So Saturday night I brewed a new recipe, a Rye IPA with 20% rye malt and 10% crystal Rye.  Throw in a pound of wheat you have about 35% of the mash coming from grains with no husks.  A definate potential for a stuck mash.  But that sort of thing never happens to me. Nah.  It couldnt.

It did.

I mashed in at 155.  Let it sit for an hour.  Mashed out with two gallons.  Stirred well.  Opened the valve and a trickle greeted me.  A trickle continued.  I closed the valve. Stirred and scraped and Opened it up again.  A trickle.  I tried to push the fluid out the drain manually.  Nada.  It was really freaking stuck.  I ended up putting on kitchen gloves and cutting off the braid.  Even then, nothing but a trickle.  I ended up manually straining the grain with a colander and mesh bag.  I did the same for the sparge.  The boil ended up with massive amounts of grain in it.

I will off up this advice.

1. Keep a couple pounds of rice hulls in the house at all times.
2. If you are forced to manually mash, Use two strainer bags.  Over over the colander and one over the container you are draining into.  If I had done this I wouldn’t have had the grain problem.
3. I can and probably will happen to you one day.

I proceeded with the batch as planned.  It definitely has some additional bite. I have a good feeling I will end up serving it to people when they are too drunk to know any better.