Hulls in the CIP

[GoldenArm]

So I've only recently started using rice hulls to deal with some of the issues that have come up as a result of having to ramp up my batch sizes.
Overall, I love what they're doing for my runoff time and brewday frustrations. Unfortunately though, no matter how thoroughly I rinse out the mashtun and brewhouse manifold, the suckers still manage to find places to hide, and they end up clogging up my CIP spray balls.
Wondering if this happens to anyone else, and if anyone has any tricks for dealing with it

[NYSBrewer]

I use rice hulls in my hefe-weizen and have not had this problem. Maybe you are using too much? I also make sure the are well mixed in the mash. I only use them when I am using a large amount of wheat, and mix it into the mash as the wheat is falling into the tun. Hope this helps.

[South County]

Take a look and make note of any dead legs (long tees) in your manifold piping in your brewhouse. The low density (lightness) of the hulls is allowing them to hideout in parts of your process piping and only until you CIP or run a long recirc-cycle do they eventually come out. Definitely a pain, but not uncommon. As far as solutions, maybe adjusting your pump speeds to creae a more turbulent flow and/or just hooking directly to any dead spots or areas that look suspect.

[kai]

Could you add a small trap filter to your CIP lines just upstream of the sprayball? We have a removable one on our mobile CIP unit and it always fills right up with ordinary husk material on a MLT CIP.

[Sulfur]

You could consider other spray balls. By that I mean, the flat plate kind. They still work for a CIP but will not get clogged. It's as simple as unscrewing the one and screwing on the other. Unless of course there's no thread assembly and your spray ball is held in place by a pin or similar device.