Ok, really want to try this but really new to the All Grain thing. Lets see if I got it right:
- Mash In
-Mash Out
Vorlauf, Slowly drain (1qt per minute, roughly)
When grain bed has 2-3 inches of water on top, start your sparge
When you get desired preboil level, stop
So no draining off the cooler after mash out and then sparging
Sorry if this is wrong but hats why Im asking....thanks in advance for your help...
Last edited by williamgardner; 02-03-2010 at 05:53 PM.
Hardly what I'd call an unbiased view of both methods. Choosing your brewing technique based on the opinion blog of one particular homebrewer really is a narrow means by which to find your homebrewing zen.
If you search, I think there is someone around here that swears by urinating on their equipment to sanitize it.
I'd suggest you dial in your system and do what works best for you.
i gave this a shot and it worked great. after the mash was completed, i recirculated for about 5 min or until it was running clear. i then cut the power to the pump, threw a piece of tubing onto the outlet of the MLT and hooked the pump to the HLT and opened it up 100%, just using the valve on the pump to control flow(less valves to worry about). after some fiddling i was able to keep about 2 inchs of water on top of the mash and the total sparge took about 30 min. i just used the aluminum foil to avoid drilling a hole into the mash bed. the runnings were clearer then i've ever had doing a double batch sparge and i had a slight increase of efficiency.
btw, i was running into the ale pales because i actually was finishing up a previous batches boil in the kettle. thumbs up.
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I have been batch sparging for several years. I am thinking of trying the fly sparge to improve my efficiency which has hovered between 77% and 80%. After conducting the mash, does anyone add a calculated volume of boiling water to raise the temp of the mash to 168F - let it rest for 15 minutes - and then begin the fly sparge process?
I swtched to batch sparging because I could never get the water
in and water out rates close to each other. Now I have a huge MLT and I'm wondering if it would work just as well to add the sparge water more quickly than it drains, as long as the water delivery didn't disturb the grain bed. I might end up with 5 or more inches of water above the grain bed but I wouldn't go neurotic fiddling with valve openings, or more usually, adding sparge water too slowly so that the water level dips below the grain.
Thoughts? Is there something "special" about the "2-3 inch above grain" rule that must be respected?
I really don't understand how this is not just fly sparging. The only difference seems to be the way the water is being delivered to the top of the bed. How is this any faster than normal fly sparging? The time and efficiency of a fly sparge is equipment dependent and some systems run faster than others but achieve the same efficiency.
I started reading this post thinking that someone was doing what I've been doing which is more of a hybrid method. I didn't read through all the pages so maybe someone already mentioned the method below.
I use a copper manifold instead of the braided hose. And I generally only do this on big beers to try to capture the lost efficiency (lately all my beers have been big so I've been doing it quite a lot).
After mash I vorlauf until reasonably clear. Then completely drain the mashtun.
Fill up with heated batch sparge water, stir, and let sit for about ten minutes.
Then I re-voulauf. I let the second runnings go a little bit slower, maybe my ball valve at 1/3 open. Once the wort drains to about an inch below the top of the grain bed I ladle hot sparge water on until it's about an inch above the grain bed. I continue doing this until I hit my target volume. On big beers (1.070 and above) my efficiency is averaging a point or two above 80%.
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