Hey guys! I have a question regarding my sparge technique, I have a 5 gallon cooler setup with an 8 gallon pot heated by an electric range.
Some Back Ground:
I have been hounding down inefficiency problems in my setup recently, and I was very successful I went from ~50 to ~75 after determining that my thermometer read 6 degrees to warm.
In addition, when I did my sparge, I basically refilled the mash tun water and made sure it hit ~170 and let it drain out until the gravity of the lauter was below 1.010 including compensation for temperature. Doing this however, I way overshot my preboil volume.
My setup evaporates wort at a rate of .685 gallons an hour, so if I hit 5.685 gallons preboil, I should be pretty spot on with a 60 minute boil. Instead, I ended up with like 7 gallons of wort and so I had to boil the wort for 3 hours to get it down to the target volume.
So here is the fundamental question:
If I only add enough sparge water to hit my target preboil volume of 5.685 gallons will my efficiency suffer, or should 2 gallons of sparge water more or less be plenty to rinse the sugars out? Should I add it in small batches, or add it all at once, stir then drain?
I hit my best efficiency yet with the uber large volume of sparge water, but the boil was way to long.
Any help or advice would be really nice
Some Back Ground:
I have been hounding down inefficiency problems in my setup recently, and I was very successful I went from ~50 to ~75 after determining that my thermometer read 6 degrees to warm.
In addition, when I did my sparge, I basically refilled the mash tun water and made sure it hit ~170 and let it drain out until the gravity of the lauter was below 1.010 including compensation for temperature. Doing this however, I way overshot my preboil volume.
My setup evaporates wort at a rate of .685 gallons an hour, so if I hit 5.685 gallons preboil, I should be pretty spot on with a 60 minute boil. Instead, I ended up with like 7 gallons of wort and so I had to boil the wort for 3 hours to get it down to the target volume.
So here is the fundamental question:
If I only add enough sparge water to hit my target preboil volume of 5.685 gallons will my efficiency suffer, or should 2 gallons of sparge water more or less be plenty to rinse the sugars out? Should I add it in small batches, or add it all at once, stir then drain?
I hit my best efficiency yet with the uber large volume of sparge water, but the boil was way to long.
Any help or advice would be really nice