We recently incorporate a HERMS system into our brewing process and we cut our fly sparging time in half with the thought that with the recirculation of the mash tun during Mash Out we would still grab the maximum amount of sugar out of the grains. We ended up slightly under gravity and my thought is that even though we recirculated the grain bed maybe it still requires an hour of sparge time in order to maximum the sugar you are pulling out of the bed. We mill our own grain and calibrate before every beer so being under gravity is not due to the crush. The beer was a Porter and I have heard that dark beers can result in lower gravity of wort.
I'm looking to find out if anyone thinks that an hour of fly sparging is required in order to get everything out of the grain bed or if cutting it short is ok because of the HERMS and our lower gravity could have been caused by something else.
Thanks!!
I'm looking to find out if anyone thinks that an hour of fly sparging is required in order to get everything out of the grain bed or if cutting it short is ok because of the HERMS and our lower gravity could have been caused by something else.
Thanks!!