First All Grain In Progress - Phil's Sparger Question

I am in the process of sparging my first all grain brew (FINALLY!!!). The water is heated to 180 but think it needs to be a bit higher next time. I am getting the grain up to about 165.

Phil's Sparger looks cool as hell. It is spinning like hell. But... it is shooting water EVERYWHERE. A great deal of water shooting out the top of the sparger as well as the arm holes. It was literally covering an area about two to three feet beyond the mash/lauter tun. When I lowered the water pressure (which was not much the hot water tank was set about a foot above the mash/lauter tun) it barely was enough pressure to move the arm.

Did Phil build a bad sparger or am I doing something wrong?

Sounds like you've got a bad one. Mine shoots water out of the holes, but nowhere else. I assume that the holes are angled downwards. I also try to keep the arm spinning as slowly as possible. In this condition it still adds water faster than I am draining the wort out.

=a.

I had pretty much zero luck with my first Phil's sparger. It didn't seem to want to let any water out of it. That was several years ago. Recenly I bought another one, and it is really great. Depending on how wide we open the ball valve, the arm can go from not moving and cover every gradation up to spinning furiously which adds water too quickly. No matter what the setting is, though, the water doesn't escape the cooler. If you can exchange it for another one, that might be a good idea. I'd imagine that these things are made by hand and, as a result, are prone to an occasional defect.

I normall do my sparging in the garden. I use a big rock to weight down the sparging arm.

I usually keep boiling the kettle and pouring the hot water into a bucket while I am doing the mash. I havent counted exactly how many times I boil the kettle but I would guess maybe a dozen times and it takes maybe 80 minutes to collect enough water to do the sparge.

I know you are not meant to use boiling water in the sparge but I figure that the time delay between doing these actions are gonna lead to the water cooling to the target temperature of 78C by the time it filters through the grain bed.

Btw it should only spray water onto the grains if you are using it correctly. Try weighting down the arm with a brick/rock.