Lost volume?!?!

I usually batch sparge. Today, last minute, I figured I'd try a hybrid fly sparge. During my first runnings, I gently poured sparge water over my grain bed. It took about 30 mins and was pretty easy. I use a pump from my mash tun (70 qt Coleman cooler) to my brew kettle with the valve on the "out" side of the pump barely open to keep it nice and slow. Using the same volume of water as I do when batch sparging I got only 4.75 gallons into the fermenter. I'm not terribly worried about this, particularly since my efficiency was near 80%, I'm just wondering if anyone has a similar experience OR good explanation for why this happened.

Also... anyone else think Widmer makes some pretyy f*cking great beers?! I've had 5 of theirs (so far) tonight: 2 x Drifter Pale Ales, and 1 each of their Dark Saison, Spiced IPA (no thanks), and Hefeweizen. They might be getting big, but damn, they do it right.

Cheers!

Bump

+6 for Drifter! But no good explanation.

Did you use more grain and thus more absorption? Also, did you have the beers before or after you sparged?

Nothing from usual, except the pump, which is a newer addition. It's happily fermenting at 62F right now, using WLP029 German Ale-- I love this yeast. The Widmers came after brewing

How much wort do you usually get from your sparge? The process itself shouldn't hold back wort. All things being equal, you may have lost some in the hose going to the pump. If you are aiming for 6.5 gallons pre-boil, increase your grainbill then mash & sparge more.

texasbrewer73 said:

How much wort do you usually get from your sparge? The process itself shouldn't hold back wort. All things being equal, you may have lost some in the hose going to the pump. If you are aiming for 6.5 gallons pre-boil, increase your grainbill then mash & sparge more.

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I brew 5.5 gal batches an usually get about 7.25 gal into my BK. Yesterday I got about 6.25 pre-boil. I'm alway concerned about running my pump dry, so I've been Turning it off once the sparge starts slowing way down... should I not be doing this? Prior to the pump, I would just let the tun drain until it was barely dripping; now, when cleaning up, I notice a lot of wort leftover in the tun.