Oat Husks, how much to use?

[WishboneBrewery]

Oat Husks, how much to use?
I'm thinking of 80% Wheat Malt in a recipe.

[kitoog]

I used about 5% of the grain bill in a few Hefe's l I did over the last few weeks, which sparged fine. i looking for info on how much to use a while back and found it hard to find much info. I rinsed them out with the water used to preheat my mash tun before adding back for the mash. You could also add them after the mash before sparging.

[Wolfy]

Is "as much as you need" a good enough answer?
I use rice hulls (same concept) adding a few scoop fulls if I think I might have a problem. Then if I get a stuck-sparge, add more, stir try again.

[Kev888]

IMHO its probably related to how well your particular setup copes - I find that I can do small quantities of up to 70% wheat without hulls if I'm slow with the sparge and keep it all nicely suspended/floating, but bigger quantities (and presumably more weight compacting the bottom of the grain bed) even at only 60% wheat always cause it all to stick completely solid no matter how slowly I go. So I've settled on oat husks at roughly 5% of the grain bill and that seems to work for me.

The american forums seem to use rice hulls for the same purpose at between about 5% to 10% of the grain bill, and I've read that John Palmer apparantly said at least 4% husk is needed in the grain bill and I tend to assume wheat has none (however I've not been able to find that in his book so I don't know if its true or not).

Cheers
kev

[far9410]

would oat bran do the same job? has anyone tried it?

[Kev888]

I could be wrong but I 'think' oat bran has a lot more fat and soluble stuff in, and so would affect the beer (especially a light one like wheat) - the idea of husks/hulls is that they really just add bulk and coarseness to help draining without affecting the wort.

Cheers
Kev

[WishboneBrewery]

Cheers guys My mash tun drains brilliantly with the perforated stainless false bottom, I'll go for the minimum 4-5%, maybe mix it thru the other dry malts and see how it looks/feels and add more if its too solid.