Sparge Temperature for 2 Rinses?

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mcleanmj

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I am using http://www.brew365.com/mash_sparge_water_calculator.php for my mash and sparge calculator, I have compared it with some others and it has been fairly reliable for me so far.

For the batch I am doing it calculates a sparge volume of 5.16 gallons. Normally I would add this volume at 185-190 degrees to get a grainbed temp of 168 or so.

Well, I am hoping to increase my efficiency by using 2 smaller batch sparges instead of 1 of the full volume.

So my question is: By breaking the 5.16 gallons into two smaller volumes (2.58 gal each?) would I need to increase the temperature of each to ensure that I still raise the grainbed to a high enough temperature?

Thanks!
 
great question..... Probably yes because if your mashing out at 168 ( alot of us don't mash out myself included ) you need to raise the entire mash temp. The first smaller addition will be higher than if you put the full amount but the second addition can be at 168 degrees as long as the grain bed has already been raised with the smaller addition first. The exact calculation depends on the recipe as the more grain the more heat absorbtion, it will also depend on the thermodynamics of the mashing vessel. hope that made sense.
 
Yeah that makes sense. I am not really looking to do a mash out...I have just been lead to believe that raising the mash temperature to 168 when you sparge will result in the highest extraction. But I do see what you are saying raise it to 168 with the first rinse and maintain it at 168 with the second.
 
Honesty, this is what I do...be it good practice or not.

I heat my sparge water to 170 and split it in two batches. I pour in half, stir and let sit for a few minutes. Drain off and repeat with remainder of water (not reheating).

Seem to get decent efficiency of high 70s on good days. Before I changed mash tuns I use to get in the 80s.
 
I think for tonight I am going to use brewheads sparge calculator and just go with a mashout...see how it comes out.
 
mcleanmj said:
Yeah that makes sense. I am not really looking to do a mash out...I have just been lead to believe that raising the mash temperature to 168 when you sparge will result in the highest extraction. But I do see what you are saying raise it to 168 with the first rinse and maintain it at 168 with the second.
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No raising the grain temp to 168 does not increase extraction though it does loosen the mash and makes the sparge smoother. Raising the bed to 168 is called a mash out it STOPS all enzymatic conversion of sugars and should only be done to ensure it has stopped. Most of us either use a iodine test to determine if conversion is complete. I rarely mash out.
 
Wow if I ever added 170 degree water to 12 pounds of mash at 150 +- it would be way under the 168 degree optimal sparge temp. I split my batch sparge additions and always heat it to 205 degrees which always gets me right around 170 degrees for the first addition and 168 for the second, which is perfect for me. I have read about people heating until 185 degrees, for me this would be barely 160 degrees, it's were I started years ago and quickly learned that if splitting the 5 gallons or so sparge water I need to be in the 200's.
 
Bandt9299....I agree with you. I usually split sparge along with mash out. 200 degree sparge water temp. for split sparges gets me 170ish. If i dont split, i go lower. After reading all your comments i may skip mash out all together and just do split sparges.
 
andyherrick said:
Bandt9299....I agree with you. I usually split sparge along with mash out. 200 degree sparge water temp. for split sparges gets me 170ish. If i dont split, i go lower. After reading all your comments i may skip mash out all together and just do split sparges.
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Yep, me too. The first addition is around 200 degrees, so that the grainbed gets brought up to 165-168 degrees. The second addition is around 170, to keep the grainbed there.

If you are lower, that's fine. It's not crucial to hit 168, as you're bringing the runnings up to a boil anyway right after. It's just thought that it makes the sugars more soluble. You can even sparge with cold water, so it's not all that important to hit 168!
 
The solubility of malt sugars is way, way, way above anything we deal with as brewers, even with frigidly cold water. It's north of 1.300, if I remember correctly.

I suspect, though certainly can't prove, that people who notice a big jump in efficiency due to a mash out are actually getting it because their conversion wasn't actually complete in the first place. Anyway, I sparge with hot water about half the time and cold water about half the time and I hit my numbers dead on every time.
 
MalFet said:
The solubility of malt sugars is way, way, way above anything we deal with as brewers, even with frigidly cold water. It's north of 1.300, if I remember correctly.

I suspect, though certainly can't prove, that people who notice a big jump in efficiency due to a mash out are actually getting it because their conversion wasn't actually complete in the first place. Anyway, I sparge with hot water about half the time and cold water about half the time and I hit my numbers dead on every time.
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Interesting you mention that, my buddy said recently that he sparges with cold water, straight from the tap. Cold water. I haven't tried it yet, but he says that he gets the same efficiency whether he hot or cold sparges. Maybe I'll give it a shot next brew.
 
bottlebomber said:
Interesting you mention that, my buddy said recently that he sparges with cold water, straight from the tap. Cold water. I haven't tried it yet, but he says that he gets the same efficiency whether he hot or cold sparges. Maybe I'll give it a shot next brew.
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Yes, I've read some articles at braukaiser.com where he said the same thing. that cold water sparging didn't increase the efficiency.
 
bandt9299 said:
This sounds pretty interesting but why risk the efficiency? I'm old school if it isn't broke don't fix it.
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Because the conventional wisdom here doesn't make sense. I'm not saying that cold sparging is necessarily better than (or, heck, even as good as) hot sparging, but the standard explanation for why we need a hot sparge is definitely hinkey.

Solubility is not really a relevant fact to mash chemistry, at least not in any way I can see. Your converted sugars are already in solution, and adding a few gallons of 50ºF water isn't going to make them precipitate out.

If you don't want to do it, don't do it. But, there are a lot of brewers out there with systems such that a cold sparge would make their lives a lot easier. For anyone in that situation, I'd say give it a shot. I did it for probably 50 batches and never once noticed a difference.
 
bandt9299 said:
This sounds pretty interesting but why risk the efficiency? I'm old school if it isn't broke don't fix it.
Click to expand...
For me the bonus would be saving the propane.
Yooper said:
Yes, I've read some articles at braukaiser.com where he said the same thing. that cold water sparging didn't increase the efficiency.
Click to expand...
I'm personally more interested in if it decreased the efficiency.. If it doesn't, then heck yeah I'll try it!
 
Sounds great but I won't even consider trying it on a 7 barrel system, I'll stick to what I've been taught. I might try it at home though to save the propane.
 
Just using common sense here and I am not known for my common sense but go with me on this one. In a commercial setting where they actually make money making beer.... why would they waste the gas heating sparge water if they could get the same results using cold water? also, why we are at it when we check our gravities we want to do it at 60 degrees right ? why is that ? if we were to check it at 120 degrees the density would be less because the heat effects density so in my mind by heating sparge water it assists the residual sugar to flow free from the mash. This is all speculation but this is what goes through my little mind when I read about cold sparging but, I may be way off.
 
Aschecte said:
Just using common sense here and I am not known for my common sense but go with me on this one. In a commercial setting where they actually make money making beer.... why would they waste the gas heating sparge water if they could get the same results using cold water?also, why we are at it when we check our gravities we want to do it at 60 degrees right ? why is that ? if we were to check it at 120 degrees the density would be less because the heat effects density so in my mind by heating sparge water it assists the residual sugar to flow free from the mash. This is all speculation but this is what goes through my little mind when I read about cold sparging but, I may be way off.
Click to expand...

Just to put things in context, though, water is about 1% less dense at mash temp than at room temp. If that made a significant difference to grain bed fluidity, it should be nearly impossible to lauter a barleywine.

There's not a huge amount of savings to be had in fuel, in any case. If you sparge cold, your combined runnings need basically that much more fuel to hit boiling temps.
 
MalFet said:
Just to put things in context, though, water is about 1% less dense at mash temp than at room temp. If that made a significant difference to grain bed fluidity, it should be nearly impossible to lauter a barleywine.

There's not a huge amount of savings to be had in fuel, in any case. If you sparge cold, your combined runnings need basically that much more fuel to hit boiling temps.
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I was more thinking of the density change in the sugars, making them more soluble at higher temperatures. I know it's difficult to stir a spoonful of honey into a glass of cold water. Again, I will have to try this myself to know. As far as fuel savings, I think that depends a lot on your system. Also a lot of every is lost heating up the grain bed that could stay in the propane tank. I don't think on a hunch that the savings are huge, but it probably would have gotten me out of trouble that time that my tank kicked right as I was adding my 20 minute hop addition.
 
bottlebomber said:
I was more thinking of the density change in the sugars, making them more soluble at higher temperatures. I know it's difficult to stir a spoonful of honey into a glass of cold water.
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Definitely, but your wort gains all its gravity during the mash, when temperatures are high. At the end of the mash, there are no solid sugars in your grain bed. There are no more sugars to be dissolved into solution, so the only way solubility could act as a limiting factor would be if temperatures got low enough for sugar to be forced out of solution. That's not a problem, though, because near-freezing water doesn't saturate until 1.310 or so.

It helps to use warm water to make Kool-Aid, but when you stick it in the fridge the sugar doesn't all come tumbling back out.
 
MalFet said:
J
There's not a huge amount of savings to be had in fuel, in any case. If you sparge cold, your combined runnings need basically that much more fuel to hit boiling temps.
Click to expand...

Right. If you're heating the sparge water, you save on heating the wort to boiling.

Also, sparging with hotter water can have one big advantage- it works as a mashout step. Not a big deal for a short sparge, or for a batch sparge, since you'll be boiling the wort shortly. But for a big commercial set up, a mash-out will keep the profile of the mash by denaturing the enzymes at the correct time.

When I said cold water sparging didn't increase efficiency, I also meant to say that it didn't decrease efficiency either!
 
MalFet said:
Just to put things in context, though, water is about 1% less dense at mash temp than at room temp. If that made a significant difference to grain bed fluidity, it should be nearly impossible to lauter a barleywine.

There's not a huge amount of savings to be had in fuel, in any case. If you sparge cold, your combined runnings need basically that much more fuel to hit boiling temps.
Click to expand...

I'm not contesting what your saying about only a minute differnce in water density I'm referring to sugar density which is effected by more than 1%. Also, I worked for a fairly large microbrewery up in NewHampshire and trust me on a micro brewery level there is a huge amount of difference in savings by not heating sparge water in the tune of the thousands of dollars. I saw the bills first hand and it was a point never to use more than we had to. My point is if cold water gave the same results why do NO breweries use cold water sparges ?
 
Aschecte said:
Maybe someone could explain this to me because if its as simple as me not heating sparge water than I'm all about that. But let's say you mash at 152 -154 because you want some dextrins in there so you have some more mouthfeel and body to the beer. You sparge with let say 70 degree room temp water aren't you lowering the grain bed temp and in essence creating almost a beta rest situation or are those enzymes already denatured enough during the main alpha rest not to mater anymore ? I just feel like by using colder water to sparge it may not effect your efficiency but you are stepping it in reverse.
Click to expand...

That is why I mentioned an advantage of heating the sparge water- to do a mash out.

but say you could direct fire your mashtun to get it to mashout temps to denature the enzymes first- then the cold water sparge wouldn't affect the mash profile of the wort.

An alpha rest itself will NOT denature the enzymes. But in a home environment, if you're batch sparging, you're talking about maybe 10 minutes before the sparge runnings get put on to boil anyway so any change in the mash profile would be negligible!
 
Aschecte said:
I'm not contesting what your saying about only a minute differnce in water density I'm referring to sugar density which is effected by more than 1%. Also, I worked for a fairly large microbrewery up in NewHampshire and trust me on a micro brewery level there is a huge amount of difference in savings by not heating sparge water in the tune of the thousands of dollars. I saw the bills first hand and it was a point never to use more than we had to. My point is if cold water gave the same results why do NO breweries use cold water sparges ?
Click to expand...

Because then you'd spend the same amount of money anyway bringing up the wort to a boil immediately after. If you start with the wort at 165, you don't have to expend all that much more energy to get up to boiling. Plus, again, at that level, you'd want to do a mash out anyway.
 
For the batch I did Friday night I only had 7 and 1/4 lbs grain and 1 lb honey. Aimed for a ratio of 1.50 qts/lb but, as has been happening to me a lot (despite heating mash tun), initial temp came out too low - 148. Took 3 quarts to get it to 152 surprisingly. This brought my ratio up to 1.9 qts/lb. At this point I decided I was no longer going to do two steps in my sparge as it only required a bit more than 3 and a half gallons. Added the sparge water at 190 degrees which brought it up to about 170, went over 170 briefly, I stirred in a few ice cubes and it stayed about 169. Did a pretty good dough in and a good stir in for the sparge. Marked a spot on my ball valve that is 1 qt/minute on the drain. Planned for an OG of 1.047 @ 73% (been getting about 70) efficiency, ended up with 1.052 OG which is about 82% efficiency I believe. This leads me to believe that the higher ratio of water to grain really got it mixed thoroughly and that the hot sparge helped a lot. I am pretty pleased with this outcome.
 
mcleanmj said:
For the batch I did Friday night I only had 7 and 1/4 lbs grain and 1 lb honey. Aimed for a ratio of 1.50 qts/lb but, as has been happening to me a lot (despite heating mash tun), initial temp came out too low - 148. Took 3 quarts to get it to 152 surprisingly. This brought my ratio up to 1.9 qts/lb. At this point I decided I was no longer going to do two steps in my sparge as it only required a bit more than 3 and a half gallons. Added the sparge water at 190 degrees which brought it up to about 170, went over 170 briefly, I stirred in a few ice cubes and it stayed about 169. Did a pretty good dough in and a good stir in for the sparge. Marked a spot on my ball valve that is 1 qt/minute on the drain. Planned for an OG of 1.047 @ 73% (been getting about 70) efficiency, ended up with 1.052 OG which is about 82% efficiency I believe. This leads me to believe that the higher ratio of water to grain really got it mixed thoroughly and that the hot sparge helped a lot. I am pretty pleased with this outcome.
Click to expand...

For batch sparging, draining at 1 quart/minute is not necessary. Since you stir in the sparge water thoroughly, you can just vorlauf and drain. It doesn't hurt, obviously, but one of the main advantages of batch sparging is the time savings. You can drain with the ball valve wide open, and get the same results.
 
Yooper said:
That is why I mentioned an advantage of heating the sparge water- to do a mash out.

but say you could direct fire your mashtun to get it to mashout temps to denature the enzymes first- then the cold water sparge wouldn't affect the mash profile of the wort.

An alpha rest itself will NOT denature the enzymes. But in a home environment, if you're batch sparging, you're talking about maybe 10 minutes before the sparge runnings get put on to boil anyway so any change in the mash profile would be negligible!
Click to expand...

You got a point there.... I know this thread is talking about batch Sparging but in my mind I'm thinking about my process which I do not batch I fly sparge. Agreed in batch sparge situations it probably won't make a huge differnce.
 
Aschecte said:
I'm not contesting what your saying about only a minute differnce in water density I'm referring to sugar density which is effected by more than 1%. Also, I worked for a fairly large microbrewery up in NewHampshire and trust me on a micro brewery level there is a huge amount of difference in savings by not heating sparge water in the tune of the thousands of dollars. I saw the bills first hand and it was a point never to use more than we had to. My point is if cold water gave the same results why do NO breweries use cold water sparges ?
Click to expand...

Hmm...I'm not sure what you mean by sugar density. Your sugar is in solution, so its density wouldn't really be calculated independently of the water under most conditions. Are you talking about viscosity? There's an argument to be made that colder temperatures increases water retention in the grain bed, but that never was my experience. That might have an impact on lautering rates for fly systems, though I still can't see why it would on a batch system like the one the OP is using.

Yooper explains the cost thing, though bottlebomber correctly mentions some degree of savings that would be had, specifically for the heat left in the grain bed. Like often happens in breweries, there's a tradeoff here between energy use and time.
 
MalFet said:
Hmm...I'm not sure what you mean by sugar density. Your sugar is in solution, so its density would really be calculated independently of the water under most conditions. Are you talking about viscosity? There's an argument to be made that colder temperatures increases water retention in the grain bed, but that never was my experience. That might have an impact on lautering rates for fly systems, though I still can't see why it would on a batch system like the one the OP is using.

Yooper explains the cost thing, though bottlebomber correctly mentions some degree of savings that would be had, specifically for the heat left in the grain bed. Like often happens in breweries, there's a tradeoff here between energy use and time.
Click to expand...

Yeah you are correct I got so caught up in the temperature itself i forgot this thread was about batch Sparging. And yes I meant viscosity of the sugars.
 
Aschecte said:
Yeah you are correct I got so caught up in the temperature itself i forgot this thread was about batch Sparging. And yes I meant viscosity of the sugars.
Click to expand...

The viscosity question is an interesting one. It's certainly possible that the higher viscosity of cooler runnings could lead to something akin to channeling for fly spargers. That could in theory decrease efficiency.
 
MalFet said:
The viscosity question is an interesting one. It's certainly possible that the higher viscosity of cooler runnings could lead to something akin to channeling for fly spargers. That could in theory decrease efficiency.
Click to expand...

That was my point but I have zero practical expierence as I fly sparge not batch I can only acedemically imagine the colder water would "gum" up the sugars inhibiting the flow and leave residual sugars behind. I will concede though if people are doing this with equal efficiency and results who am I to argue not to do it. I personally love when real world expierence wins out over what the books say is "the only way".
 
Yooper said:
For batch sparging, draining at 1 quart/minute is not necessary. Since you stir in the sparge water thoroughly, you can just vorlauf and drain. It doesn't hurt, obviously, but one of the main advantages of batch sparging is the time savings. You can drain with the ball valve wide open, and get the same results.
Click to expand...

Really? If this is true this would really cut down on my brew time, but I would be really cautious to even try it. How can full speed be sufficient enough to rinse all the sugar?
 
mcleanmj said:
Really? If this is true this would really cut down on my brew time, but I would be really cautious to even try it. How can full speed be sufficient enough to rinse all the sugar?
Click to expand...

I don't think anything rinses ALL the sugar. I can tell you that I mill my own grain, batch sparge, and get 77-80% efficiency every time with beers 1.080 and under in a 10 gallon cooler. I can't imagine getting better efficiency, or that a few extra points would be worth an extra half hour on the brew day.
 
mcleanmj said:
Really? If this is true this would really cut down on my brew time, but I would be really cautious to even try it. How can full speed be sufficient enough to rinse all the sugar?
Click to expand...

Rinsing is the wrong image to have of what happens during batch sparging. By the end of your mash, the sugars are no longer trapped in the endosperm of your grain, but rather are evenly distributed in solution through your mash water.

You drain your mashtun, but inevitably some quantity of sugar-rich water is left behind with the grain bed. When you add water for a batch sparge, what you are doing is diluting this water so you can reclaim more of the sugar when you drain again.

There's no rinsing, and likewise once you mix thoroughly you can drain as fast as your system allows.
 
So drain the first running at 1 qt/minute, and once I sparge drain full flow and I will get the same efficiency?
 
from my experience when I've drained full speed my extraction was horrible, and when I've drained slowly my extraction was excellent
 
mcleanmj said:
from my experience when I've drained full speed my extraction was horrible, and when I've drained slowly my extraction was excellent
Click to expand...

If you're collapsing your stainless braid or something, and thus getting a stuck sparge, that's a different story. But, there's no reason your rate of draining should affect the gravity of your first runnings.
 

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