Stupid hose!

[Brewddah]

I recently watched the chop and brew episode with John Kimmich, and he really stressed that splashing wort around, during any point of the process, is a very bad thing. Up until that point, I had been allowing the wort from my MLT cooler to flow into the boil kettle below without making any effort to prevent oxygenation. I know HSA has kind of been declared a "boogieman" but I thought maybe attaching a piece of silicone tubing to the barb on the mash tun, and preventing splashing, might actually improve my hoppy beers - less oxygen, more hoppy goodness.

All this hose has accomplished is trashing my efficiency. It creates a weird siphon effect, and drains the entire mash in a matter of minutes - even if the valve isn't fully open. I fly sparge, and pretty soon, nothing is coming out of the mash tun. What eventually does come out, after enough sparge water has been added, has a gravity close to 1.010. I never sparge past 1.010 to avoid astringency issues.

I am thinking about ditching this hose altogether, since my beers didn't have any serious issues before. Thoughts? I know other people do this, so what could I be doing wrong?

 

[day_trippr]

I wager everyone using a pumped MLT has better control than what is implied above.
I can't imagine why one cannot control the outflow of a MLT better than described...

Cheers!

 

[Brewddah]

Yeah, I'm not that fancy yet. Someday...

 

[day_trippr]

Point is, you should be able to control the outflow of your MLT better than described...

 

[MaryB]

I am not following, when I drain from my mash kettle to my boil kettle I use a silicone hose and it is a 24 inch drop. I use the ball valve to set my flow rate as I vorlauf then use that same valve handle position to drain and sparge at the same time. No way should it suck your kettle dry unless you have a ridiculous height difference... I vorlauf then open my sparge arm ball valve far enough to keep liquid levels an inch or so above the grain bed...

 

[brewcat]

You have to start slow. Otherwise there seems to be an issue with the valve. The hose shouldn't matter.

 

[Brewddah]

Maybe it is the height difference? I feel like 2' shouldn't be a problem though.

I open the valve about 1/3 of the way. I didn't think the hose would matter, but this was never a problem until I started using it.

 

[eric19312]

the hose can absolutely improve the draining of a kettle through a valve. The column of liquid in the hose is pulled down by gravity. The longer the vertical drop to the open end of the hose the more pull. You can still control this using your ball valve, you will just have to close it further than you previously had to close it.