looking for hybrid fly sparge advice.

I just got into brewing recently, and have been enjoying it very much having one successful brew and one that didnt quite work out. However i have a few questions on my sparge process. I was advised to add 1.25 liters to every pound of grain in my mash tun... which i have been doing. this should sit for an hour starting at 160 and should not go below 152. in my latest recipe i want to brew its my understanding that it wants me to heat the remaining water that will be added up to 180 before sparging. As far as i can tell the benefit to this is to leave behind non fermentable sugars to add sweetness to the beer. after all it is a honey ale. Is my theory correct or am i misunderstanding something? also input on ways to maximize efficiency during this process would be greatly appreciated. This hobby is addicting, but way more rewarding when your brew turns out in the end. Thank you for any help you can offer!

Would you post the recipe and instructions you have? What is common is to mash at one temp(152 you stated)then drain and sparge

I don't know what you're looking for in a hybrid fly sparge. Fly sparge is fly sparge. There are different types of devices available to add water. Some spin, others drip. The trick is to distribute the water evenly over the grain bed and not to disturb the grain bed with too much water pressure. During fly sparge, the water input rate is set to match the wort run off rate. Keeping an inch or so of water on top of the grain bed. The 180 thing may be for sparge water, a higher temp alpha rest, or may be mash out. If you're lautertun is designed for fly sparge, run off slow. Run off until the gravity drops to 1012/1010, @ 60F. Take what you get. Focus on tuning in the process. Deal with efficiency later.

You're starting your mash at 160, or that is your strike temp? 160 would be pretty hot for a mash temp, would leave a pretty unfermentable wort I would think. I agree the 180 sounds like a mash out.

chickypad said:

You're starting your mash at 160, or that is your strike temp? 160 would be pretty hot for a mash temp, would leave a pretty unfermentable wort I would think. I agree the 180 sounds like a mash out.

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Your temp should be no higher than 155, no lower than 148 depending on the recipe.

You shouldn't be getting that kind of drop in temp during the mash. A cooler will hold the temperature to only 1 degree loss after an hour. 180 is the typical temp for the mashout water. It should bring the mash up to about 170 but you should check that with some of the online calculators. 168 is the usual mashout target temp to get the best solubility of the sugars and a higher extraction efficiency though it's debatable if that's really any better than just continuing the mash at 148 - 155 while your draining.

You should do some reading on alpha and beta amylase to understand the affects of temperature on the mash. At 160 you will destroy all the beta amylase which is really good at making fermentable sugars.

ok, so the right thing to do, sounds like i should add my water at 152-153. After that sits for an hour then add the required water to raise the temp to 170.... not 180. after looking arround on this forum i found a recipe im going to use instead of the first one i had. heres the link www.homebrewtalk.com/f62/honey-ale30469/ the only thing that will be different is instead of a mash out rest temp and sparge temp i will just use the sparge temp since i am doing a fly sparge. is that correct? and thank you for the help, there are some things that came up in here that i want to look further into so i can expand my knowledge.

In order to achieve a mash temp of 152, your strike water will need to be higher because the grain is room temp (at 1.25 liters / lb, strike water will be around 167-169 approx.). check out the strike water calculator below...your sparge water can be hotter but the resultant grain temp should not exceed 170. Some even maintain that a cold sparge is fine fwiw. The main importance is temp during the mash to convert the grain to sugar, the sparge not so critical.

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

the best advice I can give which helped me is to stop thinking is specifics regarding your water temp. What is important is you Mash temp. you have to adjust the water temp in order to get the mash temp you want.

In order to get your initial mash to 152 for example, you may have to add 160 water, then stir and check, at which time you may need to add some hotter or colder water to get the grains to 152.

Then during the sparge you again have to estimate the water temp in order to get the grain bed to 168 for the sparge.

your equipment, amount of grains, the initial temp of the grains will all play into what your water temp will have to be in order to achieve those grain bed temps

Check out How To Brew by John Palmer. There is great couple chapters on going your first AG beer. He will answer all your questions about mashing and sparging. The first edition is free online, but I picked up a latest edition and learn something new every time I pick it up.