Sparge Water Temp

I thought I had this down pretty well but then I started thinking...

It seems pretty common practice that sparge water should be 168* - 170* (double batch sparge). However, does that mean that you heat the sparge water to that temp, or, should the grain bed be that temp once it is added? I am mashing @ 150*...do I need to make my sparge water hotter to hold 168*? Or the fact that the bed is already 150* mean that no adjustments need to be made...just heat to 170* or so.

Sorry...I would have done a bit more reading before posting (and I have donbe a LOT already), but I am 15 minutes into my mash right now.

TIA,

John

You can go quite a bit hotter if you want to nudge the temp up for lautering. Sparge temps of 185F will be fine.

Thanks Bobby!

I took your advice and did two 2.5 gallon sparges at 185*. Man...I hit my boil volume on the nose: 6.64 gal. This is only my second AG batch and I am stoked! I'm doing BM's Centennial Blonde today!

Thanks again!

John

I tend to sparge on the hotter side too 180ish

John, you should consider a single batch sparge. It accomplishes the same thing as a double batch sparge, but takes less time. I made the switch after someone on this forum suggested it a couple of years ago, and it works great! I get efficiencies in the 80's on every brew.

I heat my sparge water to 190F, and that gets my grainbed to 165-170.

Bobby_M said:

You can go quite a bit hotter if you want to nudge the temp up for lautering. Sparge temps of 185F will be fine.

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I think that Bobby_M means that your sparge water temp could be ~185, so that when it is added to the grains, the temp of the grains is raised to ~170.

-a.

the answer to your question is you want the grain to end up in the 170F range. i add 190F sparge water for each double batch sparge. if you do a single batch, you can go cooler, like low 180's.