So I just finished my second AG batch–NB’s Saison. The first one was NB’s Hefe, which I’m about to bottle. The hefe went very well. No problems. A little less wort than I expected, but I’m learning.
Now, the second, the Saison, was a mini-disaster. Mashed for an hour, hit the temp, and was ready to sparge. Opened the valve and vorlaufed. Then everything stalled. “Oh, ok,” I thought. “Stuck mash, I"ve read about this.” So I closed the valve, gave it all a real good stir, vorlaufed again, and it got it flowing… for about eight seconds. Repeated the whole thing. Same result. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t get the wort flowing. I would stir and would get a good flow, but then watch it slowly get choked out.
I wound up having to try to pour it through a strainer to get the wort out and had a fair amount of grain in the BK. Strangely enough, when I added the sparge water, the wort came through without any problems.
So, two questions: one, what the heck happened? I did not use rice hulls. I figured if I got through a hefe wo a stuck mash, they weren’t a necessity. The only thing i did differently was, when I pre-heated my tun, I ran a little water through the braid to get the air out. I read that this would keep the braid from floating, which it did during the hefe. The only thing I can think is that the crush was too thin. There did seem to be more “dust” in there than in the hefe grain bill, but the grain (for both) was crushed by NB, so I figure they know what they’re doing.
And two, is my saison totally ruined? I only wound up with about three gallons post boil. Will that bit of grain that went into the BK ruin it?
FYI: I use a 10 gal round tun with a SS braid in a circle.
Many thanks.