Too much grain debris during my sparge

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stvcoburn

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I did my first all grain batch yesterday and ran into a couple of problems.

I brewed a low gravity beer, the AK47 Pale Mild from Norther brewer. This recipe has only 5.5lbs of grain in the mash and then a lb of corn sugar is added at the end of boil.

I fly sparged using a 10gal Rubbermaid cooler and a false bottom. While doing the Vorlauf I couldn't seem to clear the wort of grain debris (the wort clarity cleared up, but there was still quite a bit of debris). Eventually, after 10 minutes of recirculating, I said F* it and just sparged with the grain coming through.

My thoughts are that the grain bed was too shallow (about 3" +/-) and when I would add the water it would disturb the grain bed, never allowing it to officially set.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for the help.
 
what was your runoff rate and grain to water ratio?for a fly sparge water should always cover the grain bed at least 1 inch and the runoff rate should be very slow,just above a trickle.If a table spoon of solid matter makes it to the kettle its not going to ruin it
 
I just did an ESB last night that used flaked corn, which apparently, from reading other posts on here, is notoriously difficult to remove from the runnings during vorlauf. I have a two quart pitcher that I use to vorlauf and if it doesn't come out after two full pitchers worth of vorlauf, I say screw it. None of my beers have ever been cloudy as a result. All that crap settles to the bottom of the carboy over the few weeks of fermenting and the additional few weeks of sitting in a bottle.

I say don't sweat it. but that's just me. I'm a gamblin' man by nature.
 
When using a false bottom of any kind you need to run your first runnings really as fast as you can to clear all the grain (that is smaller than the holes of the false bottom) that got through when you doughed in. So if your holes are 3/32", when you dough in all the small stuff smaller than 3/32 can get through the false bottom untill you clear it out and set your grain bed. Then you pull back and run slow, but only after the grain bed is set.... Hope that helps.

Cheers
Jay
 
Jaybird said:
When using a false bottom of any kind you need to run your first runnings really as fast as you can to clear all the grain (that is smaller than the holes of the false bottom) that got through when you doughed in. So if your holes are 3/32", when you dough in all the small stuff smaller than 3/32 can get through the false bottom untill you clear it out and set your grain bed. Then you pull back and run slow, but only after the grain bed is set.... Hope that helps.

Cheers
Jay
Click to expand...

Hey, I bought one of your false bottoms for my igloo cooler.

I liked how the guy with the angle grinder wrote 'cheers' just ever so slightly into the steel. I get a kick out of that every time I see it .lol
 
stvcoburn said:
I did my first all grain batch yesterday and ran into a couple of problems.

I brewed a low gravity beer, the AK47 Pale Mild from Norther brewer. This recipe has only 5.5lbs of grain in the mash and then a lb of corn sugar is added at the end of boil.

I fly sparged using a 10gal Rubbermaid cooler and a false bottom. While doing the Vorlauf I couldn't seem to clear the wort of grain debris (the wort clarity cleared up, but there was still quite a bit of debris). Eventually, after 10 minutes of recirculating, I said F* it and just sparged with the grain coming through.

My thoughts are that the grain bed was too shallow (about 3" +/-) and when I would add the water it would disturb the grain bed, never allowing it to officially set.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for the help.
Click to expand...

That is a pretty small grain bill for the 10 gallon coolers. I always put a small plate into my mash tun and dump water (or set the outlet tube from my HLT) on that to help avoid disturbing the grain bed.
 
I have the same setup as you, and what I do is use a fine mesh hop bag on the end of the hose into my boil kettle and tie it to the bk handle after the vorlaf ofcourse, And that keep all the grain bits out. I hope that helps.
 

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