep contaminants out of it ...

A quick update ... I kegged this one today. It finished at 1.012, so it's about 3.5 percent. This tells me it was mostly the thickening part of the flaked barley that didn't lauter out. Efficiency was down, sure, but most of what came through the mash seemed to be fermentable sugar. It's not bad, actually. But it's definitely the blackest "lite beer" I've ever heard of!