I am by no means an expert in this area, but my guess is that it isn't really possible to over-sparge. I think you will just end up with more water then necessary and it will take longer to boil down to your target gravity.
well technically i think you can start extracting some tanins if the OG falls below 1.10 on the output sparge
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Code Blue Brewery
Planning- Centennial Blonde, SNPA clone
Primary- AG Bavarian Hefeweizen, AG Haus Pale Ale
Secondary- Blueberry Mead
Bottled- Dry. Dear lord no!
On Tap- Robust Porter, Old Ale
I'm brewing a old Brown dog ale right now. 8.5 lbs grain
I determined I need a total of 8.75 gallons of water total to brew with
I mashed with 3 gallons of water
Planning on 2 batch sparges of 2.875 gallons per sparge
That seems like a lot of sparge water for the small grain bill. Is it possible to oversparge, or will this work
Thanks
Yes it is possible to oversparge. What is the size of the batch? Three gallons for 8.5 lbs of grain is towards the high side but within the normal range. Assuming you have a five gallon batch you might get approximately 2 gallons from the original strike water and five gallons from the sparge runoff. Seven gallons to boil for a 5 gallon batch is not unreasonable.
I thought tannin extraction was solely a function of pH. If the pH rises above 5.4 then you start to risk oversparging and tannin extraction. Why would specific gravity alone extract tannins?
The pH rises as you wash the sugars out, thus when your gravity falls, your chances of extracting tannins increases. I've also read that tannin extraction is affected by temp--if your grainbed gets above 175, there's a greater risk of extraction.
Is overspargeing possible
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