Piratwolf

Recipes 

Prey for the noob question, but I'm moving to AG and am going to batch sparge. How long do I sparge for?

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Piratwolf: "I've heard that Belgian Blondes can be "panty droppers" but they're not particularly high IBU nor cheap."

jmendez29: Haha! I get it! :ban:
Wait. You're not talking about beer, right?
You're talking about beer. That could have been a whole lot more fun.

shafferpilot

Recipes 

time is not the issue with batch sparging... though I prefer to add my sparge water, stir, and wait 5-10 minutes before vorlaufing and draining.

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birvine

Recipes 

What I do is sparge until I have my boil volume but I also watch the wort to see if there still seems to be sugar remaining - I don't like to miss out!

B

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SilverZero

Recipes 

I concur. Mash for 60 minutes, vorlauf a a few times, drain the MT, add the sparge water (mine is usually around 185F if I got it on the burner in time) and stir it up well. Wait 5 minutes for the sugars to rinse out and vorlauf and drain again until you hit your pre-boil volume. Don't forget to take a well-mixed sample from the kettle before you boil to calculate your mash efficiency.

I do a double-batch sparge, so I add half of my heated water, do the thing, then add the rest and stir and sit a second time.

ElevenBrewCo

Recipes 

do you get better efficiency doing double?

OHIOSTEVE

Recipes 

I don't know about Silver but I absolutely get better efficiency doubling up. The only issue is when you do a big beer and the initial mash in gives you a large first running so your sparge volume is too small to split.

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azscoob

Recipes 

This is exactly what I do, I also mashout with the volume lost to absorption before draining my first runnings.

Since I started mashing out with the absorbed volume (I bring it to a boil to get the grainbed temp up) and splitting my sparge into two separate sparges I have been getting 85-89% efficiency. I also drain the tun fairly slow, maybe 50% open on the valve, it makes for a clearer runoff too.

Thats when I shoot for a longer boil, so I need to sparge with more water to make up for the long boil.

It really comes down to your equipment and the time you have available.

Start with a single sparge, mashout with your calculated absorption amount, and then start fine tuning your process each brewday to see if efficiency goes up, if not keep doing a single sparge.

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SilverZero

Recipes 

Maybe, never done single-batch. My first one calculated out to some ridiculous 90s efficiency, which maybe I did something wrong but I couldn't find a mistake. My last batch was mid-70s, but I was also mashing at a low temp in a larger tun (chest cooler). I have also shot for 1.5qts/lb for mash thickness. Honestly, I'm too new to know what's helping and what's not. I read a lot and decided what I would do based on research, not experience, but I'll hopefully be able to back it up someday. Then again, if it's not broke, I probably won't try to fix it.

Piratwolf

Recipes 

This is awesome, guys. Thanks for the input. Depending on how overwhelmed I get on my 1st AG batch, I may double sparge w/ half volume as some of you do. I love this place!

Cheers!

__________________
Piratwolf: "I've heard that Belgian Blondes can be "panty droppers" but they're not particularly high IBU nor cheap."

jmendez29: Haha! I get it! :ban:
Wait. You're not talking about beer, right?
You're talking about beer. That could have been a whole lot more fun.

djfriesen

Recipes 

Is it OK to sparge with water @ 185 *F? I was under the impression that getting it above 170 *F was somehow detrimental. Or are you assuming the soaked grains will bring the sparge temp down?