A bit confused on batch sparge water temp.

After reading a couple of other posts I am a bit confused. When batch sparging and Beersmith or recipe calls for 168F sparge temp. does that mean heat the water to 168F or heat the grain bed to 168F. I thought that heating the actual grain bed to that temp. and letting it rest shortly was the "mash out" and was not necessary in batch sparging. Please correct me if wrong.

Are you referring to Sparge water or the initial Strike water. I'll assume you're meaning Sparge since it's what you typed. You're grain bed should already be at this temperature after mashing so the water will be heated to 168, dumped in EASILY, vorlauffed and drained.

I usually strike in with water around 170 to hit my mash temps of 150ish (I calculate this out ahead of time). My sparge water is almost always at 180 or 185, I do a double batch sparge, no mashout (though one may help).

Sparge with whatever temp water will keep the grain bed at 168-170. On my system with a 16 lb grain bill, I sparge with 192 to keep the grain at 170.

This is a confusing subject. If you're sparging with 168F water, you're fine. If you're sparging with whatever temp it takes to get to 168F, you're fine....but in that case the water is probably only hot enough for a short period of time or maybe only a portion of the mash gets affected.

The truth is, the lines of enzyme conversion are blurry. All the time you're draining to the kettle and waiting for it to boil, you're still actually mashing because the enzymes are also in the wort, not just the grain. You're not actually mashing out until full boil, when all the enzymes are totally denatured.

ScubaSteve said:

This is a confusing subject. If you're sparging with 168F water, you're fine. If you're sparging with whatever temp it takes to get to 168F, you're fine....but in that case the water is probably only hot enough for a short period of time or maybe only a portion of the mash gets affected.

The truth is, the lines of enzyme conversion are blurry. All the time you're draining to the kettle and waiting for it to boil, you're still actually mashing because the enzymes are also in the wort, not just the grain. You're not actually mashing out until full boil, when all the enzymes are totally denatured.

Click to expand...

I agree with this. From what I understand, mash out is more important in fly sparging when the process of sparging takes longer. If you are putting your first runnings from a batch sparge immediately in the kettle and on the heat, the eznymes will quickly denature. Therefore a mash out step is not necessary.

You want your batch sparge water to be warm enough to dissolve all of the sugars, but not too warm to extract tannins.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

One thing that still confuses me about this... and I think now is the best time for me to ask... what is the difference between sparge out and no sparge out... do some people never open and vorlauf/drain to the boil bucket until AFTER you put int he 180ish water? and is sparge out when you drain the 150 deg water, close off again, add the strike water, and then "sparge out" that water after 10 mins again? I've been very confused about that.... and not sure I'm doing it right... or if both are valid options, why is one better than the other?

dlauver said:

You want your batch sparge water to be warm enough to dissolve all of the sugars, but not too warm to extract tannins.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

Keep in mind that mash pH is as important (I think MORE important) than temp.

bell0347 said:

After reading a couple of other posts I am a bit confused. When batch sparging and Beersmith or recipe calls for 168F sparge temp. does that mean heat the water to 168F or heat the grain bed to 168F. I thought that heating the actual grain bed to that temp. and letting it rest shortly was the "mash out" and was not necessary in batch sparging. Please correct me if wrong.

Click to expand...

When batch sparging, you want to heat the grain bed to 168F.

Mash Out is basically a step, after you let your grain sit at 152F(depends on recipe) for the required period of time, then raising the temp to 168F.

But this step usually isn't necessary when batch sparging because after you vourlaf and drain the MT, then raise you the grain bed to 168F by using whatever temp. H2O necessary ( in my case 190F).

ok, gotcha, that all of a sudden made it all make sense !!! YAY thanks I.e. I don't need some tricky method of heating the bed, just drain, and add water thats hotter... which was the method I used on my first ag, albeit horribly efficiency was 55%... but now I'm learning my mistakes and will hopefully do much better next time!

S.O.

I was having a brain cramp about this too. I found an on-line mash water and sparge water temp calculator. try googling that. I also found an on line calculator to upscale your grain bill to accommodate the extra grain needed for batch sparging. Having too much free time on my hands, I developed a spreadsheet that combines the two functions on one page. You can too. The basic formula for the mash & sparge temps comes from John Palmer's research in his book "How to Brew". Here is the link to the page in his on-line book. (Great reading BTW, but the newest edition of the actual book is even better.)

How to Brew - By John Palmer - Calculations for Boiling Water Additions

"T1 = Initial temperature of the mash", is the temperature of your grain before you add the mash water. "r = The ratio of water to grain in quarts per pound" is sometimes referred to as mash thickness in the batch sparge calculators. Many of the numbers for Palmer's formula can be plucked from the batch sparge calculator.

As for the sparge water calculation, it seems about 170 degrees F is a good number, but as long as you are doing calculation, you can run the numbers and verify the temperature. If you make your own spreadsheet, it's a no-brainer.

Hope this helps.

I personally follow Palmers method for sparging.Meaning I heat my sparge water to 170*.

According to him mashes using 1.5-2qts water per lb of grain do not need to mash out. For thicker mashes or when you use oats or wheat for 25% of the grain bill a Mash Out will help with Lautering, or if your mash drops below 140*

BUT, I couldn't tell you if one is really better than the other since I've never done a mash out, so take this FWIW.