I've been using a step infusion mash with my water cooler MLT but over sparged on a recent batch (dough-in had too much water and it spiraled from there...) I got great efficiency (around 93%) from the over-sparging but am worried about astringency from the tannins. Unfortunately I did not read the gravity of the final runnings so I'm not sure how low I got but I know it was low as I was running this pretty thin.
The reading I have done describes the tannin leaching as resulting from the ph increase of the mash. So I'm curious, how much of a concern is over-sparging if one uses ph corrected (say 5.2) sparge water?
I like the efficiency that the over-sparge creates, but certainly not at the cost of astringency (haven't tasted the beer yet to know as it has another week to go before bottling). Certainly another downside is the longer boil time to get to the target volume.
Cheers,
-Brad
The reading I have done describes the tannin leaching as resulting from the ph increase of the mash. So I'm curious, how much of a concern is over-sparging if one uses ph corrected (say 5.2) sparge water?
I like the efficiency that the over-sparge creates, but certainly not at the cost of astringency (haven't tasted the beer yet to know as it has another week to go before bottling). Certainly another downside is the longer boil time to get to the target volume.
Cheers,
-Brad