4 step batch sparge?

Hello,
I'm diving into my first all grain today with a Stone IPA clone and was wondering what you guys thought about how Beer Smith wants me to sparge.

It says 4 step sparge: drain mash ton, 1.45gal, 1.45gal, 1.45gal at 168 F. So is this 3 small sparges and for how long each? Can I just do 1 sparge with the full amount called for and be alright?

Thanks for any help!

Absolutely! Just make sure your equipment can handle that much sparge volume. Under the volumes tab it will tell you if you have enough room in your mash tun for the sparge water.

I either "batch" drian completely and refill completly or do a hybrid "fly" where i add water slowly as it drains slowly using a peace of tin foil to deflect the water ! either way works , not really sure about 3 differant additions????

Drain your first infusion completely, then fill with the total sparge water, mix it all up and make sure you hit above 168 F,wait 15-20 minutes then drain the wort.
The three additions are for large boils, where you won't have enough room to put the total sparge water into your mash tun.

Yes absolutely. However make sure your sparge water is nice and hot. 190 usually gets me to around 170 in the sparge. Remember, sparging above 170 will NOT result in tannin extraction like some people claim. I've had the grain hit 180 during the sparge and no trace of tannins in the wort/beer.

That helps a lot guys, that's what I'll do. I think I'm good to go with everything else today but this sparging part was the only thing that's been bugging me.

Thanks again.

I'd suggest you design the sparge for two equal runnings. If you drain off say 2.5 gal, then do one batch sparge with 4.5 gal, it's not really optimal. Imho, a better option would be to add say 1 gal of boiling water to get the temps up and sugars better dissolved, then you'd have two equal runnings of nice hot wort, each 3.5 gal. That's just an example but hopefully you get the point.

So it went pretty good yesterday. With 13lbs of grain my 5 gallon mash ton was maxed out! I only got just over 2 gallons on my first runnings. I had to do 2 sparges to get my full pre-boil volume of 6.8 gallons. Ended up hitting my pre-boil gravity of 1.062. Post boil volume was lower then anticipated at 5.2 gallons after 90 minutes (was supposed to 5.98). Gravity hit though at 1.073. Overall the whole session turned out going much longer then I thought it was going to but I'm pretty happy with the result so far. I'll know for sure in 8 weeks!

Beersmith usually tells me to sparge 3 times (something like .25gal, 2.25gal, 2.25gal). Not sure why it does that tiny sparge at the beginning, but I usually just do it twice. As long as you hit your numbers, should turn out great.

If you manage your settings correctly, you can have BS give instructions for as many sparges as you want. I think most of the problem is not having your equipment set up properly in the program and not adjusting the percentage of mash tun volume for sparging. IMO the settings could be make easier to understand.

It's my first time using it and I'm still in the trial phase but it didn't seem like there was many options for adding your equipment. I'll look again but I think I saw a drop down that only had like 8 options. I selected what best closely matched my setup which was pretty close. Overall I was pretty impressed with BS and will probably end up purchasing it.

buzzno said:

It's my first time using it and I'm still in the trial phase but it didn't seem like there was many options for adding your equipment. I'll look again but I think I saw a drop down that only had like 8 options. I selected what best closely matched my setup which was pretty close. Overall I was pretty impressed with BS and will probably end up purchasing it.

Click to expand...

Not sure which version you downloaded, but generally the commands I'm about to give should work...

To change your equipment, you go to profiles and then click on equipment. From there, there are various built-in standardish HB equipment profiles that you can choose from.

Select one that's close to your equipment. Doesn't need to be exact, just double click one that has roughly the same sizing. You can edit it all in there. Just take your time and look at the options, it makes sense overall.

Unless you know how much you boil off, leave it as is for now and it'll be pretty close. For your mash tun, just change the size and look at the coefficients for the material that are listed (.4 for plastic, for example). Adjust your boil time if needed, default is 60 minutes.

Then save it as "My Equipment" and go from there. As you learn your equipment, you can make adjustments to dial in your volumes, temps, and efficiency.

Good luck. Also, use the BeerSmith site for tons of info and FAQs.

+1 on going to Beersmith site for tutorials and whatnot. I'm sure the software makes sense to the programmer, but IMO it's not always intuitive when starting out. But since there are several ways to make beer, there are many ways to think about making beer.

There is a lot of good advice on the website. After the equipment is set up and you get a feel for the interface it's not hard to use.

buzzno said:

So it went pretty good yesterday. With 13lbs of grain my 5 gallon mash ton was maxed out! I only got just over 2 gallons on my first runnings. I had to do 2 sparges to get my full pre-boil volume of 6.8 gallons. Ended up hitting my pre-boil gravity of 1.062. Post boil volume was lower then anticipated at 5.2 gallons after 90 minutes (was supposed to 5.98). Gravity hit though at 1.073. Overall the whole session turned out going much longer then I thought it was going to but I'm pretty happy with the result so far. I'll know for sure in 8 weeks!

Click to expand...

Beersmith instructed you to sparge 4 times because it read your recipe and equipment and saw that you had maxed out capacity in your 5 gallon tun and could not fit the full sparge volume if you want to keep brewing bigger beers and reduce the number of sparges then get a 10g collet or bigger.

never mind

Thanks for the suggestions. Looks like I have some Beer Smith studying to do. I thought it was mostly pretty intuitive and it was very helpful to follow it while brewing. I think I'll stick with the equipment I have for now and just get used to multiple sparges. No big deal.

Keep in mind that Beersmith is a tool to help you brew. It's not instructions on how to brew.