[babalu87]

Dammit, you guys are gonna convince me yet!

BTW, anybody heard from Kai lately?  He seems to be MIA on all forums he usually posts to.

i just spoke with him on Wednesday of last week - he will be offline until Monday the 26th.

Yeah, we'll have to ask him how he liked Mickey 

[Hokerer]

Yeah, we'll have to ask him how he liked Mickey 

Oh, the poor guy

[dbeechum]

Oh, the poor guy

Nothing wrong with people liking Mickey. Makes me happy!

[bluesman]

Oh, the poor guy

Nothing wrong with people liking Mickey. Makes me happy!

+1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDybu6CxFiI

[babalu87]

Oh, the poor guy

Nothing wrong with people liking Mickey. Makes me happy!

Its all about the kids

Wife and I went there before kids and had a BLAST
Though we did spend too much time in Merry Ole England and Germany at EPCOT 

[Kaiser]

BTW, anybody heard from Kai lately?  He seems to be MIA on all forums he usually posts to.

I'm back. But in the last few weeks I have also gotten much more busy at work. This meas less time for browsing forums

Kai

[denny]

We'll miss ya!  Hope you had a great time with Mickey!

[bluesman]

Welcome back Kai!

How was the trip to Disney?

[Kaiser]

How was the trip to Disney?

Less relaxing that it should be. Too many people for my taste, but the Kids had fun and that counted.

Kai

[skyler]

I actually tried malt conditioning for the first time recently and had my first stuck sparge in an all malted-barley beer. This is what I did:

I sprayed with tap water and stirred/shook the stainless steel stock pot full of grain (Cargill 2-row and TF Medium Crystal) until a few grains stuck to my palm when i grabbed a fist-full. Then I waited 20 minutes and milled. I poured the crushed grains into my Denny-style mash tun, then closed the lid and went to bed. The next morning, I mashed in at around 10:00 am. Ended up giving it a very long mash (nearly 2 hours @151F), because I had to run an errand. Then, boom, stuck sparge. My guess is that the weight of the moistened crushed grain sitting on the steel braid overnight eventually caused the braid to flatten or collapse. Regardless, I have been hesitant to try it again. Did I do something wrong?

[tygo]

Except for putting it in the mash tun overnight I do it exactly the same way as you do and it works for me. 

Do you have lautering issues when you don't do it?  I originally started doing it because I was having problems with my runoff and now it's just habit.  One of these times though I'm planning to not do it to see if I still have the same issues.  It's one more step in the brewing prep and if I could get away without doing and not compromise anything I would.

[skyler]

I generally only have lautering problems with wheat or rye beers. I wanted to malt condition so I could crush finer. I'll try malt conditioning one more time before I decide it's not for me - this time I won't let it sit in the tun overnight.

[Kaiser]

Did I do something wrong?

Based on your description I don't think you did anything wrong. How much finer than usual did you mill the grain? While conditioning the malt allows you to mill finer you can still mill too fine.

Kai

[skyler]

Sorry, I forgot about this thread. When I conditioned my malt, I crushed to .030. The mill is relatively new (I previously used various HBS mills). I have since been crushing to .035 without conditioning and have been getting great results and consistent 80-84% efficiency, regardless of gravity so I don't plan on crushing any finer. I will be brewing an Imperial Rye Stout in a little while, so I would really like to get as much help lautering as possible. I will try it out again crushing all the barley at .035 and crushing the rye at .025 (the finest crush my mill can give me).

[rabid_dingo]

I have a bit of an update/question.

Kai,
Do you think that there is a possibility of over conditioning? Here is the situation I encountered and
now wonder about. I conditioned my malt as normal. I maybe was heavy handed with the spray bottle
a bit and I figured it was minimal. I waited about 20-30 minutes as my strike water heated up and milled
as normal. Here is where it got weird. After milling I noticed a large amount of grist that looked like it
was untouched by the mill. There were complete grain kernel in my milled bucket.  But then I
re-inspected what was going on. The mill did its job the grain husks where whole!!! Completely
"un-touched" when I pinched a few they quickly gave with no resistance and some powder and
crushed malt poured out. Again  !

My efficiency suffered. I was expecting 1.070 ish and only got about 1.056...I can only assume that
the fully encapsulated crushed grain did not let any sugars out. Is that a possibility? That the husks
actually remained too intact. What are your thoughts?

On a side note I did not jam the mill or have any issues that one would expect with wet milling...