Another Fly Sparging question

Fly Sparging question.

1. Here is the technique I use. Mash in at the determined tempeture based on the recipe. I make 10 gallon batches, usually around 22 Lbs of grain, so I mash in with about 7-8 gallons of water, into my rectangular cooler with copper manifold

2. after 1 hour or so of mashing, I Vorlauf through my March pump back to the grain bed for 5-10 minutes.

3. I attached my copper sparge manifold with tiny holes drilled in the copper tubes, to the top of my mash tun. I have a separate elevated vessel which holds about 6 gallons of the sparge water at 170-175 DG, and I gravity feed the sparge water slowly through the sparge manifold gently rinsing the grain, while slowly pumping the wort to the keggle, while keeping 1 " of sparge water over the grain bed .

3. When all sparge water has drained through the grain bed, I usually end up with 12-13 gallons of wort in the keggle.

Question : the idea behind sparging from what I have read is to rinse the grain and extract as much sugar and fermentables as possible. Also by rinsing with the hotter 170-175 DG water, you stop the conversion process.

My mash tun has a dial thermometer on the side, and some times I use a digital probe as a backup. As I go through the sparge cycle, I see no elevation of the thermometer temps and this is continious through the whole sparge cycle. Is this normal ?? Should the thermometer temps go up ?? Or should I start with hotter sparge water ?? By the time I have pumped all the wort to my keggle, the keggle thermometer usually reads somewhwere around 140 DG.

Is this normal ?? Or am I missing something in my technique ?? My beer seems good to me, but if it can get better, I want it to be better

I have the same problem. Have you taken the time to figure out your efficiency? Take a look at this: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/mash-tun-vs-efficiency-244209/

When you Vorlauf, do you apply heat to the mash tun to raise the grain bed temp? Otherwise there is a ton of thermal mass in the grain bed that is hard to elevate with the slightly warmer sparge water (it's only 20 degrees warmer).

I wouldn't worry too much about it, though. I usually am only patient enough to get my grain bed up to around 160 or so before I just say good enough. If you batch sparged with 190 degree water you'd have no trouble getting up to 168 mash out temps, but it sounds like u wanna keep fly sparging.

I fly sparge and use 175F sparge water. I do not do a mashout to raise the grain bed above 168F. The result, for me, is great beer – award winning beer. If you feel you NEED to get the grains above 168F after your mash, then do a mashout. I find it doesn't make a difference for my beer.

The difference between your setup and mine, though, is the 10 gallon batches. Your sparges are going to be twice as long. Because of this you may find it necessary to do a mashout. Either way, I don't think you should try to stop conversion by using a high sparge temp, just mashout.

jmo88 said:

I fly sparge and use 175F sparge water. I do not do a mashout to raise the grain bed above 168F. The result, for me, is great beer – award winning beer. If you feel you NEED to get the grains above 168F after your mash, then do a mashout. I find it doesn't make a difference for my beer.

The difference between your setup and mine, though, is the 10 gallon batches. Your sparges are going to be twice as long. Because of this you may find it necessary to do a mashout. Either way, I don't think you should try to stop conversion by using a high sparge temp, just mashout.

Click to expand...

Yes, my grain bed stays below 160 during sparge. I do not do a mash out, prefering to reserve the extra water for Sparging. My efficiencies usually run above 70 % since I got my Monster Mill and I'm happy with that. My main concern was does it affect the beer if you don’t raise the grain bed temp enough, and the conversion really stops when the worts heated in the keggle. I think my beer tastes fine.

Toecutter said:

Yes, my grain bed stays below 160 during sparge. I do not do a mash out, prefering to reserve the extra water for Sparging. My efficiencies usually run above 70 % since I got my Monster Mill and I'm happy with that. My main concern was does it affect the beer if you don’t raise the grain bed temp enough, and the conversion really stops when the worts heated in the keggle. I think my beer tastes fine.

Click to expand...

The effect would be potentially more attenuation since the enzymes are still working. Just don't mash longer than necessary to help curb the longer enzyme activity.

I'm just getting into AG so I could be completely off...

but why not lauter a little more wort from the MLT into the kettle before starting the fly sparge and also raise your HLT temp a little so your sparge water added with your grains and what wort you have left gets warmer?