Good Backup Plan

[Barley Water]

Your mashtun set up looks good to me, mine is pretty much the same except mine is stainless steel (which should make no difference at all). If you batch sparge (which I am now doing and it works great), it makes no difference that the screen doesn't make it to the edge of the mashtun. If you fly sparge however, that may actually cause some channeling which would theoretically reduce efficiency. Actually, all you really want is as little dead space under the screen as possibe and yours looks great.

I'm sorry to hear that you guys can't easily source rice hulls in your corner of the world. I guess you can just chalk that suggestion up to another "Yank idea" with no practical application, at least in the UK.

[adm]

How about your grain? Have all the slow sparges come from the same sack/same crush/same maltings ? Could be that I guess. I'd imagine it could also be something to do with your water, but to be honest haven't got a clue about that!

I've had two sacks from the same brewery - both Fawcetts MO. It does seem very floury, but TBH it's all I've ever used, so I don't have any experience of anything else. At £20 for 25 kg I don't want to change supplier! Perhaps it's that...

I think I might build a new mash tun and see if that makes any difference. Thanks for your ideas

It could be the malt.....if you're getting it from a local brewery then they may be specifying exactly how they want it crushed for their setup and it may not work well with your system.

I'd be tempted to buy a sack of a different brand from an LHBS just to try even if it does cost a bit more. At least you'll convert it into drinkable beer whatever happens!

Ont he other hand.....back to the rice hulls! H&G sell Oat Husks which have the same effect. I've used them a couple of times when making wheat beer and didn't notice any particular flavour from them myself, but as others have said it's probably a good idea to soak them first. (In fact - I've got a couple of bags of them in my grain bin for "just in case"!)

[GARYSMIFF]

Oat Husks , Ill give that a try try out, thx Adm, got to be better than Lego.

[Jerry Cornelius]

Think I'll try a kg of malt from the LHBS and mix it in with my stuff.

See if it makes a difference in the next brew.