... I don't malt condition. My crush is fairly fine but not as fine as flour. I can usually drain 30lbs of malt using a 1.25:1 qts/lb in about 10-15min. My beers are typically clear after a few weeks and the tannin levels are non-existent. In fact my most recent ESB is so clear it's like looking through a glass window.
Then I wouldn't recommend Malt Conditioning to you. The OP is having trouble with slow run-off, so I think it might help him. Clearly there is a difference between your two systems. He can try rebuilding the tun or changing other parameters randomly, and perhaps he'll solve the problem, or he can condition the malt and have a decent probability of solving the problem.
It's a process that has only upsides, for me, and I even suspect it may be contributing to the improved clarity of my beer, lately.
Can you say how it contributed to clarity?
Again, if it works for you, it works, but I also crush very fine average 85% efficiency, and don't condition. Malt conditioning might help some people, but I'd say it's far from a universal solution.
Again, I wasn't saying that people who don't have runoff problems should start conditioning their malt (unless they just want to give it a try). It isn't going to cure a problem that you don't have, just like taking antibiotics aren't going to make you feel betterr if you don't have an infection. I don't think it's easy to come up with another treatment for slow runnings with such a high probablility of solving the problem, other than coarser milling which risks lower efficiency. I recommend malt conditioning to people who have slow runoff and it seems to help
them.
I perfected my current water treatments around the same time as I started Malt Conditioning, so I can't say for sure, and I usually credit my water treatment to my improved clarity. In fact, I've always had pretty clear beer, but I was controlling my pH and still had some minor haze (nothing I ever fretted about, I could still read the paper through my beers). Since I've been Malt Conditioning I've had absolutely crystal clear beers as soon as they're carbonated. Frankly, I'm wondering why people use finings.
I don't bother trying to get clear runnings. I don't believe that matters, at all. I've tried it both ways and it never does in my beers. I think that I may have reduced my already slight polyphenol extraction to even less, thanks to not having a tun full of tattered husks. Perhaps it's just enough to give me a slightly larger leeway with pH and Calcium.
I don't mean to oversell Malt Conditioning, and I haven't done the proper experiment, I'm just saying that there
seems to be a correlation in my brewery.