New MegaPot Mash Tun with NorCal False Bottom Question

Here is some background:

I previously mashed in a square cooler with a copper pipe manifold(cut w/ splits), I have a chugger pump helping to recirculate through a RIMS tube. I never had any flow issues or stuck sparges with this setup. After 5 years of brewing with this setup, the cooler was starting to wear out.

For Christmas I received a 15 gal MegaPot. I purchased a NorCal false bottom for it. Wonderful piece of equipment, by the way. I was finally able to break away from life and brew with the new equipment.

Now comes my question: I brewed up a Pliny the Younger clone over the weekend. I had roughly 18.5 lbs of grain, using the 1.5 Lbs/qt for my strike water (this has been a good number in my previous setup to use as a starting point). While mashing and recirc'ing thru the RIMS tube, I was having some pretty significant flow restrictions. I had to keep stirring the mash, therefore disturbing the grain bed, every 10 minutes or so throughout the 90 min mash. Is this something that I should have been doing all along or is there some other solution that I over looked? In the past, I would mash in, stir to make sure that there were no grain balls, start the pump, turn on the RIMS element and forgot about it until it was time to raise the temp for mash out.

I am thinking that I may have to add 0.5 to 1 lb of rice hulls as a necessity to all of my grain bills from now on. Any help, suggestions, ideas, etc would be greatly appreciated.

 

What is your crush at?


You can try rice hulls - the only minus being if you happen to use your spent grains for human consumption, it might render them "too pokey".


I run a keggle RIMS with a Norcal level 1. I run a fairly aggressive crush - 0.028" with the malt conditioned. Got to the point where even using a good amount of rice hulls, I still ran into flow issues with seemingly little warning per the grist (ie, not clearly only on large batches, or batches with a lot of wheat/rye). With poor flow, even though I have a low-density 120V element and have the temp probe mounted with very little space in between itself and the element, I had some scorching issues.


After that, I went to using a BIAB bag along with the false bottom. Haven't had any issues since, and have done things like a 21lb barleywine and a wheat-heavy hefeweizen. No rice hulls anymore. Added plus of not having to strain the runoff (where before the very first bit of runnings would have some grain husks / matter in it).

 

I haven't checked my crush recently, but I believe I was in a similar range as you, 0.028". My RIMS tube is from Bobby at BrewHardware. My temp probe is very close to the element as well and I believe I have an ultra low watt density element.

When you are doing the BIAB with the false bottom, are you still recirc'ing thru the RIMS for temperature control?

 

Haha, we sound like we have pretty similar systems. My tube is also from Bobby. Still recirculating, yeah. I run my locline return on the outside of the bag.


I think some other things you could do along with trying rice hulls are to condition the grain if you aren't (leads to more fluffy husk material intact aiding some in lautering), back off the crush some, and / or make sure you let the bed rest for a few minutes after dough-in and if you're batch sparging before starting your recirc / cracking the valve. I have nothing against the Norcal / Jaybird false bottoms, but for me as I went tighter and tighter on my crush, the bag proved valuable. The false bottom still helps on my system as it keeps the bed suspended away from my bottom drain and keeps an amount of liquid available for the pump similar to a grant.

 

That is pretty funny. I use a locline return as well. Thanks for the suggestions. I will not be able to brew again for a couple of weeks due to other commitments, but I will definitely be looking into a few of these options. Thanks for all of the advice!

Cheers!