Sparging

Hi everybody

I want to get involved in AG technique so i am reading a bit the forums,and i have some doubts about sparging,referred in particular to this program: Mash and Sparge Water Calculator ::: Brew365 - Homebrewing Recipes and Articles

if you put batch size 6.5 gals (25 liters) and a total of grains of 12lbs you can see at the bottom that you need 6.67 gals to sparge!!!!!isn't that A LOT of water? i mean,i thought mash was the part in which you get more sugars and stuff,not the sparge!
Also the program says i must boil like 11 gals to get 6.5 gals in the fermenter...how is that possible?
consider i left all the data to standard (besides batch size and grain bill)

Please help!!

That actually looks pretty close.
I've recently tracked down my efficiency problems to a bad case of Small Pot! That is to say I can only boil 6.5 gallons, so I'm missing out on about a gallon and a half of sparge water....thus causing me to see efficiency in the mid to low 60's.
I think that is an overlooked issue when trying to diagnose low Eff%

with 12lbs of grain you should be using ~3.75 gallons to mash. A lot of that will be absorbed by the grains, so you'll only get around 2 gallons out of that. If you sparge with 6.67, you'll wind up with with about 8.5 in the brewpot; boil for an hour, and you'll be close to 6.5

the mash releases the sugars from the grains - you get 'em all out with the sparge (think of it as rinsing soap off of something)

aaaahhh!!!
i guess i didn't considered the absorption of the grains!
Alas, i didn't know that also with sparge this would have happened....
So there's no point in buying a 10 gals pot,i'll just get one around 8's....
:rockin:

My wife will be happy also,she always thinks i'm going to destroy the kitchen with all that weigh on the burners

You would be much more happy if you get a propane burner and a 10 gallon pot. Its nearly impossible to boil 8 gallons in an 8 gallon pot. I have a 30 quart pot and have to watch my boil like a hawk to avoid boilovers. I'll be upgrading to a larger pot as soon as I can afford to.

ok... iìm going with the 10 gals pot....thx for the advice!

Edcculus said:

You would be much more happy if you get a propane burner and a 10 gallon pot. Its nearly impossible to boil 8 gallons in an 8 gallon pot..

Click to expand...

I'll guarantee that!
I try to boil 6.5 gallons in a 7 gallon pot....It SUCKS!
My efficency suffers greatly, and I'm constantly monitoring for boilover.

BigKahuna said:

I'll guarantee that!
I try to boil 6.5 gallons in a 7 gallon pot....It SUCKS!
My efficency suffers greatly, and I'm constantly monitoring for boilover.

Click to expand...

I started my brewday this last Saturday with a 30qt turkey fryer for my strike and sparge water and quickly realized that wouldn't work.

Went out and picked up a 52qt/13g aluminum pot for $40 at winco here in Cali. So if anyone is looking for a relatively cheap alternative, $40 gets you 13 gallon capacity to boil with.

P.S. I still had a little boil over at the start of my boil because I had the lid on and wasn't watching close enough.:cross:

by the way why small pots have low efficiency?due to evaporation/ heat retention or what else?

Due to the inability to sparge enough. Just as an example, for a finished 5 gallon batch, you'd typically collect up to 6.75 gallons of wort from the mash/sparge and boil it down.

If your pot can only boil 6 gallons, you're missing some sugars.

how do you know how to exactly hit the pre-boil volume?
is there an equation/program?whatever?

Download Beersmith it is a (free to try) brewing program that calculates everything.

aahh!
by the way....how big is your mash-lauter tun guys? it seems quite impossible to find a cooler with a faucet here in Italy bigger than 4,7 gallons...
do you think that eventually drilling a hole into a cooler doesn't give problems???

MIne is 5 gallon round drink cooler. I wish it was bigger...but it's not limited me yet.

cooler: i think the best way to go for the cooler is one of the round one that has the spigot for dispensing water. the spigot can be removed and you can install a valve that will seal well. drilling a hole will most likely give you problems unless you do a really good job drilling and tightening the valve. you buy something called a weldless fitting for the hole in the cooler.

hitting preboil volume: something i did when i first started all grain is fill my boil kettle with x gallons and boil for 1 hour. i have a 15 gallon kettle so i filled it with 10 gallons and boiled for 1 hour. after the hour i cooled the water quickly just like would if it was wort and measured it exactly. your boil off isn't a % per hour, it's a fixed amount per hour based on factors like the surface area of the water in the pot and the humidity. once you know how much you'll boil off in an hour you can add that to how much you want to have in the kettle after boiling and that's your preboil volume. if you want to ferment exactly 5 gallons then you'd better have 5.25 or 5.5 gallons in your kettle so you can leave behind hops, trub, and cold break.

SenorWanderer said:

cooler: i think the best way to go for the cooler is one of the round one that has the spigot for dispensing water. the spigot can be removed and you can install a valve that will seal well. drilling a hole will most likely give you problems unless you do a really good job drilling and tightening the valve. you buy something called a weldless fitting for the hole in the cooler.

hitting preboil volume: something i did when i first started all grain is fill my boil kettle with x gallons and boil for 1 hour. i have a 15 gallon kettle so i filled it with 10 gallons and boiled for 1 hour. after the hour i cooled the water quickly just like would if it was wort and measured it exactly. your boil off isn't a % per hour, it's a fixed amount per hour based on factors like the surface area of the water in the pot and the humidity. once you know how much you'll boil off in an hour you can add that to how much you want to have in the kettle after boiling and that's your preboil volume. if you want to ferment exactly 5 gallons then you'd better have 5.25 or 5.5 gallons in your kettle so you can leave behind hops, trub, and cold break.

Click to expand...

the main problem is that here in Italy homebrewing is considered an uncommon hobby so we don't have specialized Home Brew Local Stores like you have in the USA.., if i had gone to a shop asking for a weldess fitting the guys would have laughed at me or glazed like he had seen a ghost...i tried to go to a plumer shop to try asking for something close to a wort chiller and he suggested me to "put lot of ice in the wort and it will cool, pal!!!!!"
What we have here is only

buy plumber stuff and try to adapt to your situation like a real scrapmetal man,either recycle stuff from every place available.It's not uncommon that entering into a mall,i start considering "ha!i could use that for my HB!!";but since i'm not even close to McGuyver i risk to waste money,time and eventually liters and liters of wort/beer

buy extra-super-expensive stuff from websites, if there's any choice of what you need!: we don't have any coolers with spigots/faucets,but we have zapaps...i hate zapaps,the temperature can't be controlled...

i considered buying in the USA, but shipping really kills this idea.

Ok today i'll drill my 45quarts cooler and put some teflon gaskets and see what happens...

I AM DESPERATE!



edit:

it seems i have found a nice 49quarts cooler with spigot!!!
here it is!

but my question is:
isn't it too big for my 6.5 gallons batches of beer??Am I loosing sugar extraction yeld using that big cooler??

Links:


Austin Homebrew Supply
MoreBeer | Beer Making and Home Brewing Supplies
NORTHERN BREWER
William's Brewing, Home Brewing Supplies, Winemaking Supplies, and Home Coffee Roasting. @ Williams Brewing
MicroMatic.com - Draft Keg Beer Equipment, Kegerator, Taps
St. Patrick's of Texas
www.beersmith.com
www.moorescott.net/marc/homebrew.htm

How to Brew - By John Palmer

no, it's not too big, you wont lose extraction. you will lose heat with all that airspace above the mash. if your batch is 6.5 gallons then your average 1.050 beer with 75% efficiency will have about 12-13 lbs of grain. that wont even come close to filling it.

if your homemade cooler job works then great, but i don't think you'd have to order from the US to get good parts. try england, there's lots of home brewers there. shipping should be that bad from there. maybe a private message to Orfy will give you an idea if there are any good homebrew stores in the UK that might be able to help you with this stuff. the other thing is that i know shipping from the US is a killer, but i'd think of it as a one time purchase that would make every brew you do for the next 5, 8, 10 years much easier. if you amortize the cost of extra shipping over the life of your totally awesome new mash tun it's pennies. just something to think about, but if you dont have the cash you dont have the cash.