Sparging Problem

Let me start by saying I do fly sparging.

I brewed a dunkelweizen last weekend with a grain bill of about 10.5 lbs of grains, slightly over 50% was wheat. Everything was going reasonably well until it came time to sparge. I found that my grain bed had compacted and water was not flowing through the grain bed, it was just pooling on top.

I use a 10 gallon cooler for my mash tun, and a stainless steel false bottom.

This was my first AG wheat beer. I'm curious if this is due to the wheat and if there is anything I can do to get a better sparge, other than batch sparging.

I don't fly sparge, but I will say that I know a lot of people that use rice hulls in their wheat beers to avoid stuck sparges like you had.

Personally, if it were me, I'd switch to batch sparging. I regularly get 85% efficiency with batch sparging---it's easier, takes less time, and I've never had a stuck sparge---even in wheat beers with no hulls.

I do a 70/30 hefeweizen without rice hulls - but I have a rectangular cooler, so my grain bed is much less deep (ie. less pressure over a larger area). 250G or so of rice hulls will go a LONG way to helping a stuck sparge with high wheat grain bills.

Hmm, rice hulls. Interesting. I'll give that a try.

Yeah, I really don't have anything against batch sparging, and I'll probably try it at some point. I was just curious how other people handled this problem.

Thanks!

Wheat and rye are both sticky grains. Rice hulls are a solution, a couple ounces per pound of sticky.

In radical brewing by Randy Mosher He has some really good info on how to avoid a stuck sprage one thing he says to do which I did on my mash tum made out of rubber maid cooler was to run a vent tube inside the tun down under the mash screen the first sprage I was doing when I opened my vent I could here it sucking air, I was surprized, I really like his book have a good one

I've never had problems with wheat (but I never use a lot of it). I have had problems with flaked barley. For me, the solution was to ensure that I never added grain during the mash in unless there was sufficient water in the tun to keep the grain suspended. I start with enough water to cover the false bottom by about 4 inches, and then alternate between small grain and small water additions, continually stirring as I go. Never had a problem since.

-a.