It will never happen to me….
So Saturday night I brewed a new recipe, a Rye IPA with 20% rye malt and 10% crystal Rye. Throw in a pound of wheat you have about 35% of the mash coming from grains with no husks. A definate potential for a stuck mash. But that sort of thing never happens to me. Nah. It couldnt.
It did.
I mashed in at 155. Let it sit for an hour. Mashed out with two gallons. Stirred well. Opened the valve and a trickle greeted me. A trickle continued. I closed the valve. Stirred and scraped and Opened it up again. A trickle. I tried to push the fluid out the drain manually. Nada. It was really freaking stuck. I ended up putting on kitchen gloves and cutting off the braid. Even then, nothing but a trickle. I ended up manually straining the grain with a colander and mesh bag. I did the same for the sparge. The boil ended up with massive amounts of grain in it.
I will off up this advice.
- Keep a couple pounds of rice hulls in the house at all times.
- If you are forced to manually mash, Use two strainer bags. Over over the colander and one over the container you are draining into. If I had done this I wouldn’t have had the grain problem.
- I can and probably will happen to you one day.
I proceeded with the batch as planned. It definitely has some additional bite. I have a good feeling I will end up serving it to people when they are too drunk to know any better.
