Cereal Mash for Flaked Grains

[dangove]

Hello

I happen to come across 10 kg of flaked rice.(see photo for label) . So, I made a lager by adding about 20% flaked rice to my mash. The rice seemed to turn to cement and took my efficiency way way down.

I’m thinking that next time I will do a cereal mash first. Is there anything wrong with that?. Is there any other suggestions?

 

[day_trippr]

There's no need to do a cereal mash with flaked grains and offhand I don't think there'd be any benefit. I've never bothered, whether flaked oats, wheat, rice or corn. I don't even bother passing them through my mill, just mix them in before strike and call it done. And, no brag, but any recipe I've used flaked grains has never come in low on OG at the recipe volume to fermentors.

When the flakes were created pretty much everything a cereal mash would do was done. All you really need to do is hydrate them and let the base malt enzymes have at them...

Cheers!

 

[dangove]

Could it be that 20% was too much for the base grain to convert?

my efficiency dropped from high 70s down to 65%. Also, true mash was extremely tight and difficult to stir.

 

[dangove]

Here’s what it looks like. I’ve used flaked corn before but I’ve never had this kind of trouble....

 

[day_trippr]

Flaked grains at 20% of the total grist shouldn't have challenged the available enzymes.
I don't use flaked rice often but that pic sure looks like the flaked rice I used (for Cream Of Three Crops, as an example) and I had no gravity issues without cooking the rice flakes first.

What mash process did you use - fly sparge, batch sparge, BIAB? If fly sparging a tight mash might have channeled enough for a 5% efficiency loss...

Cheers!

 

[dangove]

I have a Herms system. I use a fly sparge. Perhaps it was channeling.

The mash was so dense, I thought I was going to get a stuck sparge, but I didn’t.

 

[BigEd]

I have a Herms system. I use a fly sparge. Perhaps it was channeling.

The mash was so dense, I thought I was going to get a stuck sparge, but I didn’t.

Did you just dump the flakes in or mix them first? In my experience it is best to mix the flaked grains, or any other unmalted product, with the dry crushed malt before adding the strike water. Then when the water hits the grains the enzymes start to go into solution and get to work. I've never used flaked rice but I've used flaked maize, wheat, and barley many times without problems.

 

[dangove]

They were in my grain bucket at the bottom of the 2 row. So they went into the mash last. Many stirs during the 1 hour boil . The mash was liquidy on the top but turned hard at the bottom. Had a consistency like toothpaste

I didn’t crush the rice