First time using rice hulls and of course I get a stuck sparge

[beernutz]

I bought a 1 lb bag of rice hulls a couple of months ago and decided to try about 1/3rd of them in a 10 gallon wheat beer I've made many times which has 50% wheat in the grain bill. I was just experimenting to see their effect on the lautering process.

I've brewed 22 batches with my current brew structure and equipment* over the last year including that wheat beer 3 previous times and never had any type of sparging difficulty.

Yet of course the first time I try to use one of the most widely recommended remedies for stuck sparges I get one. What a PITA! I had to disassemble my pump setup and blow backwards up into the mash tun to get the sparge going again and even then it was slow as turtles through molasses.

Perhaps I should forward this post to Alanis Morissette for the followup to Ironic?

*I use an Igloo cooler mash tun with a bazooka screen surrounded by another SS mesh screen which is drained with pump assistance

 

[hunter_le five]

I have nothing at all to contribute, but the thread title made me laugh.

 

[Rev2010]

Interesting. I've never used rice hulls with my wheat beers (hefeweizen's and wit's primarily) as I too use the bazooka screen and it's been awesome. I also crush my grains with a tighter gap setting for wheat, I've been getting 81% efficiency like clockwork with both my ales and wheats going between the two gaps settings I use. I only use rice hulls for my pumpkin ales since I use canned pumpkin and it definitely helps. First time I tried one I went without the rice hulls and got a stuck sparge. I actually had to transfer the mash to a bag and pretty much turn it into a BIAB. After that I've used rice hulls and haven't had a stuck runoff/sparge since but they sometimes still do drain quite slowly.

Just curious, did you pre-soak the rice hulls? Only thing I can think of is that if you didn't they sucked up some wort and made for a tighter packed grain bed. They should always be pre-rinsed several times to clean them off of dust and such which also pre-soaks them and serves as to not suck up wort. If you did then I dunno... weird.


Rev.

 

[guazzabuglio]

I guess if it ain't broke...

 

[beernutz]

Interesting. I've never used rice hulls with my wheat beers (hefeweizen's and wit's primarily) as I too use the bazooka screen and it's been awesome. I also crush my grains with a tighter gap setting for wheat, I've been getting 81% efficiency like clockwork with both my ales and wheats going between the two gaps settings I use. I only use rice hulls for my pumpkin ales since I use canned pumpkin and it definitely helps. First time I tried one I went without the rice hulls and got a stuck sparge. I actually had to transfer the mash to a bag and pretty much turn it into a BIAB. After that I've used rice hulls and haven't had a stuck runoff/sparge since but they sometimes still do drain quite slowly.

Just curious, did you pre-soak the rice hulls? Only thing I can think of is that if you didn't they sucked up some wort and made for a tighter packed grain bed. They should always be pre-rinsed several times to clean them off of dust and such which also pre-soaks them and serves as to not suck up wort. If you did then I dunno... weird.


Rev.

You may have found the problem as I just tossed the rice hulls into the mash and did not pre-soak them. I didn't think I used a lot of hulls and the mash did not seem to have a different consistency than previous batches but I suppose it did.

 

[Natdavis777]

Murphy's Law...