Great brew day - But!

[timtoos]

Advice please!!!

I brew in a 20L braumeister and recently (only the last few brews) I have had a few wort fountains. No idea why. I am not doing anything different to normal in terms of grains and grain bill.

Any idea of what causes the wort fountains? When I mash in I make sure there are no dough balls and all the grain is mixed in the mash water.

Anyway today was no exception, my malt pipe had 4.89kg of malt with 30L of liquor and I had the top grain disk the other way (stem pointing down) for maximum grain movement (this maybe my problem but I have done this before with no issue).

What I did initially was get a ½“ stainless BSP fitting to push the malt disk down into the malt pipe (at the time I did not know about the pause function so was waiting for a pump break). The fitting I found was new. I washed it in cold water and sprayed with starsan and fitted it just in time before the process stated then away it went.

Afterwards I thought about if there were any oil contaminants on the fitting so quickly found the pause function (wish I looked more closely before) and stopped the process. I tuned the malt pipe end the other way (stem facing up) and continued the mash and everything was fine. The fitting was in the mash for no more than 5 minutes.

What I am worried about is oil contaminant in my beer. What are your thoughts?

TIA

[Haydnexport]

Your malt may be crushed too fine , or there is too much malt in the tube, i think speidel recommend no more than 4.5kg. I wouldn't worry about any oil contaminate personally

[Maldon John]

Speidel state 6kg the max for the malt pipe which I have filled to a few times without any issues. 30litres of mash liquor to 4.89 of grain sounds like a fairly thin mash which may accentuate any wort fountain issue, which as mentioned is often caused by too finer grain crush or poor mixing.I usually use 23-26litres for 4-6kg of grain. Doesn't sound like you are sparging

[timtoos]

Don't know why but I always mash in with 30L of water and also sparge nowadays. When adding the grains I remove a few litres of the mash water until the grains have been added then I add it back in.
I try to aim for 34L pre boil and that leaves me with 25L in the fermenter. Seems to work well for me and I have done the for a while now.