Long batch sparge on first all grain

Did my first all grain this weekend. Probably beginner's luck, but hit my temps on the nose and hit 82% efficiency, and sg was with 2 points of predicted.

I batch sparged. After a 60 minute mash at 152 I vorlaufed, drained, and added another 4.5 gallons of 170 degree water, stirred it, and let it sit for an hour while I fiddled around with a few other brew day chores. Then I vorlaufed again and drained. Seemed like it worked very well.

Was letting the sparge sit for an hour overkill?

Thanks to all those on this forum for their excellent advice. A year ago I was trying to figure out the Mr Beer kit I got for Christmas

Letting it sit for an hour isn't "overkill"- it's just not necessary. The beauty of batch sparging is that it's faster than continuous (fly) sparging. If you're letting it sit for an hour you just lose the times savings, that's all.

I usually pour in the 170-180 degree water, stir ths sh*t out of it for 5 minutes, let it sit for a few, stir for a few more then vorlauf and pour. 10 minutes total or so. Easy Peesy.

Basically what I do, is do a 60 minute mash, vorlauf 2 or 3 times, drain it slow. Once it's mostly empty, then batch sparge and let it sit for about 15 minutes, then vorlauf again 2 or 3 times, and drain it. If I still feel like I need a hair more in my pot, then I fly sparge a little.

You should be fine, but you don't need to do an hour

jflongo said:

Basically what I do, is do a 60 minute mash, vorlauf 2 or 3 times, drain it slow. Once it's mostly empty, then batch sparge and let it sit for about 15 minutes, then vorlauf again 2 or 3 times, and drain it. If I still feel like I need a hair more in my pot, then I fly sparge a little.

You should be fine, but you don't need to do an hour

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True, but you don't have to drain the mashtun slow, either, or let it sit at all. You could vorlauf and let 'er rip, and batch sparge just as quickly, and not have any loss of efficiency at all.


So, you can see that there are lots of ways to do this, and whatever works for each person is what works.

I sometimes batch sparge, and when I do it's to save time. I volauf, and drain the MLT. Then stir in the sparge water vigorously, vorlauf and drain. It's like 5 minutes. If I'm not in a hurry, I'll fly sparge (which takes about 45 minutes). It just depends on how my day is going.

Yooper said:

True, but you don't have to drain the mashtun slow, either, or let it sit at all. You could vorlauf and let 'er rip, and batch sparge just as quickly, and not have any loss of efficiency at all.

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Ok, i was thinking I had to do it slowly to let the grain bed set. So you are saying I can let it rip, and I don't need to do that slowly? I've only get 2 All Grain Brews under my belt so far

I did my first AG this weekend as well.

Wish I'd read up more before doing it. I did not do the vorlauf step on my sparge. I did it on the original mash, before draining, but not when I dropped my sparge water in. I just poured in my sparge water, stirred it like crazy, and then drained.

I have no idea how to calculate efficiency or anything, but my OG was dead on after chilling it, so I was happy.

Aboo said:

I did my first AG this weekend as well.

Wish I'd read up more before doing it. I did not do the vorlauf step on my sparge. I did it on the original mash, before draining, but not when I dropped my sparge water in. I just poured in my sparge water, stirred it like crazy, and then drained.

I have no idea how to calculate efficiency or anything, but my OG was dead on after chilling it, so I was happy.

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I wouldn't worry about that too much, as far as the sparge goes. Just do it next time. Now as far as efficiency goes, have you heard of BrewTarget, Beersmith 2, etc? That let's you enter your gravity information, volume amounts, etc for your brew day to help you with that.

BrewTarget is free and is pretty good. Beersmith 2, may be a hair better, but cost a little money, has a trial period so you can try it.

Aboo said:

I did my first AG this weekend as well.

Wish I'd read up more before doing it. I did not do the vorlauf step on my sparge. I did it on the original mash, before draining, but not when I dropped my sparge water in. I just poured in my sparge water, stirred it like crazy, and then drained.

I have no idea how to calculate efficiency or anything, but my OG was dead on after chilling it, so I was happy.

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What did you brew?

jflongo said:

Ok, i was thinking I had to do it slowly to let the grain bed set. So you are saying I can let it rip, and I don't need to do that slowly? I've only get 2 All Grain Brews under my belt so far

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Yes. Crack the valve open slowly at first, and vorlauf. Then open it wide and let it rip!

Like pretty much everything else in brewing - "It depends...."

If you had roughly 100% mash conversion in the first 60 minutes, then very little happened in the next 60 minutes at sparge temps.

If you didn't have full conversion in 60 minutes (poor crush, water chemistry issues etc) the you would have continued conversion at the higher sparge temp. In the range you were at, you would get a higher percentage of non-fermentable sugars in that second 60 minutes. That would make for a slightly less fermentable wort - which could be good or bad depending on the style you were going for.

In any event, you'll still get beer. For future batches, you should definitely look to standardize your process so you can be consistent.

stevehardt said:

What did you brew?

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BierMuncher's Cream of 3 Crops

6lbs 2-row
2.5lbs flaked corn
1lb minute rice.

I'll take a look at the software and see what I can see.

a few days ago I did my first double batch sparge that I ran off slower than the usual wide-open after it clears. i brewed the same 2 recipes within 2 days of each other (the 1st batch was the usual wide open run off after the wort cleared, the 2nd time I drained at a slower pace so it looked clearer throughout the whole sparge) and the difference in trub was negligible (I was hoping the slower drain would lead to less stuff getting through the grain bed and clearer wort). i would run it wide open once it clears. of course the beers are at different stages in fermentation but after trying this I see no reason why I would want to slow down a batch sparge now. if conversion is complete, its ready to go.

I just did my first all grain. I vorlaufed about 3-4 times after mash. I put in the water for the batch sparge, stirred it up let it sit for maybe 5 mins, vorlaufed again, then let it rip. My target OG was 1.051, and I hit 1.056. I took my OG at 75 degs, an I did no temp correction. So I'm assuming they my OG was closer to my target than it appeared because of temp. 7.3 gallons of wort boiled down to 5 gallons. I've never read anything in my travels that indicates that letting the batch sparge sit for an hour is needed. But I'm new as well and don't have everything down pat yet. I would think 5-15 min rest of stirring the sparge water in would be plenty of time.

:chreers:

That should be *after stirring the sparge water in.