I’ve noticed over the past two batches (only batches) of all grain that even with a pretty clear vorlauf I get the sporatic pieces of starch in my wort from the grain. Is this ever an issue? I believe someone answered me a while ago about this, but cannot find it as I post an obnoxious amount lately! ;D
Are you talking about little chunks of grain getting into your beer? I mean like, it looks like corn grits or cream of wheat or steel cut oats? Little pieces of grains? That would be a bad thing, could lead to tannins and astringency in the finished beer. See if you notice an odd puckering in the finished beer. If so, you need to vorlauf a little longer to get those chunks out.
Or perhaps that’s not what you are talking about at all. Could you be concerned about the cloudy egg-white looking material that settles to the lower half of the fermenter? That’s cold break, and is very normal, and will compact down over time. It is not harmful in the slightest, and some experiments seem to prove that it might even be beneficial to yeast health and to final beer flavor. So if that’s what you are witnessing, then don’t worry at all.
Cheers.
I’m talking about little tiny white chunks.
do you see this before boil or after?
To clarify…here is a picture of my grain crush. I’m referring to the little white chunks of grain (not the husk). I’ll see a few of these during vorlauf and sometimes maybe a few after I’m done draining into the kettle.
I haven’t seen them after the boil, although they are probably at the bottom of the traub.
sounds like your system is letting clumps of finely ground malt through…kind of like little dough balls.
you’ll want to check your braid for holes, your connection to the braid . then, when you collect the first wort…collect a little more than you’ve been doing. collecting a gallon very slowly sets the grain bed and catches some of this fine material that is making it into your kettle.
The “braid” in my case is silicone tubing. I believe it’s getting sucked up under the grain bed. I’ll just vorlauf more, currently doing about 4-6 quarts or so. Thanks for the suggesting. Thinking back, I was pretty liberal on my wort flow this time, probably had the valve cranked open too far during this step.
Yeah I would just go a little slower, collect a little more for vorlauf…should take care of it.
Open the valve just slightly, about 1/8 to 1/4 open, for the first few quarts. When you no longer see chunks coming out then it’s safe to slowly open your valve and runoff faster.
Before you get carried away, how much of this are you seeing? A few particles in the wort? A few hundred?
If you have starch in your wort, conversion is incomplete. How long are you allowing the malt to rest? Are you certain that you are not seeing what’s left of a rootlet at the tip of a barley corn?
A few.
60 minutes, no, not sure. Maybe it’s a rootlet, I don’t know as I’m new to this.
If you are resting 60 minutes, then what you are seeing is more than likely a rootlet or other fibrous material. Did you perform an iodine test (using the colored stuff that stains everything it touches)?
You’re fine.
No, I read those iodine tests aren’t worth a hoot.
You can’t see starch…what you see is malt pieces or husks. You can get either of those in the wort regardless of conversion or not.
flbrewer, I am just curious, but what brewing books have you read? From the volume and nature of your questions, it appears that you are LTBBFing (Learning To Brew By Forum), which is not the most efficient or effective way to learn. There’s an advantage to learning how to brew by reading a comprehensive introductory text on brewing such Dave Miller’s Homebrewing Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great-Tasting Beer, John Palmer’s How to Brew, or even Charlie P.‘s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. From there, I would recommend reading Greg Noonan’s New Brewing Lager Beer and Ray Daniels’ Designing Great Beers. Most of the senior brewers on this forum learned how to brew using one or more of these texts. All of these texts provide a brewing fundamental base on which to build more advanced knowledge.
I haven’t done much reading and I hope I haven’t come off as taking advantage of the folks here! Good suggestion though. I do own The Complete Joy…and can read Palmer’s book online. I have a couple of other recipe based books which I can look at as well.
Don’t worry about that. We’re on here because we like learning and teaching about brewing! That’s said, S. cerevisiae recommended some great books. I read How to Brew in its entirety before jumping to all-grain. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t understand at the time but I still learned a lot.