Rice hulls (or oat husks)

[xozzx]

I am looking at ways to increase my mash efficiency with my GF and wondered if adding rice hulls to my mash might help. Ive never tried them before as I have never had a stuck sparge. I like stronger beers so am often using a higher grain bill than is ideal with GF, I have done a couple of re-iterated mashes for grain bills around 9kg but often I use about 7kg which would be 3.5kg for each mash and I would prefer to get better efficiency doing a single mash. I do stir the grain 3-4 times during the mash which helps, I also mill my own grain and seem to have found a good crush size.

I have read a bit about rice hulls and fancy giving it a try. Is this likely to increase my efficiency? How do I use them, do I just mix in 5% of total grain bill and mill all together or do I not need to mill them?

I am getting an order ready with theMaltMiller and they dont have rice hulls but have oat husks instead, are these basically the same?

Cheers for any advice

 

[strange-steve]

It might do, Gordon Strong recommends adding a few hundred grams into every mash although in his case I believe it's more for the purpose of getting a more even temperature distribution. I only tend to use them if I have a lot of rye malt or similar but never noticed if it affects effeciency. Also rice hulls and oat husks can be used interchangeably.