Spray Ball for MLT Sparger

Has anybody successfully used a spray ball, such as the one pictured here http://www.stpats.com/newphotos/SprayBalls.jpg, for sparging your grains?

Ha. I have seen those for gardens and wondered the very same thing.

At work, a great deal of attention and work goes into making sure similar spray balls provide full coverage for CIP of tanks and other similar equipment. I'm thinking if it works for that, it may work for sparging the grains. I was just wondering if anybody had tried it here and can discuss how it went.

That is the smallest one I could find. $40
http://breweryparts.com/detail.asp?n=345&market_id=2&category_id=228

It has an operating spec of 40 GPM at 20PSI for a 10ft cleaning coverage.
Here is where I am concerened. How much flow do you need to keep the ball full and all the jets working? You will more than likely have to plug the upper holes so you dont spray water out of the tun. I would entertain the idea of getting one for my rig but I think it would have to be much smaller to handle our low flow rates.

That's a good point on the flow rate needed to keep the ball filled. I would want the flow to be slow and steady to get a good sparge.

Perhaps getting a virgin spray ball, and drilling out the holes yourself, like that you can control the size and number of holes, and hopefully be able to control the flow.

Here's an idea.
use a water hammer arrester like this.

plumb it in and drill holes into the copper. I may swing by lowes tonight and pick one up and give it a try.

Why not make a tubing ring for sparge water inside keggle/pot like this http://picasaweb.google.com/kevin.ladue/SpargeRing
Wrap tubing around outside of keggle, drill 1/16" holes 2" apart, and cap the end.

Kladue,
How is that working out for you? Seems like it would work great since you can mix with a mash paddle and not smack the sparge arm.

Sometimes you have to just wander through the hardware department for the simplest solutions.

Both of these are less than $5.00 at Lowe's.

Kladue,

Why not a ring...well everybody has a ring set up.

I wanted to be original, sorta speak.

Muncher, what are those? Is that bottom one stainless?

jrm16311 said:

Muncher, what are those? Is that bottom one stainless?

Click to expand...

According to Lowe's.."heavy duty metal..."

Whatever the F that is...

I use these around the veggie garden and they are perfect for low flow soaking.

BierMuncher said:

According to Lowe's.."heavy duty metal..."

Whatever the F that is...

I use these around the veggie garden and they are perfect for low flow soaking.

Click to expand...

I'd be concerned about lead content with something like that. I like Kladue's example. I may have to engineer something like this to replace my current ring set up.

The ring was the simplest solution to getting water into the mash tun without getting in the way of stirring the grist in during dough in. The flow shown in the picture is .85 GPM in the SRIM recirculation mode, during sparge the water runs down the side of the pot to maintain 1" of liquid above grain bed. bending the tube around the outside of the container puts enough spring in the tube to make it self support against the inside of the mashtun.

Nice SS ring... I might have to grab some "spare" SS tubing from work... What diameter did you use? Looks like 1/2".

Tubing used in sparge ring was 3/8" OD x .035 wall 316 tubing, end cap was Swagelok SS 600-C

You mentioned that your ring provides a way to get to your grains and stir without obstruction. How much stirring is involved during mashing? Do you stir often, or just onces at the beginning? Would there be an advantage to building in an agitator to contantly stir the grains during mashing, and then of course, stopping it and letting the grains settle, when preparing to sparge?

I'm lazy, I use a piece of 3/8" tubing with a u bend on the end, chucked in a cordless drill to knock out the lumps during dough in, then start recirc pump for rest of cycle. Mixing after dough in was not necessary when I used a 5 gallon gott cooler for a mash tun without recirculation, mix once, put the lid on, have a cold one, after a hour pop the lid and start sparge. Sparging was just maintaining 1/2"-1" of liquid above top of grains while draining liquid out slow enough to get a 30-45 minute duration. Efficiency was in the 75-80% range with gott cooler setup, lower with recirc because of coarser grind to achieve flow rate needed for steam injection operation.

After looking over your ring design, and thinking about the process steps involved, I think I'll adopt a similar design. The spray ball idea was just a thought. Thank for your input and insight.

jrm16311 said:

At work, a great deal of attention and work goes into making sure similar spray balls provide full coverage for CIP of tanks and other similar equipment. I'm thinking if it works for that, it may work for sparging the grains. I was just wondering if anybody had tried it here and can discuss how it went.

Click to expand...

We use the CIP spray ball on our mash tun to sparge. It works perfectly well. I have wondered why a copper "spray ball" (simply a copper pipe with a cap with small holes drilled in it) isn't used more as a sparging device on the homebrew level.