Wheat Beer Spare Question

[thesweetlycool]

Alright, this was our third All-Grain batch and the first two went off without a hitch. This one was 5 lbs. of 2-row and 4 lbs. of White Wheat Malt.

Now the first two were all Barley Malt the the sparge went just fine and flowed nicely though our cooper manifold with slits cut in it. This wheat beer, however would not flow one bit and after dumping the entire contents of the mash into a fermenting bucket.. cleaning the whole system and then putting it back it still would not flow! We even use a few handfulls of rice hulls!

We ended up just siphoning though a tube with a screen on one end but the resulting OG was only like 1.029.. so we just scraped it and plan to try again later.

My question though, is if anyone else has had trouble with wheat malt.. as this is the only thing i can think of that would cause this. Is the milled malt just stickier and clumps up near the slits or is there something else im missing here?

 

[Opherman47]

need a lot more rice hulls...... and i dont know what your sparge regimen is

 

[thesweetlycool]

Yeah will use a ton more rice hulls next time.. when do you usually put yours in? I've been pouring in a bit of mash water and closing the lid to pre-heat the cooler.. then throwing in the rice hulls on top of this little bit of water before adding the grains.

We've been fly sparging so it was 60 min mash at 150 and then opening the valve to begin the sparge. Instantly, however, nothing would flow out and it was all downhill from there.

 

[Big10Seaner]

Just mix the rice hulls with your grains when you stir them in the mash tun.

 

[thesweetlycool]

Just mix the rice hulls with your grains when you stir them in the mash tun.

So you're saying that it's better for the ricehulls to be mixed in with the grains instead of primarily on the botton? I thought they were used to help the compacted grains not stop up the manifold at the bottom.

 

[Johnny9]

Just mix the rice hulls with your grains when you stir them in the mash tun.

That was the advice my LHBS gave me. Also, 1/2 lbs of rice hulls per 5 gal batch.

My first two hefe's went without a hitch.

 

[Jumbo82]

I agree, mix the hulls in with the grain for best results. Also, you should sparge slowly. I use to have poor efficiency until I slowed the flow way down. Might help you too.

 

[ericm]

So you're saying that it's better for the ricehulls to be mixed in with the grains instead of primarily on the botton? I thought they were used to help the compacted grains not stop up the manifold at the bottom.

when you stir in the grains they're gonna get all mixed in anyway. and you want them to keep the whole grain bed 'separated', not just the bottom.

 

[IrregularPulse]

half pound of rice hulls stirred in with my grain today, No draining problems.

 

[AnOldUR]

half pound of rice hulls stirred in with my grain today, No draining problems.

Yup. Lasts weeks bill was 55% Wheat and 5% Flaked Rye. Like IrregularPulse, I also used 1/2lb of rice hulls with batch sparge and a braided strand. No problems. The rice hulls are not as compact as grain. A half pound is actually quite a lot more than you'd think.

Probably not, but it could be your manifold. How wide are the slots and what is the spacing? A picture would help to see if there is a problem with it.