Redweasel
Well-Known Member
I do, but a brewer at the local pub told me it would negatively affect my efficiency. Thoughts?
What do you mean by drain? If you mean draining all the wort before adding the sparge water, I've always done it that way, and have never heard anyone suggest the other way.
I would be interested to hear alternate methods of sparging.
That is exactly what I mean. He was telling me to just add my first round of sparge water on top of my mash water then drain then add my second sparge. I think he could possibly just be a jack ass.
I do, but a brewer at the local pub told me it would negatively affect my efficiency. Thoughts?
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For example, if you expect the mash runnings to equal about 2 gallons and you want a 7-gallon preboil (your sparge would be 5 gallons) you can go ahead and add 1.5 gallons pre runnings, then run out that 3.5 gallons and then do a single and final 3.5 batch infusion. This is the highest efficiency you can get...
Maximum efficiency in terms of sugar extraction is in having two equal volumes drained from your tun. This entails adding a small amount of water at the end of your mash, stir, vorlauf and drain and then add a second larger volume that equals the amount just drained off, stir, vorlauf and drain. Many of us use the first addition as an opportunity to "mash out" by adding boiling or almost boiling water to the mash to bring it up to 165-170F.
GT
What temperature for these 1.5 gallons, in this example..?
If you continually add sparge water in top-off fashion as your draining, you're essentially fly sparging.
That's what I do now. I picked up 6 points just ladling in 170 degree sparge water (very gently) only was fast was the wort as draining (which I did slowly). Never let the water level fall below 2-3 inches above the grain bed. Never stirred. The clean water pushing down through the grain bed acted like a squeegee. I always got the sense that draining, adding water, stirring, draining and repeating was re-suspending sugars throughout the grain bed that never came out completely.
Maybe that's what he was talking about.
Any plans to put your HLT up on some milk crates to stop you from having to ladel?
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That's what I do now. I picked up 6 points just ladling in 170 degree sparge water (very gently) only was fast was the wort as draining (which I did slowly).
I was thinking about the possibility of using a plastic water bucket with the shower head for watering patio plants (which also seems like half-assed fly sparging). Would that work better than simply pouring over the grain bed?
WBC, the difficulty of batch sparging an 1100 gallon mash is a bit of a red herring in the context of homebrewing isn't it? I do agree that as the batch size increases, the utility of batch sparging goes down but 1100 and 10 are not even close.
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