Cold Sparging???

I've been reading for a few days on the forums about sparging and I am getting ready to brew my first All Grain... Are there any ill effects from using cold (Room Temperature) water to sparge the grain other than starting your wort at a cooler temperature for your boil?????

i'm no cornicopia of brew knowledge but can tell ya that the 168-170 ' sparge water will help your grain bed release the sugars better. any hotter water you run the risk of leaching tannins from the grain hulk which can make the beer astringent tasting. room temp will not do as good a job from what I have always read which will affect your efficency.

i do know that many BAIB brewers use a second sparge usually done with heated water or room temp. BUT this is just to get whatever sugars that have not been collected from the normal bag drain.

hope this helped........

GD

The heat helps any residual sugars in the grain diffuse more easily into the water. Don't go over 170*f for the above reason.

Kaiser did a nice write up about this.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/cold-water-sparge-110856/
I was curious about this after reading some brewing texts from the 1850's that explicited recommended sparging with cold water. I tried it a few times and ended up with results similar to Kaiser.

What he said...I put my money w/ Kaiser. Cold sparge should work fine if that's what you're into.

After reading Kaiser's stuff, I tried a cold sparge on several batches. It worked fine for me, with no noticeable ill effects.

agree with the previous mentions of Kaiser's work. I have cold sparged quite a few times out of laziness and still make wonderful beer.

gizmodog51 said:

i'm no cornicopia of brew knowledge but can tell ya that the 168-170 ' sparge water will help your grain bed release the sugars better. any hotter water you run the risk of leaching tannins from the grain hulk which can make the beer astringent tasting. room temp will not do as good a job from what I have always read which will affect your efficency.

i do know that many BAIB brewers use a second sparge usually done with heated water or room temp. BUT this is just to get whatever sugars that have not been collected from the normal bag drain.

hope this helped........

GD

Click to expand...

And you wouldn't want to make the grain hulk angry