Batch Spargers: Always scale up grain bill? Also, quick Hydrometer readings..

TastyBrew's
Sparge Calculator notes the amount of grain bill scaling that needs to happen depending on (seemingly) how inefficient my system is (it takes into account the wort lost in dead space, etc.)

So my questions is, every batch sparger MUST scale up their grain bill when using an untested recipe, correct? If Jane Home-brewer opened a book that discussed an all-grain recipe expecting a fly sparge, she would immediately kick up the grain bill accordingly.. right? I think I regularly need to scale up to about 1.2 Lbs of grain vs 1lb of normal recipe grain. I used the software app Beer Alchemy and I'm pretty sure I scaled up correctly.

My other question is: Do you adjust on the fly according to what your mash/ sparge hydrometer readings are? If so, do you all take the reading at the very high sparge temperatures and then just calculate the difference of temperature to get a correct hydrometer reading? Bobby and others track their hydrometer readings before boil, after boil, etc. and it seems they want to track the efficiency of their system, and then adjust to get close to their recipe OG (by tossing in LME or DME to raise the OG or adding water to lower the EG). Is that correct?

I was stressing about what to do if my hydrometer readings are at 150 C and I do math to factor the "real" reader. I worry this would not be as exact and throw me off regarding how to track my efficiency.

I've only done 2 extract brews and 2 all-grain brews (both fun, both somewhat disasters- equipment failure- but I hit my temps) and I feel I have a general understanding of what is happening. I like the idea of batch sparging, but I'm attempting to understand how to adapt recipes to the batch sparge workflow.
(IE: scaling grain bills up, modifying recipe's recommendations concerning how to sparge to my own batch sparge workflow, etc.)
For example, some recipes called for a single-infusion mash or a stepped mash. Do you all follow the recipe as noted or do you modify it for your own method of double-sparge?

Well, the way I do it is look at the OG of the recipe. My efficiency is always around 70% (I don't have my own mill, and usually just blame this on the crush). So, I just always make my recipe changes based on 70% efficiency.

In my opinion, all recipes should be broken down that way. I mean, batch or fly sparge, all of us vary with the efficiency we get with our own equipment. If your efficiency is markedly better than the person who wrote the recipe, your IBU/SG ratio would be off as well, and your beer would be underhopped. If your efficiency was much less, the beer would be overhopped. So, I plug in the recipe into Beersmith, and then adjust it to my efficiency and also change the AAUs of the hops to what I actually have for best accuracy.

Even with hydrometer adjustment calculations, hydrometers are notoriously inaccurate at high temperatures. So, I cool my sample in some ice water to under 100 degrees, then read the SG and correct for temperature. Since I know my system is always around 70%, though, I don't need to make adjustments.

As far as following recipes and the suggested mash schedule, it depends. I mean if Kaiser says for a certain style of beer you MUST do a double decoction, I listen up! But, I like my beers medium bodied as a rule, so I usually do a 152-154 degree single infusion mash for 60 minutes. Unless it's a beer that needs a protein rest, or a decoction, that's pretty much what I do. The recipe doesn't need to vary based on fly sparge/batch sparge/mash out- as long as you made your calculations correct for your system.

Most all recipes are set up for 70%. My system achieves between 78 and 82% so I am just ok with having a few higher gravity points than intended if I am using someone else's recipe.

Ditto Yoop on the Hydro samples. I test at around 85º Also your brewing software should be able to make the temp adjustments for you. If not then use a brewing calculator.

I sparge with the same amount of water that I mash with and have had few to no problems. If you use a cooler (as I do) then I use decoction mashing to hit multi step mashes. I feel that it is safe to say that 70% or more recipes you will find are single step though.

I have to scale DOWN most recipes that are set to 70-75% because I get about 88% brewhouse with a batch sparge. All the hydro readings during the process is something I advocate on your first 3-5 AG batches so you can troubleshoot things if you have problems. At this point, I take a sample out of the kettle before boiling, throw it in the freezer and then note my mash/lauter efficiency. I do it again as I'm filling my fermenter just to verify my brewhouse efficiency. I assume I'll even stop doing this in the next few batches.

I don't scale either way for batch sparging and just live with the higher OG I always get.

I've been consistently hitting 80% - 90% on recent batches, so, no, I'm not scaling down!

Given the success that I've seen - as well as Bobby, and Bradsul, and quite a few others - I'm about ready to declare the "myth" of batch sparging resulting in lower efficiency as BUSTED!

MAYBE it does make a small difference, but it's dwarfed, I think, by differences related to crush, mash pH, temperature at which you're doing the sparge, and lots of other things.

I figure if I'm going to go to the trouble to brew someone's recipe with the exact same ingredients I may as well try to honour the original as much as possible in terms of OG and IBU values. That means adjusting for the differing extraction rates of my gear.

Regarding batch sparging, I'm within 5% whether batch of fly sparging so as long as I decide which I'm going to do ahead of time I get fantastic results (85%+ for batch and 89-90% for fly). On my Vienna Lager I decided at the last minute to fly sparge (I was just getting the sparge water off the heat) but I had measured out my grains for batch sparging and I way overshot my OG. My Vienna Lager is pretty out of balance now in terms of BU:GU but oh well, higher alcohol makes it a great poker night beer.

It's a common misconception that batch sparging is inherently inefficient. As you can see from the folks above, batch sparging can be incredibly efficient, more so than many who fly sparge.

I think your original question is poorly founded. The question should not be whether you should scale your grain bill based on what sparge method you use, but instead whether you should scale your grain bill based on your efficiency. Your sparge method is just a means to an end, so it doesn't matter what you use as long as you know your efficiency - and once you know that, it's up to you whether you want to adjust your recipes to compensate the OG, or just live with what you get on your system.

Also remember that the majority of recipes out there are calculated for something like 65-75% efficiency. unless you've got some real bugs in your process/system, you should have little trouble getting into that range, so if anything, most people would be scaling their grain bill down, not up.

Thanks for the comments. I guess all the books I read spoke of many brewers using fly sparging as their method to sparge, so I assumed many of the homebrew recipes designed their recipe with that in mind. Good points about how efficiency is more important than the sparging method.. which is a means to an end. Thanks again.

I throw it in my brew software, which I've set up for the efficiency of my setup, and adjust the base grains to attain the target OG listed in the recipe. Thus if the recipe calls for 70% and an OG of 1.050, I put the ingredients into BeerTools and see what it calcs for an OG given my brewhouse efficiency. Then adjust base grains up or down to compensate.

One thing I HAVE wondered is if you have efficiency way off from the norm (55% or 90%), and you're working with a recipe that calls for a substantial amount of specialty grains, whether you should ever proportionately increase/reduce those as part of the scaling process. I've never really heard this issue addressed. Probably not a big deal if the recipe calls for 90% base malt and 10% specialty - but if you've got a grain bill that's 30% or 40% Munich, for example, I've wondered whether it's more "accurate" to scale that up and down along with whatever other base malt is being used.

When converting a recipe I always keep the proportions of the various grains the same. Otherwise you end up with a different beer, right?

I use BeerSmith to scale recipes up or down as needed. It has a recipe scaling function that allows you enter a recipe at a given efficiency and OG and then automatically scale it up or down to any other efficiency that you want. It keeps the proportions of the grains the same as the original recipe, so its real easy.

I always keep the percentages of each malt/adjunct the same, that way the recipe stays true to the original.

I usually hit 75-78% efficiency with a batch sparge. I usually either take the extra OG points or add a little top-off water if my OG is way too high.

I guess I haven't really even thought about it, since I'm so rarely brewing someone else's recipe. What I'm not sure of; if you've got a pound of crystal malt in the grain bill, and you're getting 60% efficiency - does that mean that you're extracting only 60% of the sugars and flavors and "goodness" from that malt as well? Is there a difference in the percentage of already existing sugars that get extracted from a crystal malt, versus the percentage that get converted from a base malt?

Wouldn't that argue, theoretically, for making an adjustment between an extract w/grains recipe and the AG version, since there's no way you'd be getting the same "efficiency" just steeping a pound of Crystal 60L versus if it's included in your mash?

I guess I'm just not sure if it's a black-and-white issue...

It's probably not that simple I haven't really put any thought into it myself. I usually just use the efficiency adjuster in promash and tell it to lock the ingredients to the efficiency - it scales everything for me.

the_bird said:

I guess I haven't really even thought about it, since I'm so rarely brewing someone else's recipe. What I'm not sure of; if you've got a pound of crystal malt in the grain bill, and you're getting 60% efficiency - does that mean that you're extracting only 60% of the sugars and flavors and "goodness" from that malt as well? Is there a difference in the percentage of already existing sugars that get extracted from a crystal malt, versus the percentage that get converted from a base malt?

Wouldn't that argue, theoretically, for making an adjustment between an extract w/grains recipe and the AG version, since there's no way you'd be getting the same "efficiency" just steeping a pound of Crystal 60L versus if it's included in your mash?

I guess I'm just not sure if it's a black-and-white issue...

Click to expand...

I dunno, but you have an interesting point. Lets assume that lauter efficiency is 100%, so that everything extracted from the grains in the mash is sparged into the kettle ([thread=68555]Kaiser may disagree[/thread]). Lets also assume that 100% of the crystal is "converted" and so sparged into the kettle. The relative contribution of the crystal in the final wort will be lower for someone who gets 80% from their base grain compared to someone else who gets 60% efficiency from their base grain. So I can see how this would lead to different tasting beers, assuming that my assumptions drunk are not too far from the truth...

In the end, detail at this level is best left to "art", don't you think?

+1 to everything thats been said already....in fact I started a thread this morning about how I got BETTER efficiency than the recipe I was using.....so batch sparging does work

Anyway, I wanted to throw in a couple of tips regarding quick hydro readings that I used this weekend. 1st the reading in my kettle before I boiled.....I got the sample, put my thermometor in it and put it in the kegger...it was down to 60* in maybe 20min so a pretty quick reading in that regard. 2nd the reading before I poured the wort into my ale pail. I used the ice water recirc this weekend w/a sump pump and cooled my wort down to 60*. It was AWESOME just pulling a sample and reading the hydro right then and there....not having to worry about adjusting for temp or cooling it down or anything.

Alamo_Beer said:

... Anyway, I wanted to throw in a couple of tips regarding quick hydro readings that I used this weekend. 1st the reading in my kettle before I boiled.....I got the sample, put my thermometor in it and put it in the kegger...it was down to 60* in maybe 20min so a pretty quick reading in that regard. 2nd the reading before I poured the wort into my ale pail. I used the ice water recirc this weekend w/a sump pump and cooled my wort down to 60*. It was AWESOME just pulling a sample and reading the hydro right then and there....not having to worry about adjusting for temp or cooling it down or anything.

Click to expand...

Another tip for quick hydro readings is to pour your sample into a metal baking pan and swirl it around (I use a 9" pie pan). A few minutes on a cool countertop is all it needs to get readable.

I must say WOW, what a great thread. I have wondered about many of these issues over the last year, and I really appreciate this discussion.
Thanks again HBT-ers for more thought provoking discussion.