Brew day

[Wade E]

Brewed an All Grain wheat Beer today and things went okay but had a little drainage problem with my manifold with this batch. How much of a bed do you guys use with Rice hulls when doing a wheat beer?

 

[Tom]

I use 1# of rice hulls per 5 gallon batch

 

[smurfe]

Same here, I use somewhere around a pound. What ever it took to cover the manifold well. With the round cooler it took less than a half pound to cover the false bottom

 

[mattsbrewery]

Perhaps my process is different. I also use a pound, but I just mix it in with the rest of the mash since I'll be stirring it during the process anyway. It sounds like you guys create a bed on the manifold to keep it separate some how? Mixing it together seems to give OK results with wheat, but still a little sluggish.

 

[Wade E]

Thats what I used. Maybe I need to make a better manifold for doing wheat beers, it worked great for other styles. May have to swith to the Bazooka style. Home Depot, here I come again!

 

[Travisty]

I'm gearing up to do a hefeweizen soon with something like 50% to 60% wheat and I was just planning on mixing the rice hulls in with everything like Matt said he does. Does anyone know the pros and cons of mixing in versus covering the manifold? I use an SS hose braid and I batch sparge, so I'm thinking the mixing I do when sparging would make the mixing in option more likely for me.

 

[smurfe]

There is no real difference. I cover the false bottom. When you do stir you should never stir all the way down to the bottom. That is just asking for a stuck mash. I just stir the top 2/3 of the mash. I like it now I don't have to stir at all. I jut fill from the bottom to saturate the mash and recirculate. Of course if you are doing an infusion mash it depends on if you add grain to water or water to grain. If I added water to grain I added the hulls first. If I added grain to water I just mixed the hull with the grain.

 

[Travisty]

That brings up another thing I've wondered about. I'vebeen adding my grain to my water. It just seems easier to me in my head. I like to heat my strike water up to a little warmer than I want it and transfer it to my mash tun. I let it cool with the lid off until it's right where I want it and the I dump in my grain and stir it up real good. But I've read of other people doing it the other way around. I figure that my way is working well for me so far so I probably won't change unless there's a really good reason. Is there a really good reason?

P.S. sorry for hijacking your thread wade!