barside laundry
Well-Known Member
I just made my 4th all grain batch, an Imperial Stout with 21 pounds of grain. After mashing at 155 for 60 minutes I added about 2 gallons of 205F water from the HLT to bring the mash upto 170F. I stirred the mash until the entire grain bed was 170 and then let it sit for 10 minutes. I then started to recirculate for about 10 minutes (about 5 quarts). I slowly drained the wort into the kettle. Everytime I do this I always ask myself, "Should I allow all the mash water (wort) drain out of the grain and THEN add sparge water or should I add the sparge water as I am draining the tun?" I do not have a sparge arm I just allow the vinyl tube to drip on top of the grain bed and I try to keep about an inch of water on top of the grain (although the grain floats so i never really know how much water is on top). With this particular recipe I drained the tun and added the sparge water and the wort was thick and black all the way up to 9 gallons in the kettle! My kettle is a 15.5 gallon keg with a 3.5kwatt element that evaporates over a gallon an hour so I usually start with 7 gallons anyway. This time I just boil the wort for about 1.5 hours (until I got down to 7.25 gallons) and then started my 60 minute brew session. The pre boil gravity was 1056 and the after boil gravity was 1098. I ended up with 5.5 gallons in my fermenter. As the wort was boiling I decided to open the valve on my mash tun and "just see" how much drains out. Well I accumulated about 3 gallons of wort! I hated to dump that down the drain. Thoughts, commendations, recommendations on my process?