Sparging question.

I am about to start all grain brewing and I will be using a sparging system made with two coolers. One to hold my sparge water and one to actually sparge the grains. After I am done mashing my grains do I go ahead and add all of the grains with my current wort in my brew pot to the lauter tun? Or do I use a bag to filter out the grains and just add the grains to the lauter tun leaving the wort I have already made in the brew kettle to save for the boil?

Jeremy512 said:

I am about to start all grain brewing and I will be using a sparging system made with two coolers. One to hold my sparge water and one to actually sparge the grains. After I am done mashing my grains do I go ahead and add all of the grains with my current wort in my brew pot to the lauter tun? Or do I use a bag to filter out the grains and just add the grains to the lauter tun leaving the wort I have already made in the brew kettle to save for the boil?

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I'm trying to picture what you're asking. The water is in one cooler (called the HLT, Hot Liquor Tank). The grains should be in the second cooler. If you're batch sparging, you drain out the wort from the grains from the mash, and then add the sparge water to the grains. Stir well, and then drain that. Add those runnings to the first (mash) runnings. Repeat if you have enough water to do it again.

Here's a photo of it, in howtobrew.com: How to Brew - By John Palmer - Conducting the Lauter

What I am doing is using a brew pot to mash my grains and then with the top cooler I put my sparge water and then the lower cooler I will be adding the grains to be sparged. So I do add the already produced wort with the grains to the lower cooler, drain that, recirculate, let that wort run off into my brewpot, then start runnning the sparge water over the grains?

And I am trying to fly sparge not batch sparge.

Jeremy512 said:

What I am doing is using a brew pot to mash my grains and then with the top cooler I put my sparge water and then the lower cooler I will be adding the grains to be sparged. So I do add the already produced wort with the grains to the lower cooler, drain that, recirculate, let that wort run off into my brewpot, then start runnning the sparge water over the grains?

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Ok, so the second cooler is the lauter tun. Got it. But I don't think you can fly sparge that, because when you fly sparge you drain the mash out very slowly while you trickle in the sparge water. The process of diffusion gently "rinses" the sugars out of the grain as the fresh water enters the lauter tun at the same rate the wort leaves. If you're going to mash in a kettle but sparge in a second vessel, you'll have to batch sparge. If I'm understanding what you're saying.

That is correct, wha tif I were to mash in the same cooler as I lauter. By adding the water into the first cooler with the grains, mashing for the appropriate timing, mashing out, and then sparging?

Jeremy512 said:

That is correct, wha tif I were to mash in the same cooler as I lauter. By adding the water into the first cooler with the grains, mashing for the appropriate timing, mashing out, and then sparging?

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Yes, that would work perfectly!

The pictures I linked to show just that set up. It's a two cooler set up, doing a fly sparge.

EDIT.. has already been said

WOW, thanks for the link. I made my first AG batch the other day but it was a modified brew in a bag method. I do not believe my efficiency was at the best I could do so I downloaded beersmith to make my own recipes and decided to use an MLT system to get better efficiency and make better beer.