Grain pumping to boil kettle?

[mpride1911]

I don't know if this is normal or I have a problem with my mash tun setup. I seem to be getting what seems like a lot of grain exiting the mash and pumping to the boil kettle. Today I put a sieve in to catch it. Is this normal?

 

[schematix]

Can you provide some more details on the mash tun? Cooler with braid, false bottom, etc....

How big is your batch size?

In that picture is that the total amount of grain from an entire batch?

Did you vorlauf before you pumped to the kettle?

 

[TNGabe]

Did you vorlauf before you pumped to the kettle?

This^

 

[mpride1911]

Its is a keggle with a false bottom. I did vorlauf prior to transfer. Its a cream ale with 9.75 pounds of grain. The first pic was taken about 15 minutes into the transfer. But after it was complete it didn't look like nearly as much as what transferred in the past.

 

[schematix]

That looks fairly normal to me. I always get a little grain coming through.

If you're really worried about it you can check where the grain is coming from. It's either going through the holes in the false bottom, or around the edges of the false bottom if it's not sitting flush. Those chunks look pretty small so I would bet it's the former. My false bottom warped over time and eventually let large chunks of grain through. I bent it back and haven't seen any significant quantity of grain coming through since.

What I would NOT do though is pump your grain through a strainer and let it trickle down into the kettle. That is pure hot side aeration.

 

[mpride1911]

Interesting, even before the boil? I agree that this isn't that much though. I remember it being quite a bit more in the past. Not sure what I did differently.

Thanks for the response.