Hi all,
I brewed this past weekend, and had a really weird problem that I've never encountered. I have a 15gal kettle tun with a RIMs tube and chugger pump. This recipe has a really long mash/recirc (~3 hours including step time), and it had all gone normally. The grain bed was nice and settled with only a few bits of grain floating at the top of the kettle. I stepped the mash up to 168 for mash-out, and after the grain bed had reached temperature I stopped the pump to attach my sparge arm. While I was doing that, bubbles started coming up through the grain bed, and then the entire grain bed (I think, it was hard to see) slowly floated up to the top! I didn't know what to do, so I just sparged right on to the grain and got some really terrible efficiency. (My pre-boil gravity was supposed to be ~1.070, but was only ~1.055). This is only about my fourth brew on this kettle/false bottom, so I'm still dialing in my process. Anybody have any ideas on what happened, and a way to prevent it in the future?
Here's some details:
Equipment
15 Gal kettle with false bottom & recirc port
RIMs
Chugger pump
Mash
21lbs of assorted grains
~0.5lbs of rice hulls
~5oz crushed pecans
Mashed at ~1.9qt/lb
Temp Steps
Step 1: 30min @ 122
Step 2: 120min @ 144
Mash Out: 10min @ 168
Thanks in advance for the help!
I brewed this past weekend, and had a really weird problem that I've never encountered. I have a 15gal kettle tun with a RIMs tube and chugger pump. This recipe has a really long mash/recirc (~3 hours including step time), and it had all gone normally. The grain bed was nice and settled with only a few bits of grain floating at the top of the kettle. I stepped the mash up to 168 for mash-out, and after the grain bed had reached temperature I stopped the pump to attach my sparge arm. While I was doing that, bubbles started coming up through the grain bed, and then the entire grain bed (I think, it was hard to see) slowly floated up to the top! I didn't know what to do, so I just sparged right on to the grain and got some really terrible efficiency. (My pre-boil gravity was supposed to be ~1.070, but was only ~1.055). This is only about my fourth brew on this kettle/false bottom, so I'm still dialing in my process. Anybody have any ideas on what happened, and a way to prevent it in the future?
Here's some details:
Equipment
15 Gal kettle with false bottom & recirc port
RIMs
Chugger pump
Mash
21lbs of assorted grains
~0.5lbs of rice hulls
~5oz crushed pecans
Mashed at ~1.9qt/lb
Temp Steps
Step 1: 30min @ 122
Step 2: 120min @ 144
Mash Out: 10min @ 168
Thanks in advance for the help!