Batch sparge question

I completed my first all grain brew over the weekend :rockin: but got really bad efficiency (56%) . I've been reading up trying to figure out what I did wrong, and I think it might be my sparge technique.

I was brewing a porter (Edmund Fitzgerald Clone) with 12 pounds of grain. I did a single infusion mash and a batch sparge.

I wanted a thicker beer so I mashed at a higher temp. I calculated in BeerSmith that I should start with 3.75 gallons of water at 170.5 degrees to hit a strike temp of 156. This was successful. I stirred the grains every 15 minutes for a total mash time of an hour. Then came the sparge... I was a little confused as to what the process and temp for batch sparging was. I poured about 4 gallons of 170 degree water into the mash tun and waited a few minutes for the grain bed to settle. Then I recirculated the wort until it ran clear at which point I continued to drain it into my boiling pot. Did I use the right temp for a batch sparge? Should I be using 170 degree water or using water that is hot enough to bring the total temp of the mash up to 170 degrees? Eventually I want to try fly sparging, but I want to get my feet wet with batch before I spend the extra money.

I know Ph can also be a big factor in the efficiency. The Ph of my water is about 7.3, and I didn't make any adjustments because I was using darker grains for the porter. I read that this should bring the Ph to appropriate levels.

I don't really know how good my crush was. I just had my LHBS crush the grains for me. I am making an assumption that since they are the pro's they should have a pretty decent crush.

So, my conclusion is that something is wrong with my sparging techniques. Any help would be appreciated.

I'm going to be attempting my first batch sparge this weekend, so needless to say, I'm not an expert. Did you stir after adding the second batch of water? Also, my understanding is that you want to add water to bring the temperature up to 168 or so.

I found this calculator to determine water temperatures.

Did you drain your mash before you added your sparge water or add it on top? You want to drain the mash before adding in the sparge water. 170 is fine for the water, just don't get it much hotter than that.

First, you need to drain your wort of the mash befor sparging. If you did not do that, it could be a reason for low efficiency.
I would also guess that your grains were not well crushed/milled. I have found that the crush is extremely important in terms of getting a good efficiency.
I like to heat the first "batch" of sparge water up to about 180 to try to get my mash to 170. This way you get a mash out and sparge....at the same time. Then for the second "batch" of sparge water, I heat it to 170.

Also, try to verify that your thermometer is correct. A danger with warmer mashes is that your thermometer is out and you are mashing a lot hotter than you think you are (happened to me on my last batch). This could definitely reduce your efficiency.

I also do what jdoiv does, I drain my mash (well run until it clears, pour what came out back over...vorlaufing, then drain), then add 1/2 of my sparge water, mix, let sit 10 mins, vorlauf and drain, then repeat with the other 1/2 of the sparge water. I usually have my sparge water around 180*F, and this maintains the grainbed at around 170*F. A general rule i read is that you want to sparge with 1.5x mash water volume, this ends up being a lot of volume for the bigger beers I brew, which means a really long boil...oh well...

Last brew was 16#, mashed w/ 5.25 gallons of water and sparged with 7.5 gallons, ended up with probably 9-gallons pre-boil, boiled for almost two hours before I started my hop additions for an hour...long night.

Running the Wort off first makes sense. I guess I got confused when I read Palmer's "How to Brew". He describes the process of running the wort of first as english sparging and dumping it in with the mash as batch sparging. At least that is how I read it. What do you think?

"In the English method of sparging, the wort is completely drained from the grain bed before more water is added for a second mash and drained again. These worts are then combined. Alternatively, the first and second runnings are often used to make separate beers. The second running is lighter in gravity and was traditionally used for making a Small Beer, a lighter bodied, low alcohol beer suitable for high volume quaffing at mealtimes.

Batch Sparging is a U.S. homebrewing practice where the full volume of sparge water is mixed into the mash. The grain bed is allowed to settle, and then the wort is drained off. The re-circulation step in this process takes place in the first minutes of the sparge. You can use more than one batch of water if you need to. This method differs from the English method in that the mash is not held for any significant time at the saccharification temperature before draining."

I think that he explains it as having 2 sparges for batch, once when lautering and once when sparging. English I think you actually mash twice. I think things are getting confused with terminology.
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This guy is a huge proponent of batch sparging, I think he explains it well: http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/

From your description, you seem to have sparged with a single batch of 4g sparge water. I don't think this is enough to sparge 12 lbs grain. I'd sparge with at least 5g, and preferably 6g. If you can't do this in a single batch, you can do it in two batches of approximately equal volumes.
If this would result in collecting too much wort, you could mash a bit thicker (down to 1 qt. water per pound of grain). which would reduce the amount of wort you collect.
I agree with the suggestions to drain the mash before starting the sparge.
I also agree with the suggestion to stir after each addition of sparge water. (If you add some sugar to a cup of tea or coffee, and don't stir, much of the sugar remains undissolved).
When sparging, you want the temperature of the sparge (not the added sparge water) to be about 168 - 170. To do this with fly sparging, many people add some near boiling water to raise the temperature at the end of the mash and stirring (a mash out), before starting the sparge.
You can achieve the same effect with a batch sparge simply by using hotter water for the initial batch, but I find a mash out to be easier.

-a.

I split my sparge water into two equal batches and shoot for 170F. I drain the first run, add water and stir for five minutes, re-circulate, drain, repeat. For my last batch, I got 22 points of the sugar in the first run, 14 in the second and 10 in the last. Two smaller sparges just seem to work better than one large one. Sometimes I'll run a final gallon, just to see what I get. Maybe it goes in the pot, maybe not.

I had similar problems on my first two AGs. I think the pH may have had a lot to do with it as i used spring water for my water (I don't have a water filter yet, that's the next project!)

I'm planning on doing another brew tomorrow with my new pH reader and with 5star pH stabalizer.

My new brew kettle arrives tomorrow as well so I can now safely sparge with the appropriate 1/2 gal per lb of grain.

I'll let you know how it works as my efficiency has consistently been around 60 so far.

Big Al said:

I'm planning on doing another brew tomorrow with my new pH reader and with 5star pH stabalizer.

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Let us know how this works out. I am planning my first all grain and am going to buy some of this...learning from others I guess. Thanks!

You got it. It will be an evening brew so I'll post results tomorrow night after I finish.

What you did is known as "no sparge" brewing and you would expect poor efficiency - but it is easy.

Batch sparging is most efficient if the two volumes used are the same. I start with 6.5g of wort so what I do is mash with 1.25quarts/#, calculate my absorption loss and add enough ~185-190F water to bring my expected 1st sparge volume to 3.25g. This usually brings the mash up to about 170 for mash out and lowers the viscosity of your wort so it flows better. After vorlauf and draining off the first sparge I add 3.25gal of 170F water for the second sparge. With this I get 70% efficiency. I'm anticipating improving that further as I need to adjust my water based on my recent analysis.

For my first AG brew, my FLHBS suggested a no sparge technique, kinda like this:
http://www.strandbrewers.org/techinfo/nosparge.htm

The rationale being, that the increased efficiency of fly sparging or even batch sparging, costs time, and that the loss of efficiency of not sparging could be made up by adding a little extra to the grain bill.
I ran the Pro Mash calc to add enough water to the mash to get my total pre-boil volume as a single runoff, and also bring the total mash to 170F.

I was able to get 71% efficiency on my first try. I now plug this efficiency back into Pro Mash and adjust the grain bill to get my desired pre-boil volume and gravity.

I know everyone likes to brag about the great efficiency they get, and they should be proud of putting together a great mashing system. Some of us though, just want to KISS.

Got Trub? said:

What you did is known as "no sparge" brewing and you would expect poor efficiency - but it is easy.

Batch sparging is most efficient if the two volumes used are the same. I start with 6.5g of wort so what I do is mash with 1.25quarts/#, calculate my absorption loss and add enough ~185-190F water to bring my expected 1st sparge volume to 3.25g. This usually brings the mash up to about 170 for mash out and lowers the viscosity of your wort so it flows better. After vorlauf and draining off the first sparge I add 3.25gal of 170F water for the second sparge. With this I get 70% efficiency. I'm anticipating improving that further as I need to adjust my water based on my recent analysis.

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This is exactly what John Palmer describes in his book. There are a lot of people on this forum that will tell you that this isn't right...you should sparge with more water like 5 gallons.

Beerrific said:

This is exactly what John Palmer describes in his book.

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I don't think so...as per in mcgeebc's post above, Palmer describes two lautering processes:
"English": drain all the mash water, then add and drain all the sparge water
"Batch": add all the sparge water to the mash, and drain everything at once

What Got Trub is describing is a hybrid of these two (as described in the link you posted earier): add enough sparge water to the mash so that the first runoff (mash + sparge 1) will be half the desired total, and drain. Then add the rest of the sparge water (half the desired total) and drain.

The first sparge addition serves double duty, in that you can use very hot water to raise the mash to 168-170 for mashout.

Beerrific said:

There are a lot of people on this forum that will tell you that this isn't right...you should sparge with more water like 5 gallons.

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Wouldn't this depend on the size of the grain bill and the amount of water in the mash (among other things)? Most people on this board seem to advocate shooting for a certain target brewpot volume, rather a targeted amount of sparge water.
Example: 12-lb mash, 1.25 qt/lb gives 3.75 gal in the mash. ~1.25 gal gets absorbed by the grain...adding 5 gallons would put 7.5 gallons in the brewpot. Seems like most people shoot for 6.5 to 7.0 in the brewpot, which would mean 4-4.5 gallons of sparge water.

Either method works, its just a matter of trading off a efficiency (maybe) vs. boil time.

I am pretty sure that in the print version of How to Brew John Palmer says "Batch sparging is most efficient when the first and second run off are the same volume." He even has a page making these calculations and determining how much more grain you need to use if batch sparging vs. fly.

Got Trub said to sparge with 3.25g. Others say that you should use 2qts/lb, that would come up to about 5g for 10lb of grain. If you are using 10 lbs and mash with 1.25qt/lb, then you would want to sparge with about 3.25g to have the second run-off the same as the first, as Got Trub said.

Beerrific said:

I am pretty sure that in the print version of How to Brew John Palmer says "Batch sparging is most efficient when the first and second run off are the same volume." He even has a page making these calculations and determining how much more grain you need to use if batch sparging vs. fly.
Got Trub said to sparge with 3.25g.

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I think we're on the same side here. Got Trub went through Palmer's calculation:

Got Trub? said:

Batch sparging is most efficient if the two volumes used are the same. I start with 6.5g of wort so what I do is mash with 1.25quarts/#, calculate my absorption loss and add enough ~185-190F water to bring my expected 1st sparge volume to 3.25g. This usually brings the mash up to about 170 for mash out and lowers the viscosity of your wort so it flows better. After vorlauf and draining off the first sparge I add 3.25gal of 170F water for the second sparge.

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I concur with the suggestion to take your first runnings out of the mash BEFORE adding your batch sparge. Also, if you want to maximize your efficiency, keep sparging until your runnings hit about 1.010. The disadvantage to this is that you can end up with a lot more pre-boil than you can handle and even if you have a huge kettle, the energy to boil down is more expensive than a few extra pounds of grain. I usually stop sparging when I have my 6.75 gallons and incidentaly, the runnings are usually still in the 1.020 area. I suppose you could collect the rest of the sugar and add some extract to do a PM side batch or use it for starters.

Like so many things in brewing it is all about compromises. We all end up with beer in the end - it is just a matter of finding a system that works for you. I'm willing to sacrifice some efficiency to prevent having to deal with a prolonged boil and to have a consistent process. My system would not work as well and becomes much less efficient if I was to make high gravity all grain beers. My compromise there is to do a partial mash with about 10# of grain which works well in my system and then add DME to make up the difference...

Ok, so the 5.2 pH stabalizer and running a much slower sparge worked awesome! I hit 78% of where I'm supposed to be going into the boil!

Woohoo!

Big Al said:

Ok, so the 5.2 pH stabalizer and running a much slower sparge worked awesome! I hit 78% of where I'm supposed to be going into the boil!

Woohoo!

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That's great!! Congrats, can't wait to do my first all grain (with 5.2 stabilizer).

So final results aren't as good as going into the pot, but it's still all good. Definately correctable next time.

I ended up with 70% efficiency, but mainly because of two mistakes:

1) Didn't boil long enough. I had 6 gallons of beer when I put it in the Fermentor. I used a brand new keggle and mis estimated how much I had.

2) Everything was going perfect until I put the wort chiller in. When I turned it on it sprung a leak right into my beer. I turned it off quickly, but I think i lost a couple of points based on that.

Anyway, definately using the 5.2 stabalizer from now on. Huge improvement over last batch. Plus, this beer tasted freakin awesome going into the carboy so I'm very hopeful about it! :rockin:

Big Al said:

I ended up with 70% efficiency, but mainly because of two mistakes:

1) Didn't boil long enough. I had 6 gallons of beer when I put it in the Fermentor. I used a brand new keggle and mis estimated how much I had.

2) Everything was going perfect until I put the wort chiller in. When I turned it on it sprung a leak right into my beer. I turned it off quickly, but I think i lost a couple of points based on that.

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Congrats! Sounds like the 5.2 really did the trick for you! I just picked some up today.

FWIW, #1 didn't affect your efficiency at all...boiling doesn't change efficiency, which is "how much sugar did I extract" divided by "how much sugar was available in my grain bill". When you boil off H2O, your SG goes up proportionally, so your efficiency doesn't change.

Bike N Brew said:

Congrats! Sounds like the 5.2 really did the trick for you! I just picked some up today.

FWIW, #1 didn't affect your efficiency at all...boiling doesn't change efficiency, which is "how much sugar did I extract" divided by "how much sugar was available in my grain bill". When you boil off H2O, your SG goes up proportionally, so your efficiency doesn't change.

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You're right of course. I was actually looking at the wrong number. According to Beersmith my efficiency was 75%.

Thanks!

Also being in Central NJ, and assuming our water supplies are similar, I don't think PH is a factor. I don't use a buffer and I hit 75-80% batch sparging. I'd think it's more a crush or sparge temp issue. Maybe? We ought to get together for a split 10 gallon batch.

Bobby_M said:

Also being in Central NJ, and assuming our water supplies are similar, I don't think PH is a factor. I don't use a buffer and I hit 75-80% batch sparging. I'd think it's more a crush or sparge temp issue. Maybe? We ought to get together for a split 10 gallon batch.

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I had the opportunity to speak with one of the owners here at a local brew pub and she said they don't pay any attention to PH. Of course our water here is pretty good.