How not to use rice hulls

[eric19312]

Brewed a 10gal wheat IPA this weekend with 40% wheat. Brewed same wort last weekend. Added a pound of rice hulls to each batch.

I run a direct fire recirculating mash tun (kettle) with Jaybird false bottom. I start heating my strike water in my HLT, then transfer to MLT and recirculate with water treatments and heat to get to strike temperature. Then I turn off the pump and add grain usually alternating between grain and rice hulls if I am using hulls. Stir it well and turn on the pump, slow at first to about half open for remainder of mash.

That is what I did last week. No problems at all. This week I noticed I hadn't accounted for the rice hulls in my strike water calculation so decided to add the hulls first with the salts, then circulate + heat to strike temperature.

Haha well I learned. Immediately stuck. I think the hulls alone must have flattened out on the fb into a perfect seal i had to stir and scrape the FB to get circulation going and keep at it all the way to strike temp.

 

[gotbags-10]

Good to know !

 

[hanuswalrus]

I had a similar incident a couple weekends ago using rice hulls for the first time. It was a wheat beer w/ 60% wheat and 40% pilsner. Used a 1/2 lb of rice hulls. Threw in about a handful before mixing in the grains and I'm thinking the same thing happened that happened to you. Took over an hour to collect my pre-boil volume. I would blow into the runoff valve as hard as I could, it would start to flow very gently but eventually get stuck again and again. It was extremely frustrating. Ended up disassembling my entire mash tun to find rice hulls jamming up almost the entire length of the runoff valve.