I hate rice hulls ?

[sanch]

I decided to do my 1st 2 batch brew day yesterday. I built my system to be able to do back to back brews with a 2nd BK and a tippie dump and a flash boiler. for sparge and strike water and also for steam injected mash steps. the brewing was going pretty well I had the 1st batch an octoberfest in the boil kettle and mashed in the seconed batch a witbier. 12lbs 2 row 10lbs wheat malt and 1lb rice hulls in to 7 gal of strike water. after a 15 min protine rest i turned on the pump and fired the flash boiler to raise the mash temp only to find the wort stream reentering the MT slowly diminishing to nothing. I stirred the mash, turned the pump on and off checked all the valves and still nothing. then I started to take apart all the plumbing there was rice hulls plugging up every thing. the pumps, valves, the sparge arm. I got it all cleared and was able to make my mash step. after the 45 min conversion I turned on the pump to raise the temp for mashout and once again it was all plugged up. I ended up collecting runings in a big kitchen bowl that had to be held up in place during the entire 45min sparge. siting in sticky wort that had been spilled during the uncloging efforts earlier. needless to say I was not a happy home brewer.

I was just wondering if any body else has had simillar problems with rice hulls? I know there are a lot of people who recirc via pump. is there way to avoid the clogging? the rice hulls are just so small they seem to just slip right through the 1/8" holes in the false bottom. is there an alternative to rice hulls? should I add another finer false bottom below the existing? I am planing to brew another wheat beer on sunday and dont want to deal with all the problems. as of now I am planing to just leave them out.

 

[shutupjojo]

With that much wheat I would do a beta-glucan rest at 105 for 20 min and probably wouldn't need rice hulls. A while ago I started using a stainless scrubber under my false bottom dip tube and it stops bits of grain and everything. Throwing some 6 row in the mash would be a good alternative to rice hulls though.

 

[C-Rider]

I"m doing a 1.75 gallon Rye using
3.5 lbs of Rye
12 oz Viena
1 oz of Black Patent

I BIAB, do you think I need rice hulls? if so how much?

Mahalo in advance

 

[eastoak]

I"m doing a 1.75 gallon Rye using
3.5 lbs of Rye
12 oz Viena
1 oz of Black Patent

I BIAB, do you think I need rice hulls? if so how much?

Mahalo in advance

you won't get a stuck sparge with the BIAB method since you lift the grains out of the mash tun. if you mashed in a cooler with lots of wheat or rye you might get a stuck sparge. i condition my malt before milling so i have lots of nearly whole husks that do the same job as rice hulls when i make a wheat beer using 60% malted wheat. haven't had a stuck sparge yet.

 

[sanch]

With that much wheat I would do a beta-glucan rest at 105 for 20 min and probably wouldn't need rice hulls. A while ago I started using a stainless scrubber under my false bottom dip tube and it stops bits of grain and everything. Throwing some 6 row in the mash would be a good alternative to rice hulls though.

would the 6 row replace some of the two row? and how much

 

[shutupjojo]

would the 6 row replace some of the two row? and how much

You could replace all the 2 row with 6 row or half of both. I have never tasted any difference using 6 row. Some people say they can but since I learned to condition my malt and do a beta - glucan rest , I haven't had to use it for a while now.

 

[RoadKing]

Try conditioning the malt before you grind it. It works awesome!

 

[Ravenshead]

Just to buck the trend; I'm thinking your issue is too few rice hulls. A single lb vs. 22 lbs of grain (esp with 10 lbs of wheat) is pretty small. I'd have used at least 2 if not 3 lbs for that grain bill.

My system is a lot simpler than yours but I'm guessing the wheat is what is causing the clogs not the rice hulls.

 

[Bob]

I'm going to disagree. When I brewed Wit in 10bbl batches, I used maybe 2-5% of the grist as rice hulls(by weight).

I think the problem is insufficient mixing of the rice hulls at dough-in, combined with poor or no vorlauf before trying to recirculate with the pump.

Rice hulls are a replacement for grain hulls, as if some of your husk-less grain had husks. You don't need an awful lot of them, provided you mix very, very well at dough-in. And that's a good thing, as they soak up a lot of mash liquor, which can throw off your liquor use calculations.

Next time, mix your mash assiduously at dough-in and vorlauf manually before starting the pump. Just keep gently vorlaufing until the wort has as few chunky bits visible as possible. If you have a variable speed control on the pump, that helps, as well as restricting the flow so you get a gentler recirculation.

Cheers,

Bob