Water for sparging.

I just started AG, and was wondering if the calculations for fly/continuous sparging are different then with batching? My book that I have been going off of(How to brew) gives me the inclination that the amount of water used is different, but can't really decipher it since the book doesn't really have a section based solely on sparging(kind of jumps around).

I can only speak for my own system. It may be very different than yours.

When batch sparging (which I do very occasionally), I heat 5g sparge water for a 5g batch. This is more than I need, but I use the excess for clean up.

When fly sparging, I heat 9g sparge water. Unless I have about 2g in the HLT, there isn't enough bead to spin the sparge arm. I also stop the sparge when the gravity reaches 1.010, at which time, there's probably another 2g in the lauter tun.

Whatever you do, make sure you have enough water. If you have too much, you can use the excess for clean up. If you don't have enough, you're in trouble.

After a brew or two, you can fine tune things to suite your equipment.

-a.

I always heat up more sparge water than is needed, just stop sparging when you hit 1.010.

WeHeavy said:

I always heat up more sparge water than is needed, just stop sparging when you hit 1.010.

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how do you know to stop at 1.010? so theoretically if i was brewing a trippel or some other high grav beer i would stop at a higher gravity?

You can either use the ph method (ph 6) to know when to stop or take a gravity reading of your cooled runoff.

Depending on what I'm making I start checking my gravity around 4-1/2 gallons collected.

Since I have a boil off of around 1.25 g/hr I would ajust my boiling time up for a high gravity beer, and for lower gravity beers I boil 60 mins and add water at the end to get the deisred amount.

WeHeavy said:

I always heat up more sparge water than is needed, just stop sparging when you hit 1.010.

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Haven't found the need for this extra step. We simply collect the amount of wort that the recipe software calls for.

Try to keep it simple.

Plan enough sparge water to get to your preboil volume.

When your pot fills to your post boil mark, pause the sparge, take a sample from the kettle, cool and take a reading. How close you are to your target OG at this stage will give you an indication of how much more aggressive you need to be in getting extra sugars your of the mash tun.