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going to be a long night

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Auger

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Aug 19, 2014
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I really f'ing hate stuck/almost stuck sparges. I was planning on being done by midnight. Yeah that ain't happenin. I'm at about 5 of 12 gal and still have the boil ahead. At least I have beer.
 
Yeah the problem (this time) I think is that I crushed the grain once at the brew store, and I had what seemed like a lot of uncrushed grains. So, I ran it through again. And ended up with practically flour. Awesome. I knew it was going to be a problem. Aaaaaand they were out of rice hulls.
 
hey me too! If i drink like this every time I brew I'm going to have to start brewing more often.
 
Well on the upside, probably due to the longer sparge and finer crush, my efficiency is way high...target pre-boil SG was 1.047, I'm at 1.055.
 
I've been thinking about this stuck sparge situation. I'm thinking about doing a three way valve on my pump that will let me push back up into the mash tun. When we have stuck filtrations at work on 8 meter filters we'll sometimes push the liquid back up the bottom of the filter to uncompact the bed a little bit and get things flowing again. I've never tried it, but I got the parts coming to build it. I did a pumpkin ale that had 80oz of pumpin puree in the mash. It was tasty as all get out, but I put more lbs of rice hulls in it then malt cause I was scared it would get stuck forever... kinda when I got thinking about it.
 
If you disturb the grainbed you will need to vorlauf again. I've used this method and it helps, but it never flows quote right again. I simply batch sparge high risk recipes (i.e. pumpkin or over milled grains). I get 80%+ with fly and 75-80% with triple batch. I usually have a shorter sparge with batch as well because I am not worried about sticking. Really I only do fly because I like to complicate things :sly:

Don't forget, of you can recirc through rims/herms to mashout you will greatly reduce sticking.
 
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