Mashing techniques?

It's been a while since I last brewed, and yesterday I had a confusing time with the mashing. I put my stuff in BS and tried to have it calculate for 1/2 batch (2.5 G). I was a bit rushed, as I got a late start, and may have missed some adjustment.

At any rate, the mashing and sparging terms have me confused. Can I get a plain English explanation as to what I'm suppose to be doing, and what it's called?

Basically my plan is:

Preheat the Tun
Replace with strike water of proper temp to hit mash temp when grain is mixed in (doughed in)
Stir and let sit for 1 hour (variable) stirring once or twice.

Then... Do I add rinse water once, or twice, and what is this called? And how do I set this up in BS? There are other methods in BS and I sometimes get confused as to which one I should be using.

I love BS, but have not spent the time playing with it that I really need to. I thought I had it pretty much figured out on my last brews, but it's been about 2 months I think, since I last brewed and some of that experience has washed away (At approximately the same rate as my keg has been emptying).

I also had less to drink while brewing. Do you think that could have been my problem?

Homercidal said:

Replace with strike water of proper temp to hit mash temp when grain is mixed in (doughed in)

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There is no reason to replace the water actually. If its stainless steel tun use water @ 185 degrees and let the temperature drop to your strike water temp. No need to waste more water than you have to. If you're using a cooler for a tun you might want to check on preheating temps. From what I have read around here it is possible to warp the plastic.

Homercidal said:

Stir and let sit for 1 hour (variable) stirring once or twice.

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As long as you make sure to stir it up really good at the beginning there is no need to stir it any more. Just make sure that you don't have any dough balls and all the grain is wet.

Homercidal said:

Do I add rinse water once, or twice, and what is this called? And how do I set this up in BS?

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This is called sparging, and most people do it twice in equal volumes. Make sure to heat your water so the temperature of your grain bed hits 170. I usually use water at a temp of 180-185 depending on the weather.

To set this up in BS go to the Mash Profile section and click choose. Select Single Infusion Batch Sparge, either Full - Medium - Light body depending on the style/preference. There you will find fields for data such as Grain Temp, Mashtun Temp, pH, etc. If you haven't already, create a profile for your brewing gear and this will help you get more accuracy from the program.

In BeerSmith this would be the Single Infusion option. Personally I preheat my tun with 185 degree water at the volume Beer Smith says. Then allow the tun to absorb as much heat as it needs and mash in at the temp specified in BS. For my tun temp setting I put 120 and my temps are dead on every time. Also make sure to take the temperature of the grain as well.

Homercidal said:

I also had less to drink while brewing. Do you think that could have been my problem?

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As strange as this might sound, I actually find that my brew days go much more smooth when I DON'T drink.

As difficult as it is to calibrate BS to your system, stick with it! When you get everything dialed in brewdays are a breeze. If only the equipment would clean itself!

I usually just heat my strike water 5-10 degrees higher then beersmith tells me, and i use that to preheat the tun.

Rinsing the grains is called sparging. I usually do it in 2 rounds instead of one because i seem to get better effiency, but you can choose to do it however you like.

As far as setting it up in beersmith, there are different mash schedules you can choose. Your looking for one that uses a single infusion/batch sparge combination. There are a couple different body type that can be generated (full, medium, light) which will basically adjust the temp/time that you are mashing for.

My routine is:
1. Add Strike water 10 degress higher then beersmith tells me
2. Once that drops to strike temp, i know the tun is preheated, so i dough in and stir till i reach the mash temp i'm looking for.
3. Cover and leave alone for 60-90 minutes
4 Vorlauf and drain tun
5. Add 1/2 sparge water
6. Vorlauf and drain
7. Add other 1/2 sparge water
8. Vorlauf and drain

Done.

Ok so there are a couple batch sparge methods... the double rinse is a double sparge and you use smaller amounts of water to rinse the grains and in theory you should be able to wash out more residual sugars with that method... I havnt tried it but Bobby M. seems to have some knowledge on this one.

But here is the general Idea:

Mash at what ever temperature you need (Dough in) I add the water then the grain then stir until its really mixed in trying not to aerate it... Once it hits your given Mash temp lets say 152* close the lid and let it hang out or an hour...

Come back voirlauf (recirculate) until you have clear runnings... Drain into the BK as fast as possible.

Then while this is going get your Sparge water ready...
You want to try to sparge with water that will get your grain bed temp up to 165-168*

Then dump this all in and stir really well to try to get all the sugars off the grain and into the water...

As soon as this has been done... let the grain bed set... usually only takes a couple minutes, and then recirculate and when its clear run off into the kettle...


FWIW... I no longer drink while I brew... I make a lot of mistakes when I drink and brew.

Damn you guys beat me to it.

I think one mistake I made was that I measured the temp of the preheat water in the tun, and used that number for the tun temp. So I input 168 ish in BS and by the time I poured that out and added the strike water, my tun was probably more like 140 (Actually, I found where this is the setting I had used before when I hit my temps).

So BS told me to use cooler water, assuming my tun was warmer, and that is probably why my temp was so low after doughing in (and after stirring too long).

I used the single infusion/batch sparge setting in BS. Last two times I think it showed me to ad sparge water twice, but I'm not seeing it that way this time. I may be reading it wrong.

I think I will be ok once I get it set up for 1/2 batches and spend more time playing with it. I always tell myself to be prepared before brewing, and it seems that every time I am rushed to do it. I need to plan a full frikkin day of brewing, not last minute evening brews.

I use 120 for the tun temp but its different for everyone. Remember that the tun isn't going to be as hot as the pre-heating water.

When dialing in the system I would recommend having some boiling water and some ice water readily available. This way you can add whichever one you need to get your mash temp.

I wouldn't worry about using BS for your sparges. Just heat your water to 180-185 and sparge twice with equal volumes. BS is kind of picky when it comes to the batch sparge.

As far as i remember, I don't think there is a double batch sparge option in beersmith. You can however trick it into doing a double batch sparge if you edit the mash details. There is an option in there to sparge using batches that fill only X% of the tun. If you check that option and play with the percentage you can get it do display 2 separate and equal batch sparges on the brew sheet. I used to do that too. Now i just take the single batch sparge it gives me and split it in half.

I think what's confusing to me is that BS has three different, but similar single infusion techniques listed for each body style. Here's an example:

Single Infusion, Medium Body
Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge
Single Infusion, Medium Body, No Mash Out

I'm not sure what the difference is between them, and which one applies best to my brewing.

jjp36 said:

As far as i remember, I don't think there is a double batch sparge option in beersmith. You can however trick it into doing a double batch sparge if you edit the mash details. There is an option in there to sparge using batches that fill only X% of the tun. If you check that option and play with the percentage you can get it do display 2 separate and equal batch sparges on the brew sheet. I used to do that too. Now i just take the single batch sparge it gives me and split it in half.

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That is what I'm thinking, but I swear that the first two times I brewed, it listed two sparge steps...

you want the Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge option

Homercidal said:

That is what I'm thinking, but I swear that the first two times I brewed, it listed two sparge steps...

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I think the only way it will list more then 1 sparge is if it calculates that the amount of grain + sparge water you are using is too large to fit in your mash tun. Then it will break it into 2 sparges.

jjp36 said:

I think the only way it will list more then 1 sparge is if it calculates that the amount of grain + sparge water you are using is too large to fit in your mash tun. Then it will break it into 2 sparges.

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Ah, then that is maybe why it worked for my 5 gallon batches!

I think I see what I did. It looks like I might have previously selected Single Infusion. THis gives a Mash Out step, which I what I did before, but it also gives a sparge amount above it, which I did not see until just now. That may be what I used before and how I got 2 "Sparges" previously.

On a side note, I only did a single sparge this time and got my full boil volume, but when my friend tasted the spent grain he said it was def sweeter than the last time. Maybe a second sparging would have been a good idea after all?

I guess it depends on your process. I tried doing single sparges, but i could never get the same efficiency as i did when i double sparged. I always do 2 now, since it increases my efficiency and only takes an extra 10 minutes tops.

Check out this page by Bobby_M: link

especially the No Mash Out Double Batch Sparge description

schweaty said:

most people do it twice in equal volumes.

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Maybe most people around here, but in general, most brewers do only one sparge.

I don't know if I had anything to do with that local tendency or not but I certainly encourage everyone to try one and two sparges on similar grain bills and note the results. The key would be keeping other variables like temperature the same to isolate the double sparge effect.

Kaiser did a great mathematical analysis that supports the idea:https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Batch_Sparging_Analysis

This chart illustrates that one aspect of it though. It tracks with my 4-5% difference I've been seeing. Worth the effort? Not sure.

Thanks, Bobby. I absolutely agree that people should try both ways and decide for themselves. My own results are in line with Kai's graph and for me, it just isn't worth it to do more than one sparge.